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6/1/2021 0 Comments 2020 Ends, 2021 Begins. Remember to social distance! As we all know, 2020 was unexpectedly under unusual circumstances. To this day, the world is handling the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought drastic changes to society. Although many countries have announced the purchase of vaccine doses, we would advise continuing the practice of regular hand-washing, sanitization and wearing a mask in public areas. We also hope you find inspiration and learn from our experiences with the pandemic in this blog!
Initially, at the beginning of 2020, we were enlisted to attend a regional competition in Hawaii. We also qualified for the Houston, Texas World Championships. Unfortunately, due to travel limitations, we cancelled our plans. Our province had transitioned to online learning, meaning we did not have access to a working facility. With a functioning robot yet no purpose, our team encountered an unmotivated break. This setback continued until October 2020, when we adjusted to a new learning style and schedule. In the team's best interest, we decided to have a more active online presence on our social media platforms in this new virtual normality, which allowed us to host an online coding workshop using Vex VR in partnership with our local library. We were glad to continue making connections with our community! It is now 2021, and our goals are to expand our side projects on the online platform. Join us in our journey to maintain learning and sustainability in our team, as we will be updating our progress!
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23/2/2020 0 Comments Tips for Rookie Teams- Week 6 With the competition dates almost here, your robot should be very close to completion for your regional or district event. Your team should start to prepare for your competition in all respects.
For the programming members, you should be nearing the completion of your program and you should be able to control your robot both autonomously and with user control. A good idea would be to set up a practice field and test your code to avoid errors during the regional or district events. Build team, your robot should be completed with your electrical wiring and the frame finished. With the programming team, both sub-teams should start looking for potential drivers and train them to control the robot. If you already have a skilled driver ready to control the robot, you can still practice running your robot through drills to further develop your skills to maximize your points during the game. The administrative team should start preparing any required files or documents for the awards judges. In addition, if your team is preparing for any awards, make sure that you start to practice to ensure that your team does it’s best. Lastly, be sure to discuss what the activity at the pits will be so that members take turns at the pits, ready to present to the awards judges. Hopefully, your team is almost prepared with your competition, we wish all teams good luck with the Infinite Recharge season this year.  Hello, rookie teams! Believe it or not, we are over halfway through the build season.
The build team has started to make some of the field parts so they can test the final robot when it is done. The programming team has finished testing their robot ideas which they had planned earlier. They are also testing some driver mechanics and the drive train. The driving team has done a lot of drills in preparation for the matches. And the admin team has been working on completing the chairmen and has continued to reach out to businesses in our community. Thanks for reading, and good luck rookie teams!  Hello, rookie teams! Now that you’ve had your planning week, it's time to get started!
Build team should have prototypes and experimenting done by the end of this week so that you could incorporate these ideas into your current strategy. Remember to also collaborate and share your ideas with the build and driver team so that you can stay on the same page. Your team should use communication applications to voice all the problems that occur with your robot and any important information regarding your robot. Some communication apps we recommend are FlowDock, Slack, Discord, or Teams. If you are not able to connect your team social media chats are also an option. They are not as organized but it is communication nonetheless. Meanwhile, the admin team should continue to reach out to sponsors by contacting local businesses, union groups and large companies. In every FRC season, there are many unpredictable events that can occur. Your team should be able to improvise and adapt to these changes to meet the deadlines. Happy reading, good luck rookies, and may the force be with you all!  Our team divided into groups to brainstorm a variety of ideas to advance with the best possible designs. Our programmers started creating and testing some code on practice bots to familiarize themselves with the challenge. Meanwhile, our admin team continued to reach out to sponsors by contacting local businesses, union groups and large companies. They have also started preparing for our regional competition, such as gathering materials for the pit and working on award applications.
We are quite satisfied with our progress as of now and we hope the same for your teams. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us on our website (Contact) or visit the most popular forum used by the FIRST community: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/ Thanks for reading, rookies, and happy building! 28/11/2019 0 Comments Coding Presentation Our team recently had the opportunity to visit a coding club at our local library. We gave a short presentation of our experiences with coding on November 28. We showed videos of our experiences to the students and encouraged them to join robotics programs in their area. Our programmers showed the students some sample code from last year, which was used for our 2019 robot. We passed around the controls for our robots and eagerly showed them its functions. After we had finished our presentation, we explained what participating in the FRC program meant and how they can contribute to the society by engaging in the FIRST community. In hopes of continuously educating others about the wonders of robotics, we look forward to presenting at other community events in our area.
15/2/2019 0 Comments Week 6 Recap This last week was a bit different from other weeks, hence why this post is being written on Friday. On Monday and Tuesday, the school district closed all schools for snow, meaning we were only able to come in and work for 3 days of the week. However, the build team has been working hard and putting in extra late nights to finish the robot in time. Currently, it is almost finished with a weekend and Monday left to finish and tidy up before bag and tag day. Meanwhile, our field elements team has finished building the rocket for practice driving. You can find a picture of it above with our robot from last year, Atlas.
The administration team has been working hard to arrange more outreach events along while also working on awards presentations. We suggest every team have a group of people working on a Chairman's award video and presentation, as the prestigious award is a sign of success and kindness, and it should be in any team's long term goals to eventually win one. While you may not win in your first year, it is a good way to get your foot in the door so improvement can be made for other years. That's the recap of our 6th week of build season, and we hope to see you again! Our next event should be concerning bag and tag day and the finished robot. Thanks for reading! 7/2/2019 0 Comments Week 5 - Tips for Rookie Teams Welcome back to another week of tip for rookie teams! Over the last 3 days we've made a lot of progress in many parts of our team. Award submissions were closed today at 3pm EST or 12PM PST, and we made sure to finish up with plenty of time left for both the Chairman's award and Woodie Flower's award. The programming team has been working on our practice robot in order to test experimental code so they will be able to quickly program the actual robot. Field elements have been finished by field elements team. The drivers have been practicing for many hours so they can perform well at the competition. Out in the metalshop, our fabrication team have been working overtime to finish up the robot before the 19th, also known as bag and tag day. You must be done and have bagged up your robot by that day, so hopefully that can be accomplished with time for programming and driving practice. Good luck with your goals for the week, and in general. See you again next week!
1/2/2019 0 Comments FFL Jr. Expo 2019 December began with a great start as we hosted a FLL and FLL Jr Expo at our school! We were glad to see multiple teams from the lower mainland join us on this day to celebrate the completion of their EV3 robots and compete with each other. The FLL Jr participants enjoyed displaying their LEGO creations to new friends and judges, as well as being entertained with games such as mini golf and a scavenger hunt. Altogether it was a successful day for everyone, and we are excited for next year’s expo!
 Welcome back! We hope you've been having a successful first 3 weeks of buld season, and are back here to explain what we plan to do along with what would ideally be finished by this time. Currently, we are working on the robot itself, but there is a moving chassis which is great because it allows our drivers to practice driving the robot and the programmers to test the robot. We also plan on getting bumpers together soon, a required part of every FRC robot. We use reversible bumpers so we change the colour without taking the bumper.
Something else which is quickly approaching are award submissions. While many awards are based on performance and presentations at the events, often they also have a second portion which is submitted to FIRST electronically before the deadline. We suggest that everyone get this done whenever they can. Awards are a great thing to add to any team's trophy case. |