Our Blog
Hello! Welcome to our Blog.
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Our posts consist of our meetings, events we have planned, new information/facts, and much more! We would love if you joined us in our journey through FIRST Tech Challenge and hope you continue to grow your passion in STEAM environments. If you would like to talk to us or if you have an questions for us, make sure to check out our social medias which can be found in the contact section of our page. We hope you enjoy our content, and promise to always keep you updated about us in our blogs.
FTC Crash Course - Coming Soon!
Do you like robotics? Do you want to learn more about mechanics, java programming, and CAD designing? Do you want to be informed about what FIRST programs are all about? Do you want to just play with some robots? If you answered yes to any one of those questions the you should attend our team's FTC Crash Course on January 2nd, 2019! Even if STEM may not seem interesting to you know, you should still come. We will not only be providing more details about STEM and FIRST programs, but we will also give an insight about creating an Engineering Notebook, Outreach, Fundraising, and Finance/Budgeting. So, If you are interested in Business Management, Finance, or other Humanitarian fields then you should definitely attend! For more information please read our flyer or contact us if you have any questions. Thanks!
How Are We Leaving a Legacy That Will Last Beyond Just This Season?
We want to help and educate other teams and share our experiences with them. We want everyone to understand that FIRST has programs which will be the best fit for anyone interested in STEAM activities. As a team we hope to help guide other teams and encourage others to get involved in STEAM programs such as FIRST. Our main goal is to inspire many about FTC and the other FIRST programs.
Since the beginning of this season we all wanted to create social media platforms that people of all ages would want to take a part of and to learn from our experiences in FIRST. For the past few seasons we made sure to reach out to others who are interested in robotics and share our journey in FIRST robotics. We hope our outreach events and meet n’ greets have inspired others to join this amazing program and what it has to offer.
We hope our legacy will last beyond this season as a team who has depicted perseverance throughout the year as we try to improve our team and make a better version of ourselves every season. We always try to encourage youths to follow their goals and dreams and discover their interests in the STEAM world. We show them how FIRST can make so many of their dreams come true and how it can enhance so many of their skills.
Centerville Qualifier - 12/16/18
On December 16th, 2018 our team competed in the FTC Centerville Chesapeake Qualifier! We are very excited to have been the 1st Place Winning Alliance Captain. We were also recipients of the 1st Place Control Award and 2nd place Design Award at this qualifier. We will be advancing to states. However, before the states competition, we will be competing in the Reston Qualifier on January 13th, 2019, which will be hosted by the South Lakes High School FTC Team. If you are interested in robotics or FIRST Programs, attending any FIRST qualifiers is the perfect way to spend your day! It is free and open to anyone; it is an amazing experience and a great way to learn about the FIRST programs and how it works.
How Does Our Team Plan on Continuing Past This Season?
After this season we all will definitely continue our journey in FIRST programs. We hope to grow in our programming, building, CAD (using Creo and Fusion 360), and 3D printing skills. We already have offers from many people who are willing to donate to our team or purchase a 3D printer for us; we are grateful to have received these donations and will certainly use these donations respectfully and responsibly. This year we were able to improve on these skills. Urvi and Miltali have learned how to use Fusion 360’s CAD software, and we all hope to understand and be able to use it as well in the future. We have also accepted many of our donation and bought ourselves a 3D printer. SO far, we have used the 3D printer to make our marker, phone mount, battery holder, and a few prototype parts for our mechanism brainstorming.
We hope to hold more meetings per week (instead of once a week) consistently. This is so that we can work more efficiently and get more work done faster, since a problem we faced often is only meeting a few hours one day and having work for many hours on the week of the competition. If we have longer meetings we will be able to have more work with less meeting times, which can solve our schedule problems easily.
Our First Meet 'N' Greet
at the Chantilly Library
On August 25th we hosted a meet 'n' greet at the Chantilly Library. We were very fortunate to have the FIRST platform in order to share our robotics and FTC experiences with so many people varying in different ages. We enjoyed teaching others about the FIRST programs and were excited to guide others into joining this incredible program. From teaching kids how to control a robot to explaining the engineering notebook to many adults, this event was definitely a success! We hope that everyone who attended received an overview on the FIRST robotics and consider joining the amazing programs and opportunities FIRST has to offer. We would like to thank team FROGbots, Shockwave, Oakton HS, and South Lakes HS for attending to help us share our journeys in FTC with others.
Team Origin, Description, and Some History
Our team first started as a group of three 7th grade students, who had previously participated in FLL, all wanting to continue their passion for robotics and STEM activities through First Programs. We had to make a decision, whether or not to continue with FLL or join FTC for the first time. We knew that if we started with FTC in 7th grade we would be one of the youngest teams in the competition, and it would be much more challenging for us compared to FLL.
Our final decision was to take a risk and start FTC in 7th grade. Although we were aware that we were going to be a rookie team that may not have had the same amount of experience as other FTC teams, we knew that FTC would be a great learning experience, and we thought we were ready to take on the challenge.
We realized that to accomplish a rigorous task like the Res-Q challenge we needed to add a few more members. We decided that we should reach out to a few people that we worked with before in other STEAM activities and environments. Our team size then doubled to a group of five 7th and one 8th grader; consisting of six members in total. In that previous season we were very proud to have made into states as a rookie team, and we encouraged others to join FTC. We reached out to some elementary schools and told those students that once they are in middle school they should definitely give FTC a try.
Two seasons ago we took on the FTC Velocity Vortex Challenge. Our most successful accomplishment was our consistent points by pressing and claiming the beacons of our alliance color. Because of our consistency we were chosen as the winning team’s second pick alliance partner. We had a great experience and we were very happy to have won first place for the Think Award and first place alliance.
Last year, in Relic Recovery we consisted of seven 9th graders and one 8th grader. We were able to consistently arrange glyphs in the cryptobox, place the relic in the relic recovery zones, and park on the balancing stone. Our strength was definitely the autonomous mode, as we were able to move the correct jewel, read the pictograph, and place a glyph in the correct position of the cryptobox.
This year we are very excited to be a part of Rover Ruckus! We were able to accomplish many of our goals and milestones we had set for ourselves throughout our journey. We have all grown in our STEM skills with this program and we all can’t wait for what FTC has to offer us in the future.
If you would like to learn more about our team and its members click here.
FTC Team Volt-e-mort #10357
