January 2025 Newsletter
Happy new year, Snails!
We are making a lot of progress in the first month of build season, so here are some updates and important information.
Updates
Our Design Team is hard at work adding wiring and a climbing subsystem to our robot CAD. At the same time, the Build and Electronics departments have been working hard to make our robot design into reality. Most recently, they’ve finished putting together our chassis and started to work on the elevator subsystem. Geared with new radios and cameras, Programming has been learning to use the updated equipment and to develop a robust computer vision system. Strategy has been creating the data analysis spreadsheet for this year’s game. Ops has been working to create the official T-shirt designs for competition.
Kickoff Celebration
Thank you to everyone who helped make our kickoff celebration great by donating food on Thursday, January 9th! Our members had tons of fun eating walking tacos while brainstorming ideas for our robot design. At the end of the celebration, everyone made rough sketches of their ideas that were incorporated into the final design seen above.
FIRST REGISTRATION
Regardless of if your child is invited onto the competition team or not, they MUST be registered in the FIRST FRC system, and there are consent forms that need to be signed. Failure to register by the deadline of 1/31 will automatically disqualify your child from competition team consideration. FIRST requires all students to register and sign consent forms every year, so even if you’ve filled out the forms in years past, you must do it again this season. If you already have a parent account created, you can electronically sign the consent forms as soon as your child registers themselves in the system. If you are new to the team, make sure your child sends you a link to connect a parent account to their student account. We want this done as soon as possible, so your help is appreciated. The link to register under Team 1257 is here. More information can be found on the FIRST website and on the Google Classroom post your child can access.
More Ways to Help
If you are interested in making a financial donation, you can submit cash or a check by giving it to your student for submission. Checks should be made out to UCVTS with “Robotics” in the memo line.
We would be extremely grateful for any donations possible. For more information, see this link regarding Sponsorship Benefit Tiers. We would also greatly appreciate it if everyone could spread the word about our team! Our members have been working hard and we would love for them to see support for all their hard work!