St Mary’s SOAR League FTC Skystone Kickoff 2019 Saturday, 9/7/19

Date: Saturday, September 7th at St Mary’s High School in Medford

Agenda: Skystone Kickoff!

In Attendance: Coach Cynde, Mentor Dan Killeby, Mentor Aidan and his Grandpa, Sean, Tristan, Liam and Lilly 

Note Taker: Connie

Reflection: We took off at 6am for the drive to Medford. It was cool to see some of our other league mates. We waited for the big reveal and were excited to see the new field. It was not what any of us had expected. There are new restrictions on the robot height because of the bridge. We anticipated having to build something and had talked about an arm extension but now could see what is needed. The link for the challenge video is below:

https://youtu.be/XiGB_8Ppnbs

The big job in our challenge is to create a claw that can pick up, transport and stack the Lego-esque blocks as high as possible with an extension arm that will lay under the 14” bridge in transport. In our team session, we discussed that the current x-rail is too long for this purpose and we may need to cut it shorter. We also talked about stability of the x-rail. When we used it to place the idol 2 challenges ago, it bent from the weight. We may need to look at the new Rev extrusion elements for more stability, but they are on backorder right now. 

The team split up for classes at the Kickoff and attended Programming, Team Building, 3D printing, and Notebook. Team building showed that Biobotz spends a lot of time playing games together. We saw some great examples of notebooks, and learned some interesting ways that other teams work well together. We had a great day together and the food trucks were very good!

1st Official Robotics Meeting of 2019/2020, Thursday, 9/5/19

Date: Thursday, September 5th
Agenda: 1st official Meeting of the year! 
In Attendance: Mentor Aidan, Hayden, Sean, Liam, Tristan, Connie, Lilly, Coach Cynde, Coach Chad 
Note Taker: Sean
Tasks: Dismantle last year’s robot, Move in robotics equipment and arrange the room, discuss plans for travel to FTC Skystone Kickoff
Reflection: Our space is more limited this year because of sharing the room with the high school band, but we will make the best of it! With the construction that is coming at the grade school, next year, we will have a dedicated Robotics/Technology room!! We are very excited about that! So, this year, we manage the room space as best we can and we will set up our practice mat on the stage when we are ready to drive. 
We have asked the school for two new laptops - one for programming and travel and the other for social media, FTC blog, 3D printing and research. The current 3D printer will be there, too. We will have two tables near the shelves, so that we have room for multiple people to sit and work on the computers. We will have one of the long tables in front of the whiteboard so that we can have out tool boxes open and available and workspace and design. We will keep one central table for current building

A group of us worked on dismantling last year’s robot and keeping the electronics basically together. We need to order the new JST PH to JST XH cables from ServoCity so we can replace the cables that need the converters. Coach Cynde will order them. We discussed mounting the Rev Expansion hubs to a wooden side to maximize central space within the robot and help minimize Electrostatic discharge. We have never had trouble with ESD until we made it to State last year. This year, we will do everything we can to protect our robot from ESD.

We took some time to discuss with lily what FIRST Tech Challenge is and what her role can be on the team. We also discussed how we might recruit more team mates.

Fort Umpqua Days 2019

Date: Saturday, August 31st

Agenda: Fort Umpqua Days at Elkton Community Education Center in Elkton,

Oregon

In Attendance: Coach Cynde, Sean, Tristan, Liam, Connie, Lilly

Note Taker: Connie

Tasks: Community Outreach, Mentor recruitment, FIRST Robotics support for students, Show the artistic ability used in engineering for robotics, new member recruitment

Reflection: Fort Umpqua Days is always a great event for us to talk with the community about why robotics is important to us. We get to show our robot to other community youth and, hopefully, inspire them to pursue robotics education. We show that anyone can be involved, not just computer nerds, ad how important it is that we have a team of diverse individuals who have different ideas. We need artists, engineers, business leaders, team leaders, math wizards, innovative builders and creators who like to design and create and play with robots! 

Umpqua Valley Summer Arts Festival 2019

Date: Friday thru Sunday, June 28th - 30th
Agenda: Umpqua Valley Arts Summer Arts Festival in Roseburg, Oregon
In Attendance: Coach Cynde, Sean, Tristan, Liam, Connie, Aidan
Note Taker: Sean
Tasks: Community Outreach, Mentor recruitment, and new team member recruitment, overall support  for FIRST Robotics for students
Reflection: We talked to hundreds of community members and visitors at the event over the 3 day weekend. We shared flyers about FIRST Robotics. We did our best to show that there is an art to engineering and robotics and that innovation = creativity = art! We offered to connect families with teams near them. We invited businesses to support FIRST Robotics in Oregon and in Douglas County and consider becoming mentors for local teams. We explained that being a Mentor is a small commitment that means a lot to Robotics students and helps them be better prepared for life and success.
We paid $100 to have the Non-Profit booth space for the weekend. We invited all the other SOAR FTC teams to share the booth for outreach, and were joined by Biobotz 2.0 and the Mini Maniacs. We got to use the Harvard Avenue stage to demonstrate our robots and talk to the public. We taught some young audience members how to drive our robot, and we had fun reconnecting with some of our League mates. It was a great day!