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From outreaches to shop days to networking events and beyond, there is never a dull day on our team!

Halfway There!

1/28/2018

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Heellllooooooo Blog! Welcome to the end of Week 3, aka halfway through the madness we call Build Season! Like always our birdies have been very busy building and programming to their heart’s content! It’s been a long week so to relieve you all of some heavy reading I will quickly summarize our (amazing) Week 3


Our Builder Birdies have been hard at work perfecting our intake mechanism prototype and have since moved on to creating the version that will be going on the practice bot. This included getting exact spring and surgical tubing tension and placements juuuuust right (which took a very long time) and marking every little measurement down in our engineering workbook. We even spent a day using our X-Carve machine to carve out bearing holes on the intake arms. We are now continuing to make this intake with “robotable” material.

Another group of girls have been hard at working creating our climbing mechanism and are currently working on mounting it and getting the specifications down perfectly, don’t worry we’ll be climbing our way to victory in no time! We spent quite a bit of time figuring out exactly how we wanted to climb, but luckily we came to a conclusion and we have some very busy birds making sure we have a great scaling device!

We also started one of our favorite times of build season: SPRAY PAINTING BABYYYYYYYYYY. We have started cutting and gathering our pieces for the competition robot so we can start spray painting them in the amazing colors purple and gold (OUR BRAND NEW COLORS WE’RE VERY EXCITED!!!!!!)! Luckily our frame pieces have dried so they’ve actually been put together and our competition frame is waiting for a few more birdie hands to get in their and start building him up! Next week we will be focusing on getting the rest of our mechanisms on (especially our elevator because the last remaining pieces finally came in) and ready to test and give to the programmers!

Speaking of our programmers! They’ve been keeping themselves quite busy with a few projects! They are still working with the practice frame we got to them quite early in the season and have been working on Autonomous like it’s their job (... well I guess it does come in the job description). AND GUESS WHAT: We’ve got a few of our programmers building a piece to go on the robot! They are building an electronics panel to go on the practice bot so we can get a functioning bot to them hopefully within the next few days! Luckily all our of girls (programmers and builders alike) are certified on all our machinery and tools so they’re on their way to be experts! (Pit Crew better watch out!)

So that’s about it for this week! It’s been long, buuuuuut we’re halfway there! So we can push through and come out with an awesome robot! If you want to see a little bit more of what we get into during our week (and some fun and goofy clips) check out this week’s vlog on our Youtube channel! (Link down below!!!) Well that’s all we have for now! Make sure to check back next week for another update and if you haven’t gotten your daily Firebird fill, GO WATCH THE VLOG (I MEAN IT)!

VLOG!!!!!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTnajTKTcrk&t=88s

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/
Snapchat: firebirds433
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Week 2: The Madness Has Kicked In

1/21/2018

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Hi Blog! Weeeeelcoooooooomeeeeee to Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeek TWOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Yes it is already week two, no it does not feel like week two, are we sure Kickoff wasn’t 3 days ago? We are? Oh… ok…

Well for our birdies finals are (finally) over. Our shop was closed from Sunday to just this Thursday afternoon. Oh, you know when we got out of our science finals we all sprinted (safely duhhh) down to the shop… after WaWa runs of course.

We got right back into our prototyping and even got the practice frame up and running for our programmers as well as the frame for our practice bot. Currently on said practice frame is the base for the elevator we started to make and as I’m typing girls are bolting it right on (it’s pretty cute). We also started the intake mechanism with some fun jelly wheels (see our twitter @firebirds433 to get this reference #FIRSTSuppliers). A few of our builders are also working on building game pieces out of wood with a few parent mentors so we can start practicing on them and getting our drive on *insert loud yoooooo dawgggg here*. Also as I’m writing this we have a small group working on a prototype for our climber! It’s going pretty well and I think it will bring us to new heights!

For our programmers they’ve been busy using the new practice frame and making rough drafts for Autonomous. They’ve spent quite a bit of time dealing with encoders. By that I mean they’ve might as well be dreaming about them because they have spent so much time working with them this week. These birdies have also started planning out code for Tele, teaching the new freshmen how to code, and all of them learning a little bit more about Mecanum wheels! Clearly it’s been very productive.

Oh for those that don’t know, Friday WAS QUIZZO!!!!!!!!! AND I WAS VERY EXCITED!!! We sold 50/50s, Mulligans, some fun raffle baskets, showed off Siggy, and even had some extra time to dance a little (Firebird Style)! Huge thanks to all the people that made that night possible!

Chairman’s Update: WE FINISHED OUR EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES!!!!!! ONE STEP TO FIREBIRD WORLD DOMINATION… nope not really… more like some more amazing ways to spread the message of the Firebirds and FIRST!

Editor note: I’m currently watching the programmers run some Auto programs AND IT’S SO COOL

Well, this week has been amazing and we’re already looking forward for week three!! Thanks for stopping by and make sure to check back next weekend too for our updates!
********ALSO OUR WEEK 1 AND 2 VLOG IS GOING OUT TONIGHT SO BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR IT!!!!!!!!

VLOG!!!!!!: https://youtu.be/3i07s8iDHvQ​ 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/
Snapchat: firebirds433






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Recap, Kickoff, and robots, oh my!

1/13/2018

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Hi Blog! Long time no see! You’re probably wondering what we’ve been up to since our last update, well, the answer is quite a bit. Here instead of a nice long essay in MLA format we can do some quick bullet points (the best way to write a list FYI) to update you the past months:
  • Summer: We presented two of our robots at the Springfield Township Library with Team 3974 e=McD and team 5181 La Salle Robotics. We got to walk (and Siggy drived) down Germantown Pike led by Mr. Palac in his red Jeep! Even with all this fun we still had to do a little work and organize the entire shop.
  • September: We held our 8th annual off-season event girlPOWER and attended the off-season competition Havoc! We also recruited over 12 new members through open houses and freshmen orientation events! AND OUR PROGRAMMERS FOUND OUT THEY WOULD BE APART OF BETA TESTING(!!!!), so our programmers get to be apart of a small team that test out the new control system before the new season!!!!!!! (we were very excited as you can tell)
  • October: Spooky Scary Fuel Shooters! Right after Havoc we took to the shop to teach our new members how to prototype and build a mechanism. And what’s a better way to do that than have them actually build a fuel shooter that would COMPETE at Ramp Riot. So we spent the entire month building our amazing new mechanism!
  • November: November was very busy for us, we not only competed at Ramp Riot (and had an amazing time), but we also attended two FLL competitions so cheer on and help our 3 teams! (Congrats to the NFA NorBots on winning the Project Award!) We were even went back to Barnes and Nobles Mini Faire to show off Siggy and Firefly to everyone in the store! We ended our month by hosting a Girl Scout Troop and taught them how to drive our robots, build robots out of batteries and toothbrushes, and even learn to program an FLL robot. (Super proud of the Girl Scouts that earned their Robotics Badge!)
  • December: IT’S STARTING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE KICKOFF!!! With one month until Build Season we wanted to make the most out of our last few weeks of normal sleep schedules and social lives. So we attended Comcast Bootcamp and filmed a vlog (link below) and learned a multitude of new information. AND OUR PROGRAMMERS PRESENTED BETA TESTING!!!!!!!! Early in the month we also made some new friends. We coordinated a hang out with Team 5181 La Salle Robotics where we eat a lot of cookies and played some really cool games. Later we had another Mock Kickoff! This time we invited Team 5181 La Salle Robotics and Team 272 the Cyber Crusaders to join us and learn about different lifting mechanisms that could have been used during 2011 LogoMotion (is Coach Farrell a mind reader when it comes to FRC games?). We also got to spend some time at the Ronald McDonald house cooking food for the residents and even showing off our robots and teaching the children how to drive them!
  • January (RIGHT NOW): With Kickoff on the horizon we really went into overgear trying to get ready for this season… Until the snow hit... Our school was off for 2 days in a row and had one early dismissal so sadly our dismay, we were able to go to Kickoff, but we could not be in shop 2 days prior to Kickoff and missed our first Monday! BUT we’re back and kicking, building several prototypes for our floor pick up mechanism. We started Kickoff with a brainstorm session where we came up with fun names for different robots and even played our own game of StuBots (some mentors even joined in!). And now with shop everyday we hit another roadblock… Finals start Tuesday. So Today (Saturday the 13th) is the last day shop will be open until Thursday afternoon. So for now we are trying to finish up a practice frame for our programmers so they can continue their work on Autonomous. WE ALSO UPLOADED OUR VLOG FROM LAST MONTH LINK IN THE BIO!!!!! But as we’re getting more and more excited for POWERUP we need to give a few reminders for our robo-nerds taking Exams this season:
    • Use the soundtracks from Boss fights in video games while studying because it will help you concentrate
    • Have snacks so you can POWERUP after studying for long periods
    • Take breaks so you can charge your batteries
    • “Switch” off at night and get as much sleep as possible
    • Balance your “scales” of life with conversations with family and friends and studying so you don’t overwork yourself
    • Don’t grind your gears if you don’t understand something, just take a deep breath and open your emergency release valve.
And this has been our year so far! We will make sure to update as much as possible this year and keep an eye out for new vlogs that will be coming your way all season!
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Peace, Love, Robots,
The Firebirds
Vlog Link!!!!!: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0jrznXdddM
​Editor Note: ONE OF OUR MENTORS MADE US A BATTERY CART AND I'M VERY EXCITED!!! SO I'VE INCLUDED A PICTURE BELOW!!!!


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