Lego Fury 2014

On Saturday, November 22, we hosted our second annual Lego Fury at E.T. Richardson Middle School. Ten teams came to our competition, which included Ridley's FLL team, mentored by Erin. The Jr. FLL, FLL, and FRC girls volunteered at the event and helped it run smoothly. The 501st Legion came and people took their pictures with them! We had a 50/50 raffle, a best lego cake competition, which we auctioned off, and good food and music. After the matches, we had a dance party on the stage and everyone had a good time! Many awards were given out, and three teams are advancing to the Penn Championship in February. We had a great day, and special thanks to all the volunteers!

STEM Night at Swarthmore-Rutledge School

On Thursday night, a few girls on the FLL and FRC teams visited Swartmore-Rutledge School for their STEM Night. The FLL girls explained this year's challenge and showed students and parents alike several missions on the NXT robot. The FRC girls demo-ed Rosie (from Ultimate Ascent) and talked to adults and kids about our program. Our old classmate was giving us some trouble at first, but after a while it turned on and we were able to shoot frisbees. Rosie is getting pretty skilled at making baskets past the half-court line. A lot of kids were very excited about joining a robotics team!

                                       

Comcast Seminars

On Saturday, November 15, we made our way down to the Comcast Building in Philly to listen to seminars about programming our robot and marketing our team. In the morning half the girls went to the Intro to LabVIEW seminar and the remaining girls went to the Business and Marketing seminar. After lunch, we listened to Women in Technology, which was very inspiring and insightful, and the Chairman's Award seminar, which was very helpful! After the last seminar, our team walked down the street to Love Park and got our picture taken in front of the Love Statue. We had an awesome day and thank you, Team 272, for putting this day together!

Woodie Flowers at Hatboro Horsham

On Wednesday night, we were given the opportunity to see Woodie Flowers speak at Hatboro Horsham High School! Woodie Flowers talked about education, specifically how it is important to integrate both STEM and the humanities into a curriculum. Additionally, he spoke about how humans do things that machines can't do and how this will change in the future. It was a very interesting talk, and afterward we were able to meet him, talk with him about our team, and take a picture! Woodie Flowers is actually such a cool guy and an inspiration.

Brunswick Eruption 13

This past weekend, we traveled to North Brunswick to participate in Brunswick Eruption, hosted by Raider Robotics. We did very well this weekend- we made it to semi-finals with teams 1089 and 1279, who did great. It was a very eventful weekend, from battery leakage to Erin coming in second place for the Evil Sundae competition. We had so much fun at our first Brunswick Eruption and cannot wait to return next year!

Ramp Riot XV

Last weekend, we went to Wissahickon High School to compete in Ramp Riot for the second year. The drive team did awesome and Rosie did well too, but there were a few issues with the pistons that lift up the feeder. A few Girl Scouts came to the event, and Emily along with girls from teams 341 and 2016 showed them one of Miss Daisy's past robot, the FTC arena, and a few matches. Afterward, we showed them the pits and Rosie, and one girl was very interested in joining our FLL team! At the end of qualification matches, our record was 6-1, and we were the fifth alliance captain, picking teams 316 and 1712. Although we worked hard and played well, we got out in quarterfinals. It was a great day nevertheless and we cannot wait for next year!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from the Tin Mints! We hope everyone has a great Halloween this year! And we'll see you tomorrow at Ramp Riot! (Also, this photo is from the Trunk or Treat we did last Saturday after Girl Power.)

Girl Power 2014

We competed at Girl Power this weekend for the second year in a row. We had some trouble with our shooter because there were problems with our gearbox after being used all season. Despite this, our autonomous worked especially well, and when we weren't working on the shooter, which was all but two matches, we were able to truss the ball. Our final record was 6-1, and we were the top-ranked alliance captain! We chose teams 222, 4637, and 3974, and because there were only fourteen teams at the event, we went straight to semi-finals. We moved onto finals in two matches. Finals, however, was tough. After losing our first match, we were determined to win the next one to stay in, but somehow our robot turned itself off, or another team did by accident, so we were dead halfway through the match. Even though there were some difficulties, it was an exciting day.

It was also Mr. Joe's birthday yesterday, so we celebrated with a Star Wars cake. Happy Birthday Mr. Joe!

Duel on the Delaware 2014

We competed at Duel on the Delaware, hosted by MOE and the Lunatecs, this past weekend in Carney's Point, NJ. Rosie did great during the matches- her autonomous was beautiful. Our record after the Qualification Matches was 3-2. Although our rank was 10th, we were not chosen for alliance selection, but we were glad that we were the first backup robot. Congrats to the winning teams!

Also, congratulations to the team who brought in about 2,000 pounds of books for the book drive. That was truly impressive!

Battle O' Baltimore

Last weekend we participated in the Battle O' Baltimore. Rosie did very well- she completed her autonomous mode of moving forward and shooting into the high goal 100% of the time! We are improving on scouting; some girls and parents volunteered to scout for this event.
We made it to the quarter-finals, but unfortunately lost. The winners of the competition were teams 2537, 1885, 4945, and 422, and the runners-up were teams 836, 2528, 357, and 533. Great job to all the teams who participated!

Ridley Park Victorian Fair

This past Saturday we had the oppurtunity to go to the Ridley Park Victorian Fair. We demonstrated Rosie, sold a lot of brushel brushes and T-shirts, and talked about our team to everyone who walked by. We even sold a few flocks of flamingos, which is turning out to be a great fundraiser! There were several people who were very interested in our team and our accomplishments, and we even encouraged a few girls to try robotics out! All the girls and parents did a great job promoting our team and helping to run our table.

Flocking Party

Last week we had a party where we made flamingos. We outlined, cut, and painted the flamingos, and they turned out even better than we hoped. We plan to use these flamingos as a fundraiser that we call "flocking." Flocking is when you place flamingos on the lawns of family and friends and leave a note explaining that they must pay a certain amount to get the flamingos removed from their front yard or to have them placed on another person's yard. We are hopeful that this fundraiser will be successful, and we look forward to flocking our first house!

FLL and Jr.FLL Meeting 8/6

We are so excited for the new challenge this year, titled "World Class Learning Unleashed." Watch the teaser here:
http://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2014fllworldclass

In honor of this season's challenge, Jr. FLL created a desk and chair using LEGOs...

And FLL made a list of "what would make school better."

The official release date for World Class is August 26th. We're thinking that there will be plenty of color sensors for the girls to program!

STEM Workshop at the Granite Run Mall- May 3, 2014

On Saturday, May 3, we held a STEM workshop for younger Girl Scouts. They learned about all levels of FIRST, especially FLL. They learned how to build and program an NXT robot using Mindstorms, played fun games, and built a "brushel bot," made out of floor scrubbers and vibrating toothbrushes. They had a lot of fun making the brushel bots, especially because they got to decorate them! We also demonstrated our robots from the past two seasons, Rosie and Rosie 2. The girls, and their moms, were in awe of both robots, and loved seeing our first Rosie shooting frisbees. They took home the GSEP FIRST Robotics Patrol STEM patch to place on the back of their vests.

Miss Laurel talking about FIRST

Building NXT robots

Congratulations

We would just like to congratulate every team that is moving on to the Championships in St. Louis, which include but are not limited to:
-Teams 2590, 11, and 341, the winners of the overall competition
-Teams 1218 and 303, the Chairman's Award winners
-Teams 25 and 1676, our Engineering Inspiration competition
-And all the other teams moving on.

The Tin Mints thoroughly enjoyed this past weekend. On Friday, we had our EI interview, and we feel like we did our best. Saturday was quite eventful, what with the alliance selection and elimation rounds. A few Girl Scouts came to see us, which was so exciting! Since we did not bring our robot with us, we showed the girls some other teams' robots, including Team 357, who was our mentor team during our rookie season last year. The girls were able to see some of the matches up close, and they thought it was so cool! Also, as an aside, I would like to shoutout to the kid from Team 4954 taking selfies with all the teams. It was a pretty cool idea.

Good Luck

Good luck to the teams competing at Lehigh University for the MAR Championships today. We'll see you later when we get interviewed for EI this evening (or we are already there, depending on the person).

FOX 29 News

Exactly one year ago, we were on the FOX 29 morning news to promote our team and the MAR Championships. Notice our nervousness/awkwardness?

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/video?clipId=8760436&autostart=true

Camping!

We are so excited to go camping this weekend with our Jr. FLL and FLL girls, as well as other Girl Scouts, at Camp Laughing Waters. We think it is very important to do activities with our younger girls, and we have made so many friends because of these connections through robotics.

Throwback Thursday

I thought I would do a Throwback Thursday picture today. Here's a photo of the Smart Cookies from our first competitive year for FLL, way back in the day (just kidding, it's from 2012). Ahh, programming an NXT robot, learning about and coming up with a solution to a real world problem, and teaching others about Core Values. Those were the days...

And here's one of the Tough Cookies...

We Will See You at MAR

All 54 teams are registered for MAR, and we are not one of them. However, we are completely fine with this, and we are excited to go to MAR for Engineering Inspiration, even though we will not be competing. What can I say? We're so excited, and we just can't hide it. Good luck to the other teams and we will see you there.

MAR Championships

The Tin Mints have been anxiously awaiting the final list for the teams qualified for MAR (Mid-Atlantic Robotics) champs at Lehigh University. And after much consideration...we still do not know, but we are hoping to know by tomorrow. If we do qualify (fingers crossed!), we would be excited and honored to compete against the other teams. Even if we do not get the opportunity to compete at MAR, we are hoping to receive the Engineering Inspiration Award to get us to St. Louis!

Here's the link for MAR's Website:
http://www.midatlanticrobotics.com

Engineering Inspiration

Our reception of the Engineering Inspiration Award. My apologies for the squealing. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4fndXULWRThZThZU3NmX3ZjbHc/edit?usp=drive_web

Competition at Lenape- Week 4

This past weekend, we competed at Seneca High School in Tabernacle, New Jersey. There were 39 other teams in attendance. We started off surprisingly well, and our rank fluctuated here and there. Once the qualification matches ended, we were ranked 11th, which was a lot better than last week's rank of 25th. During alliance selection, we moved down to the 8th alliance captain due to other alliances picking teams in the top 8. We formed an alliance with teams 2729 and 709. We made it to the quarterfinals, but lost to teams 2590, 223, and 1640.
Like last weekend, we presented for Chairman's again. Although we did not receive this award (Nemesis did), we were excited when they called our name for the Engineering Inspiration award! Looks like we might have a shot of going to World's this year.

Preparation for Lenape

Tonight we did some last minute adjustments on our robot. We are very excited to compete at Lenape this weekend, and we are ready for Chairman's! And, we are excited to say that we have a pit crew this competition, which was basically nonexistant in previous competitions.
We would like to thank the LuNaTeCs who were kind enough to allow us to come to their shop yesterday and work on our robot. They were a big help to us.

Springside-Chestnut Hill

Over the weekend, we competed at Springside-Chestnut Hill with 34 other FRC teams. We discovered that there were problems with Rosie 2.0, specifically in the connection between the battery and the breaker. Although we did not advance into the elimination rounds, we made some adjustments on our robot, and we are currently tweaking it so that it will do better at Lenape this weekend.
Our Chairman's presentation went surprisingly well even though we did not win this award. We are very proud nonetheless, and we are looking forward to present for Chairman's this weekend. We are all also extremely proud of Erin, who got on the Dean's List and will be advancing to MAR. We celebrated by getting frozen yogurt, and Patrice even taught us how to do the Nay-Nay dance.

Week 3

Tomorrow kicks off Week 3 at Springside-Chestnut Hill. Since this was our first competition last year as rookies, we have high expectations of doing well. It took the full six weeks of building season to work on our robot for this year's challenge, Aerial Assist. What a different game this year compared to last year's challenge, Ultimate Ascent.
We are excited for our Chairman's presentation tomorrow, but we are very nervous! However, tomorrow will be quite an exciting day with the Qualification Rounds. We're looking forward to seeing other teams' robots this year, including the rookie teams! The STEM Mobile will be making an appearance...

Outreach Events and Activities

Events included:

1. Robotics 101 at Shelly Ridge- 16 girls attended
2. 500 Club Picnic at Shelly Ridge- 400 girls attended over two days
3. Girls' Leadership Conference at Cedar Crest College- 100 girls attended
4. Lego Robots at the Springfield Township Building- 67 girls attended
5. Robot Girls at the Springfield Township Building- 55 girls attended
6. Fall Festival for Ridley-Springfield Girl Scouts at the Princeton Presbyterian Church
7. Bridging Ceremony for Ridley-Springfield Girl Scouts at Glenolden Park- 150 girls attended
8. Safe Trick or Treat at the Granite Run Mall- 300 kids attended
9. Eddystone Seniors Lighthouse Luncheon- 50 people attended
10. Flea Market at Upper Darby High School- 400 people attended
11. Technology Round Table - 100 of people reached through social media 
12. Robot Frenzy at the Granite Run Mall- 150 kids attended
13. Demonstration at Rose Tree Media Elementary School- 150 kids attended
14. Leader Meetings at Penn Delco, Media, and Aston- 50 kids attended
15. Year of the Girl Conference at the Philadelphia Convention Center-2000 girls attended
16. Lego Fury- E.T. Richardson Middle School