Welcome back loyal followers, members, and sponsors. We are so excited to be back for another year of participation in FRC and the fun of robotics. Our leaders are doing an exceptional job helping both new and old members find their footing within the team, and we are on track for a successful preseason! Special thank you to Chris Dahlen and Don Delisle, who have taken over as two of our adult team supervisors. The preseason started just a couple weeks ago, and already we are being extremely productive in getting everyone up to speed and ready to go! Our recruitment was very effective, as we have drawn in many new members to the team. We’re excited to have them, and this also gives us the opportunity to train them and prepare them to replace our veteran members who will be graduating this coming year. During the season (and preseason), we hope to do a good mix of training and competition prep, such as getting ahead on award submissions, dividing work equally, and teaching newer members about the road ahead. But with that aside, let me get into the specifics of what each team is doing today!
Build: The Build Team has seen a large increase in their numbers which is a good sign for things to come! They’ve started with something we like to call the “Lightning Rounds.” In order to get our new members up to speed on tool usage and the way we will run in the build season, we have decided to utilize older FRC games. The basic idea is that we will look at an older FRC game, plan out the schematics for a robot, and then eventually build a prototype robot. This will give new and returning members a rough idea of the pace we wish to go for, as well as what pace is actually possible based on our available skills. We hope that through doing multiple “Lightning Rounds,” we can prepare ourselves for the coming season.
Business: Business has been very busy so far. The group has received more members through recruitment than ever before, so having new hands has opened up so many more possibilities for the team as a whole. The Business team has already begun work on a few of the award submissions, including the Safety Animation award, which is something we haven’t been able to do as of recent. However, with the newly recruited members, we have the skill and manpower needed to get this done, which is extremely exciting! Outside of the award work, we have a few plans in motion to try a couple new things for our team, including reaching out to other teams and forming connections with local businesses. It’s a new experience for us, and as such it is an enticing idea to get into the community more through these connections.
Programming: The Programming Team has hit the ground running. Due to the influx of newer members, the group has started this preseason by going from the beginning and explaining as much as they can so that everyone has a good grasp of the code. They’re starting with the understanding of the code structure and subsystems in order to keep everyone on the same page. They are also starting to pull out the test boards to write some code. The plan is to start from fresh on the test board and try to guide newer members through the beginning steps, up to getting the code to run with a motor attached to the test board. The new members and early preseason are going to be a good time and a useful resource for starting the build season the right way.
That just about covers how we’re doing so far. We plan on starting to update more often as we near the build season, but look out for our updates in the preseason! We will continue to update as we make more progress! Thank you, and stay safe!
