Tin Mint Blog

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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 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.)

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.

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!

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!