We have a new website! This site is no longer in use.

Our new website is at http://4360spudnik.webs.com/. Hope to see you there!

NASA Grant - Success!

Good news! We got the grant from NASA that we spent an entire meeting working on as a team. We were among the 213 teams who got various grants from NASA. Good work, everyone! Of course, we're not done yet, because we're still required to make a submission for the Chairman's Award. But hey, we can do it. Go team!

Here's the list of the teams who got grants. We're down at the bottom:
http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/2014_sponsorship.php

For parents: how to complete the electronic consent form

When your daughter/son registered online with FIRST Robotics the registration system is supposed to  send you a message asking you complete an electronic consent form. I'm currently coaching and my son is on the team and I managed to completely the email sent when he registered. If you are similar, follow these instructions to get the form completed:

1. Go to https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso?r=1423346&fuseaction=home.welcome and click on the "I can't access my account" link.
2. Enter your email address.
3. Shortly after that you will get an email from FIRST with a link to set your password (if you do not get that email please check your spam/junk folder)
4. Reset your password, then log in.
5. Before doing the electronic consent you need to provide some additional contact information for the student; click the "Edit/View" button next to the student's name to do that:

6. Complete the form with address information, etc; be sure to also indicate whether your student has participated in FIRST events (like FIRST Lego League) before:

7. Submit the contact form and you will be taken back to the screen you saw when you logged in. Click on the "Edit/View" button for the consent form:

8. Click through the check boxes, then read the consent form and "sign" it by clicking the "Sign Form" button:

You are now done! Thanks for taking the time to do this--having consent forms completed electronically speeds up the registration process at Kickoff and Competition!

Question or concerns? Contact Dr. Matt Craig (interim coach)

Team Spudnik: 2014 pre-season update

Hello, everyone! The date today is November 13th, 2013, and Team 4360 Spudnik has started meeting again. We've had several meetings already, and we've started making progress on a variety of things. This is a quick summary of everything we've done so far...and a chance for our resident blogger to get back into the swing of things :)

After a couple meetings of getting things organized, we started getting stuff done. One of the first things we did was repair our robot from last season. It was having issues with connecting to the controller, and when it did connect, it wasn't running quite right. However, we were able to work through the problems and get it back in order. With the robot once again running to perfection, the build team set about getting down a full schematic of the 'bot.

This process was interrupted, as we got the opportunity to display the robot in the window of one of our local sponsors, Hobby Hut. We left the robot with them from Thursday to Wednesday, and it attracted attention, getting more publicity for both us and the shop.

One of the biggest accomplishments of the past weeks was getting together a grant proposal to send to NASA for funding. We found out that our biggest sponsor, which was sponsoring multiple teams, was no longer able to sponsor us as well as the others. So, we decided to go and try to get NASA to replace them. One issue: our meeting took place one day before the deadline for the proposal. But we got the whole team together (see picture below for a peek into what that was like), and managed to get the thing done. Go us!

Now, we're working on finishing that robot schematic, and the marketing team is preparing to go out and start getting us some more sponsors. Stay tuned for progress, and our future plans. Before the build season starts, we'll be doing certain building challenges to help the build team practice, and we'll be sure to keep you posted on those. We're also working on an entry for the safety video competition. Expect updates ons those things, and more!

Well, there's the season so far, in a nutshell. I'll see you again soon, with more reports of Spudnik's antics!

This is what a whole team working on a NASA grant proposal looks like:

Registration Site

Hey, everyone! If you want to be on the team, you need to click the link below to register! So you should do that!

https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso

All match videos up!

You should totally go watch them, 'cause they're pretty darn awesome.