Welcome to the website of Team #226, the TEC CReW Hammerheads. We've competed annually in the FIRST Robotics Competition since 1999, making this our 11th year of competition. This year, our team is composed of students from three Troy School District high schools: Troy High School, Athens High School, and International Academy East, one of our sciece and math magnet schools. We have wonderful mentors from General Motors' Manufacturing Assembly & Automation Center, and the support of many parents and volunteers.
Our team strives to spread the lessons of FIRST to our members, and the surrounding area. To work towards this goal, we hold many events in the community. If you have seen our team in the community recently, it could have been at Troydaze, our members volunteering with Summer in the City, the Sharkfest FLL regional, or possibly at an FRC competition! More information about these events can be found in the events section of our website. We invite everyone to learn more about FIRST and take pictures with our mascot Sharkie at these events.
To learn more about FIRST, our team, and our community participation without attending one of our events, consider taking a guided tour of our website:
By virtue of our team history, our team’s number day happens to coincide with the end of build. (Team 224 has it even better this year…) And because it’s friday, we had a little party after school today! It was lots of fun, and a great way to end the build season.
But besides that, we still had some work to do. This year, the Hammerheads are making bottle caps as give-aways, which means we got to assemble them with epoxy. I think I still have a coating on my hands… In just 2 weeks we’ll be at Cass Tech for our opening event! Are you ready?
Whew! This season’s been flying by. It’s already the 5th of our 6 weeks allowed to build the robot. Our robot construction and design crews has been hard at work assembling the almost complete robot base. This year, through an majority team decision, we decided to re-engineer an old drive base that had not performed as well as expected but had potential. We’re hoping that we can learn from our previous mistakes and rise from the ashes of our previous failures, an idea at the heart of our team’s original mascot: the Phoenix.
Our other work groups have also made significant progress so far. The Chairmans and Woodie Flowers Essays are in final revisions for submission of Feb. 18th. The 226 Animators are finishing up rendering of this year’s animation, and the website is getting minor changes to existing sections and complete overhauls in the Media and Events sections. The programming team expects to begin debugging and testing this year’s code on the finished robot base sometime late this week.
Surprisingly, the FRC director is allowing “all FRC teams will be allowed to hold backup to 65 pounds of their robot’s weight and may continue to work on that portion of the robot up until their first event” this year! [See Bill's Blog for more details.] However, the other 55 pounds must be shipped on ship date (Feb. 23). Just a friendly reminder to the FRC build teams:
FIRST released this year’s game, Breakaway. As usual, it has almost nothing to do with the clue!
The game rules are available on the FIRST website.
If you don’t really want to read all 168 pages of the Game Manual (not including suplements and specific part manuals), watch the game animation to get a basic sense of the game:
And to the other approximately 1800 teams competing this year, welcome to a new season!
Today, FIRST released what appears to be a cad drawing of a bracket or other part of the field as the 1st game clue for the 2010 season. Thanks for the bewildering early Christmas present FIRST!
We are having a fundraiser for the team on Saturday, Nov 21, 2009 as part of the Barnes & Noble Bookfair. Our fundraiser will be at:
Barnes & Noble
2800 S. Rochester Road
Please come join in the celebration:
Open Mic Night 6:00-8:00PM! Musicians Welcome.
Get your holiday shopping done early, and we benefit from your purchases.
Need to study for the SAT/ACT or AP tests? Buy your books early and support a vital activity in your community at the same time!
Celebrity Servers will be in the Cafe from 1:00-3:00PM. Frappucinos count!
Come drive the Vex Robot and learn about the Troy Hammerheads Robotics Team!
Don’t miss the Pajama Party Storytime at 7:00 PM. Fun for the whole family!
Note: You MUST have Barnes and Nobel Flyer 09 to have your purchase support the team! Please print it out and help spread the word to your friends and family! Thanks for all your support!
If you’re not familiar with the Google 10^100 project, about a year ago Google opened up a suggestion box for ways to solve world problems. Due to the number of responses (approximately 10^5.2), Google divided them into 16 categories. FIRST made it into the “Enhance science and engineering education” category.
If selected as one of the top five idea categories, FIRST could receive $2,000,000 to promote the advancement of science and technology in schools. To vote for this idea, go to http://www.project10tothe100.com/submit.html?id=T09 and enter your email address (for Google to eliminate duplicate votes). NOTE: Voting Absolutely Ends Thursday, October 8th 2009.
Hey all you Hammerheads out there! It’s the start of a new season, and you know what that means… we need your support!! Over the next couple of months, we have several fundraisers in the Troy, MI area:
Oberweis Dairy Store
6854 Rochester Rd
Troy, MI Tue, September 29, 4pm – 10pm Flyer [pdf] (must have to support the Hammerheads!)
Noodles & Company
3119 Crooks Rd.
Troy, MI Tue, October 6, 4pm – 10pm
Kalamata Greek Cafe
3149 Crooks Road
Troy, MI Fri, October 23, 5pm – 8pm
Flyer [pdf] (must have to support the Hammerheads!)
Wendy’s 3995 Rochester Rd
Troy, MI Thu, October 29, 5pm – 8pm
A full list of our upcoming public events can be found on the Event Calendar.
If you’re following us from afar, or would like to support us in another way, we also have Hammerhead Promotional T-shirts for sale at [check back later for a link] and greatly appreciate sponsorships and donations. Please contact us if you are interesting in supporting us this year!
Students need to remember to sign up for summer volunteering activities ASAP. If you are unsure what this is or what to do, please email anybody on leadership to figure it out.
We will be participating in the TARDEC FRC invitational tournament June 6 and 7 at Oakland University. To participate you will need to fill out a waiver form for the June 2nd meeting. The form, information about the tournament, and schedule are attached to the end of this post. Continue reading »
