Girls of Steel has been working on a lot of exciting projects recently, which was continued in the business meeting on November 19th. The finance team planned another Choolaah fundraiser, but this time on a Wednesday in December on the 11th. They also put together the Pittsburgh Popcorn fundraiser which will hopefully run in February. Finally, they put together their gift basket for the Girls of Steel holiday party coming up on December 15th. The other subteams also put together their gift baskets, each subteam is doing something different. For example, the media team donated items for a chocolate-themed basket. Media team members focused on reviewing old materials and updating them to make them better for this upcoming season! Awards was also working on preparing for the build season and competition season, specifically on Chairman’s awards materials. They are editing and writing essays as well as planning Chairman’s presenter auditions. On the same topic as Chairmans, the Video team continued working on the Chairman’s video, and of course, their gift basket.
November 21st, last meeting before a long and much deserved Thanksgiving break! This technical meeting was extremely busy for every subteam. The mechanical team continued to work on the robot cart and gathering more polycarbonate material to do the doors for the cart. This cart is simply what we carry our robot on during our season and competitions, but is very important and needed some repairs and updates so that we can be prepared for build season and competition season! They also did some work on the End of Preseason Projects, including attaching the motor to the shooter and getting ready to test. The design team, as usual, worked directly with mechanical throughout the meeting. During this meeting this included planning for the mechanical team to study how Computer Aided Design (CAD) is operated. Design team also continued to work on retro robot designs, assembling the hopper CAD [for a robot designed for 2013 game Ultimate Ascent], and testing the new 3D printer! All of the work with design will be continued in the meeting after break! Next, electrical had just as busy of a meeting! They started with a miniature physics lesson on terms and how they relate to the robot. Then they moved on making repairs to the chassis and attached a new e-board to another chassis. Finally, they went over how to use a multimeter. To conclude the November 21st meeting, programming team continued their work. They worked on reconfiguring the chassis without the limelight and worked with the swerve drive code. Now that this meeting has been completed, all of the girls and mentors will not return until December third!
At the meeting on December 3rd, the team went to work on the business side after the all hands meeting where we played a game with our Big/Little groups.
The inclusion subteam has been working hard to better the Girls of Steel team as a whole. They reviewed suggestions given by team members to the virtual suggestion box set up as a way to comprehensively get input from team members anonymously. The team members also brainstormed ideas to bring up to at the Saturday Leadership Council meeting to try and spread positive change through the leadership of the team. The inclusion team members also discussed the future of this new subteam and plans they have for the future. The video subteam planned the theme of the prize basket that will be raffled off to benefit charity at the end of year Girls of Steel holiday party. They also looked over background music for the soundtrack of the Chairman’s video, along with graphics and competition video to use. The Finance subteam worked on writing thank you letters and emails for the amazingly generous crowdfunding donors who helped us to exceed our goal of $10000 for team travel to MVR. They also summarized the business plan for the FIRST Entrepreneurship Award. The media team be grindin’ all day every day. They finalized an information pamphlet, finished the team organizational chart, and worked on the FIRST Ladies blog posts and emails. They also worked on designing a new Girls of Steel comic, worked on preseason blog posts (like this!), and reviewed old team merchandise to repeat orders. The awards subteam worked on editing the Chairman’s long essay down to the correct length. Another group within the awards team used Canva to create judging booklets.
Next up, technical meeting on December fifth! The mechanical subteam continued to work on the robot cart along with the end of preseason project. In addition to that, they organized the highbay. The design subteam made progress on the retrobot by continuing their work on the hopper cad. They also helped out in cleaning out the highbay by organizing their workspace, especially the area for the new 3D printer. Along with cleaning the electrical tables, the electrical subteam finished the third chassis bot. They gave it to the programming subteam and finished the pneumatic bot. Lastly, the programming subteam wrapped up the limelight, and worked on the PID controller, as well as helping a beginner girl learn beginners coding programs.
On December 8th members of the team attended the Steel City Robotics Alliance FRC workshops hosted by FRC 3260 at Sarah Heinz House. There were several amazing workshops presented by members and mentors from FRC teams. Our mentors presented sessions on PID controllers and fabrication, and we presented sessions on competition scouting and strategy, troubleshooting, and co-presented a session on our collaborative project with FRC 3260 and FCR 117 on the “swerve project.”
Other big news: On Saturday, December 7th, we moved from storage (thank you, Argo AI) into our new robotics practice field space at Carnegie Mellon located at 6555 Penn Ave. With help from our mentors and parents, we are excited host a field for the 2020 game in our new space. More details will be available soon!
The final two preseason meetings were held on December 9th and 12th where subteams wrapped up both business and technical projects and made plans for kickoff. In addition, we held auditions for our Chairman’s presenters on December 12th.
Our annual Holiday Party was held at Carnegie Mellon on Sunday, December 15th. As usual, we had delicious food and we collected and wrapped donations to a local charity. This year we collected items for the Women’s Center and Shelter of Pittsburgh. The other fun part was that we got to see the display of the research projects from our four award-winning FLL teams.
See you in 2020!