Hi Everyone! Yes it’s the beginning of Week 5 and this is the blog update for Week 4, buuut everyone needs a little antici….pation in their lives! So here we are! Since no one really wants to read on a Monday, I’ll make this brief. BUT WAIT UNTIL THE END FOR A VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!

As many people do, Week 4 was jumping over the Week 3 slump, and we jumped high… Very high… We did an amazing amount of work this week and are right on track! Our programmers spent a lot of time on our electrical panel for the practice bot. And guess what? All of our programmers used drills and band saw and we are very proud of them! Yes, they all have been certified and have had sufficient practice due to our training sessions during the off season (Watch our vlogs a fun time lapse of them working on it!).

Our builders were just as busy though! We had a few obstacles to jump over but we were able to get past them super quick! On update on where we are with our practice bot: The intake mechanism in mounted and is currently being wired up!!!!!! We are now starting to gather pieces to recreate it on the competition bot. The elevator is in the process of being strung and wired, the elevator has been a very fun process, but by the end of this week we will have this process down to a science! We made some modifications to our wheels and finished up the specifications for our climber. The past seven days have been filled with looking over measurements, and looking over them, and looking over them once again. But it has been worth the time, because our bot is a b-e-a-u-tyyyyyyy. Week 5 will be filled with wiring our practice bot and starting to build up our frame for the competition bot, so there’s no rest for the Firebirds!

NOW THE BIIIIIIIIIIG ANNNNNNNNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
You may have seen on our Twitter or Instagram that something is a little different with our team shirts this year. Well, no, we didn’t put a weird filter over our orange and blue shirts, our colors are actually  PURPLE  AND GOLD!!!!!!! We are very excited to announce that our team colors are now the same as our school the Mount St. Joseph Academy. We’ve realized that our school pride is something we are extremely proud of, and what’s a better way to show this than to wear PURPLE and GOLD! So keep an eye out for us in the stands because we will be shining with GOLD and dressed in PURPLE! (Guess what our robot is actually PURPLE and GOLD too!)

That’s all we have for this week! And it really is a lot I know! We’ve all been waiting to announce our color change and we hope you all love it too! If you still want to see a little more of what we’ve been up to this week, CHECK OUT OUR VLOG (link below!)!!!!!!!

VLOG!!!!: https://youtu.be/ui0R3d0msB8​ 
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/

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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We are so thrilled for our graduating Firebirds! No matter where they all, they will fly high!

This year we have 6 graduating seniors:

Emma Neill- Team president and Build Member, attending Penn State University
Megan McBride- Build Member and Drive Team Pilot, attending Saint Joseph's University
Tina Rice- Business Member and Drive Team Driver, attending LaSalle University
Cianna Kisailus- Build and Chairman's Member, Drive Team Coach, and recipient of the 2017 FIRST scholarship, attending The University of Scranton
Sydney Stockmal- Vice President of Outreach and Chairman's Member, attending West Chester University
Gabby Egan- Spirit Member, Attending Penn State University

Congratulations to all of our seniors! We wish you all much success as you fly off to your new nests!!

Over the past two weeks the girls have made great progress on our robot. We finished the basic drive train for our robot, and are currently working on the processing program for Autonomous. The ball collector we created and tested was modified from our robot, Nox. It is designed to collect balls by working like a vacuum without bristles. We brought in new materials and through trial and error were able to adjust the ball collector for smaller balls. For the gear delivery part of the challenge we are working on a slide and catch mechanism that in the end will put the gear on the spoke.  

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope your holiday was filled with lots of Raspberry pie and pi. The Firebirds have been super duper busy this season of Thanks! Attached is a picture of the things we are most thankful for, including YOU!
We spent time lately working hard on the Eaglebot challenge. Our girls have been spending more and more time trying our best to create an awesome robot! We have focused a lot of time and effort on the kicking mechanism, which is on the robot and able to run! We have been able to kick the football really far and cannot express how excited we are to showcase with our fellow Eaglebot teams!
We are going to be hard at work again this week and today will be headed over to Norwood for mentoring the FLL kids, so we will keep you updated!

These past few days have been very busy! We have spent a LOT of time both in the shop and outside of the shop- always being productive girls! This weekend the girls focused a lot on the kicking prototype and eventually developed a mechanism which has been mounted onto the robot! We have also refined code and the robot's frame has been completely extended. We also spent our Monday at Norwood Fontbonne Academy mentoring their FLL team! We were able to teach them a lot about sensors and watched their presentation, giving them some helpful tips!

We had such a busy day today! School ended at 1:30, so our girls ran downstairs (safely, of course :) to get started on the Eaglebot as soon as possible. The girls talked about the different drive trains available and the pros and cons to each one. With the original drive train, the programmers continued to work on getting the robot up and moving. The prototyping girls worked on the kicking mechanism and really advanced the kicker from the last time. They added more surgical tubing in order for the kicker to have more power when pulled back. The girls worked vigorously in the shop until about 4:30, then headed down to Wawa for dinner. After eating, girls headed over to Wyncote elementary school in the Cheltenham school district to show our robots at the school's STEM night. Alongside Simple Machines, 423, we showed our robots from Aerial Assist and Stronghold, letting the kids drive and play with the bots. They also had a chance to build cars out of Legos and race them! It was such a neat experience and everyone had such a great time!

It's been a while since we've updated you with our team life and boy do we have a lot going on!!! We are working on a robot for the Eaglebot challenge, which will be held on December 8th, as well as all our regular to-dos. Today we mainly focused on the Eaglebot challenge.
The Eaglebot challenge is a FIRST Robotics Showcase presented by NRG and The Philadelphia Eagles (fly eagles fly). We will be competing against 3 other team from our area in a couple of different challenges which you will hear about in our upcoming daily blogs. We have been working so hard and brainstorming like crazy, and now we are on to the technical part of the robot. Our girls all met in our shop today in order for us to divide and conquer as many of the tasks at hand as possible. Our build team worked on prototyping our kicking mechanism for the challenge which requires the robot to kick a football. They also widened the frame of our stronghold practice bot so that we could use it for Eaglebot, worked with motors in order to find the best way to position them on the robot with all the mechanisms we'll need for the challenge, and worked on speed controls for the motors. The speed controls are super cool because our girls can use a stand-alone mechanism to power the motors, making trial runs much easier (especially for our hard-working programmers!). The finance team met together and discussed the recent sponsor commitments and donations made to the team. The programming team was able to get the robot up and running while learning a few new skills along the way. The awards/outreach team prepared for our upcoming event, the Wyncote STEM night, brainstorming fun activities for the kids like balloon-powered lego car races! Our media team worked on the website, updating the blog and theme, as well as brainstormed ideas for our sponsorship video! Today was such a productive day and we can't wait to tell you about all our upcoming events, stay tuned!