Welcome to the new weekly newsletter, Sep 16, 2020 – New Season Edition!
Wow! Doesn’t Ultimate Goal look awesome? Thanks to everyone who joined in and especially those who helped put the kickoff together — we had 521 unique viewers on the Twitch broadcast and lots of full Zoom rooms!
- If you missed the kickoff video, you can find it here.
- Results of the season survey that went out last week can be found in this slide deck.
- If you’d like a link to the recordings of the sessions, please email tsmith@firstpartners.org with the subject “workshop videos” and we’ll send you a link to the Google Drive folder where they are saved.
- If you’d like to play back the Oklahoma webcast, you can find it here but it will probably be deleted by Saturday, so watch quickly!
- The game manuals and field information can be found here.
Giveaway winners: please email tsmith@firstpartners.org with your team number to arrange how to get your prize! Thanks to AndyMark, GoBilda, and REV for all the great robot parts and swag!
Call for workshop presenters for October 10 Oklahoma FTC Training Day
We are planning a day full of hands-on activities to help your team members get off to a good start. If you (a team, a mentor, a volunteer) would like to propose a topic, or if there are topics your team would like to learn about in more detail, please fill out this form by Tuesday, September 22!
Oklahoma Event Registration Update
We’ve gathered feedback from teams and guidance from FIRST and are hoping to have a more detailed plan for the season by approximately October 3. Stay tuned!
Things you should be working on this week
- read the rules! (Game Manual Part 1 and 2 for Remote Events)
- read them again!
- work on strategy: start simple – what are some potentially easy ways to score points?
- maybe start building a drive base so programmers have something to work with
- work on ideas for how to manipulate wobble goals and donuts
- Check out the various “robot in 30 hours”/”robot in 3 days” releases for some inspiration if you are stuck
National Registration
We have 52 teams registered so far, but I know we’ve got several more planning to play who haven’t finished up on the FIRST dashboard, yet. If you haven’t paid the national registration fee, please do so soon if you are able. If you are not able but intend to field a team at some point this year, please let me know that as well. I know of at least a couple of teams who are planning to register late due to circumstances beyond their control, and that’s fine. We expect lots of special circumstances this year, and will do whatever we can to help you out.
Update your Control and Expansion Hubs! REV Hardware Client
During the REV session at kickoff, Mack Kaurich mentioned that the #1 thing you can do to improve the stability of your robot is to make sure you are up to date on all of your firmware. Be sure to check out the following links!
Video of the Client in action: https://youtu.be/SCrNRHfupak
REV Hardware Client User’s Manual: https://docs.revrobotics.com/rev-hardware-client/
Download the Client here: https://www.revrobotics.com/content/…etup-1.0.0.exe
Mailing list information
Coaches or mentors will be added to this distribution list automatically, but anyone can join – volunteers, competitors, parents, administrators, sponsors, students, etc. are all welcome! They can subscribe by sending an email to:
ok-ftc-newsletter+subscribe@googlegroups.com
(sign in with a Google account may be needed). If you cannot get that work for some reason, then please email tsmith@firstpartners.org with the subject “newsletter subscription” and you will be added manually. Please check your spam/junk email folder to make sure it’s not ending up in the wrong location.