This January started off with kickoff and the beginning of our build season, which has been going strong since. Our build subteam has been working on prototyping various potential designs, CAD, and making important strategic decisions about our robot. Our programming subteam has been automating swerve, positioning via April tags, pneumatics, and a programming wiki. Our operations team has been planning events, deciding on our swag for this season, making an avatar for competitions, and meeting with sponsors both online and in-person. We have a goal of finishing up all of the physical parts of the robot by February 11th, our unofficial team bag day, and have made ourselves busy to achieve that goal!
Happy new year! This Saturday and Sunday, our team had our annual kick-off. We learned the new game for this year!
We started off the weekend by watching the FIRST Game Reveal Video, then went over the rule book for this season. After learning the rules and reading the rule book, we learned more about the game and strategized by talking about a scouting form, field geometry, and playing our Robot Paper Game. We then came back together as a team to decide our strategy for this year. We also had fun throughout kickoff by watching the robot reveal video eating lunch together provided by our amazing sponsor The Naughty Greek restaurant, and overall bonding as a team.
We would also like to thank Naughty Greek for lunch on Saturday, the food was very good and we all enjoyed it.
NoMythic had the T.E.S.T. competition on Saturday at L H Tanglen Elementary School. Both Torbs and Griffins did terrifically! Torbs placed 7th and Griffins placed 10th overall. Torbs was even picked by the 1st Alliance Captain, allowing them to play in the double-elimination bracket for playoffs.
Everyone was super busy: the builders had fun fixing all of the issues on the robot that arose throughout the day, the programmers were debugging the code, and everyone else was scouting, keeping score, and strategizing. As per the T.E.S.T.’s rules, the drive team changed every match so people had practice driving the huge robots. This will help us build the best drive team possible for the actual season. We also practiced strategy, coopertition, and gracious professionalism at the competition.
NoMythic has been prepping for the upcoming T.E.S.T! On November 12th, we had our team tie dye day. This is a day where we color our signature team tie dye. We dyed our team shirts, and some students brought in their own clothes such as overalls, coveralls, and sweaters. This is a great bonding experience and is a big part of what makes NoMythic unique!
Build is currently split between two teams, Torbs and Griffin, to create two separate robots. Torbs have their robot basically completed, they need to do some small adjustments. Griffin has their drivetrain done and is training people in CAD and machinery, like X-carve!
Programming has been tinkering with motors in order to teach new programmers how to make motors move! They’ve also been working on Java, the swerve robot, and programming the T.E.S.T robot! `
Operations searched for new sponsors, and contacted them along with our old ones! They also worked on the team handbook to make sure it is ready for the team to look at, so that everyone on NoMythic has a way of documenting our processes and traditions.
The new robotics season has officially started! This October, we worked on building team spirit, training new students, and kick-off for this year’s T.E.S.T.! Build has been prototyping and putting their new ideas into CAD (Computer Aided Design). Programming has been training new students to work on code for swerve drive and creating a Wiki for reference. Operations has been working on our sponsor outreach and getting the team back into gear.
The T.E.S.T., formally known as Turtle Trials, stands for Team Experience and Skills Training. T.E.S.T. is a game designed to train students new to FRC. More specifically, it focuses on training students on strategy over complicated robots. This year’s game is called ZONED OUT, which is a game of controlling territories by scoring rings and orbs onto wooden pillars. This game is meant to create more opportunities for more students.
Our team retreat was at the Bakken Museum on October 30th. The main point of this retreat was to bond as a team through a shared experience, in which we talked about past seasons, team values, goal setting, difficult conversations, and team building. We got to experience the entirety of what the museum has to offer and had a wonderful time overall.
On October 31st, NoMythic celebrated Halloween by going to the Allergy-safe Halloween event at the Mall of America. Some of our students worked with our friends from the Minutebots (team 4536) to help kids drive our robots! It was a super fun event, and we got the chance to spark interest in STEM in young kids.
