Week four could have been renamed the “Week of Visitors” or “Time Warp”. Wasn’t it just January 5th a few days ago? The Pirate crew has been hard at work and has gotten quite a bit completed. We have an internal deadline of February 17th. This is when we reveal our robot along side Boneyard to our family, friends and sponsors.
We had sponsor visitors from Suddenlink by Altice (Hi Lisa and Bob!). They stopped by to get a tour of the shop and gain a pulse on how we were doing. We love it when our sponsors drop in! It gives us an opportunity to show them first hand the impact that their donation is having on our team and all of the kids we reach through our outreach programs. They also dropped off some very cool Altice swag for our students. Lisa noticed from a previous post that we were taking steps to go greener around the shop and installed a water cooler. They brought us much appreciated water bottles. Thank you!
Then we had a visit from Rick Phillips, FRC Program Manager of FIRST North Carolina. He visited with all of our subgroups, gave us a run down on important FIRST and FIRST NC news, juggled for us and enjoyed a laugh over our STEM puns. We love it when visitors enjoy the puns!
We also had visitors from friends, family and other NC FRC team mentors. If you want to come say “hey” or get a tour of our shop, we welcome you with open Pirate arms!
In between the visitors, we were able to knock quite a bit off of our to do list.
Design has been putting in hard work to create the intake, shooter, and climber. Programming has mastered all the basic functions for the robot. Engineering has built the robot’s frame, attached drive motors, spinners, and almost have the magazine done. Inspiration was finalizing the Chairman’s and Woodie Flowers submissions and our mentor alumni were wrapping up their submissions for Dean’s List.
Outside of the shop, our students had the first full week of their second semester, but at the shop we’ve been working hard to continue building the robot.
The ECU SWE chapter announced its Gala event for funding STEM education in Pitt County.
Even with all this hard work, we are always in a sense of urgency in the shop because our robot reveal is in a little over two weeks and there’s still a lot to be done. Check back next week to see what we’ve accomplished!
