Welcome to Safety FIRST! Meet “Stormbot” a safe robot. Stormbot wears Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to protect from any abrasions or hazardous materials. The first and most important PPE item is safety glasses. These must be ANSI Z87+ certified and worn at all times. These protect the eyes from any flying materials. Other glasses include safety goggles which protect against splash potential or sprays. Face shields also protect from any hazardous materials. The robot also wears protective gloves. There are various types of gloves to protect against cuts, abrasions, thermal heat, and any containment like oil, grease, and chemicals. Be sure to read the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for safe use. When practicing safety it is important to wear appropriate clothing including long pants, no loose clothing or hanging badges, along with tied back hair. This decreases the chance of any clothing getting caught in the machines. It is also important to wear closed toed shoes while working and steel toed shoes when handling heavy machinery. ​

​The Stormgears Safety Captains​

Greetings!

It's finally over-- The hard work of 2 months earlier this year culminating in 4 huge tournaments. With two Engineering Inspiration victories, and another trip to St. Louis, we've completed yet another successful season. The World Championships were, as usual, an incredible experience. Top teams from around the world in several FIRST events were there, and it is this that made it so worthwhile. We hope to return there next year, even if there will be a second World Championship.

Regardless, Stormgears team members have been taking a nice long break- accompanied by lots of school work, and relaxing after the strenuous past couple months. We will have an official end-of-season celebration soon, but until then, we will begin meeting regularly to buckle down on our Outreach efforts for the next couple years. We will also be looking to boost recruitment, and increase team participation. Taking these steps will be key in ensuring our team continues to improve.

We'll be taking it slow for now, as our team members and mentors definitely deserve a break, but we'll pick up steam when we find our course of action.

Until next time,
Stormgears 5422

From April 9-14, Stormgears were preparing hard for an important presentation that would determine the fate of our team this competition season. Our efforts were rewarded on April 16th, when our team was awarded the coveted Engineering Inspiration award!

We're really excited to have made it this far, so now it's time to turn our heads westward towards St. Louis, MO, home of the 2016 FIRST World Championship. We've decided to fly this year, and will be leaving Wednesday morning.


Be sure to follow us on social media in order to view our progress at the tournament!
Hope to see you there!

Boston was a Week 5 event in 2016, and was an incredibly competitive tournament. Due to a series of successful matches and a somewhat-functional high-goal shooter, we felt ready to perform. 

Unfortunately, a mechanical breakage mid-tournament set us back, and by the end of the Qualifying rounds we ended at a disappointing 29th place. In the Elimination rounds, we joined the 2nd Seed Alliance along with 125 NUtrons and Captain 238, Cruisin' Crusaders. Due to an inability of our robot to play defensively, the decision to substitute out our team for another was made, and we were replaced on the alliance by 4H ALARM Robotics. The alliance made it to the finals, where a close 3rd match determined we would be runner-ups in the tournament.

Stormgears also happened to take home the Creativity Award on account of our tank treads that smoothly rolled over most defenses and our innovative shooting system. 

Though a good event, we lack the points currently to compete with our robot at Hartford. Still, we will be there to compete for Engineering Inspiration on Friday and Saturday.

Stormgears will be moving onwards from here to Boston for our next District Event! We'll see you guys there!

As you may know, taking the Engineering Inspiration award automatically qualifies us for the District Championships in Hartford, CT. We'll be using the event for practice and for testing out some of our latest changes, so stay tuned!

Hey!

Let's go over what happened this weekend:

Friday: I wasn't there, but our robot apparently failed inspection a few times; Regardless our pit was set up, and we would eventually be allowed to compete.

Saturday: The big day! After getting inspected, we began our qualification rounds, going 0-2 early on before finally picking up our first win. We would end the day 3-6 in wins/losses, in rank 21-22. Many of these rounds were lost by 2 or 3 points, and our robot wasn't even entirely functional. Major problems throughout the day hampered our performance and had to be ironed out. 
Our big win, however, came in our judging. Judges who came to our pit (which stood out from most of the others) were greatly impressed by what we had to say. Great job to all those who spoke to them and those who created the displays in our pit.

Finally, we were also shadowed by a team we were mentoring for this season, rookie team 5962 perSEVERE from Merrimack Valley, who will be competing soon in their first competition.

Sunday: Kicking into high gear, we were able to finally get our shooter working and our performance improved tremendously, ensuring that we ended Qualifiers with another win under our belt, for an overall record of 4-8, in rank 23 (just above that all important 24th rank)

After, we became 2nd pick to the 3rd seed alliance, led by CHAOS 131 and joined by Schrodinger's Cat 3958. In the quarter finals, we lost (0-2) to the alliance seeded 6th. That alliance would continue to win the entire tournament, toppling the seemingly unstoppable 1st seed in the finals.  

We were also visited by more judges.

In awards, as I'm sure you know by now, we took the award we were hoping for: Engineering Inspiration, which instantly qualifies us for the District Championships in Hartford, CT.

Stormgears have been working towards the goal of the World Championship two years in a row for the entire preseason. The only thing to get done now is the robot. So, the phase of prototyping, designing, and strategizing has begun. With increased manpower from last season, Stormgears are now able to work on several other side-projects concurrently, whether it's designing an awesome design for our team standard or a button board to control our robot. We hope to create a competitive robot and an even better team after this season, and we are well on our way.

Here's to great success!
-MJ

Oh man, it's been a while.

Stormgears are now into our 2nd Season of the FIRST Robotics Challenge, FIRST Stronghold. To find out more about the game, check out the FIRST website: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/welcome-to-first-stronghold

Be prepared to see plenty more updates here from the team! We have loads more to bring to you.

In the mean time, feel free to follow us on Social Media!

Thanks,
MJ