News

Team 20 won 2nd place at the BAE Systems Granite State Regional! We were alliance partners with Teams 40 (Checkmate) and 131 ( C.H.A.O.S.). Congrats to the winners, Teams 175, 176, and 1519 - it was a pleasure competing with you, and with all other teams.

Find out more here!

The Logomotion Scouting App is Available for Your Calculator! (iPhone app coming soon)

Click here to download the TI 84+ Logomotion scouting app! The app will let you record data on matches and transfer the data to your computer for organizing. TI 84 series only, as the app requires a timer function that the TI 83+ does not have. See the readme file for instructions.

In the very near future, look for the iPhone scouting app!

Robotics Expo and Respect Day Presentations

If your browser can't play the video, right click on this link and choose "save link as" or "save target as" to save the video on your computer.

On Saturday, 2/19, Team 20 invited local FRC teams to the 4th annual Tech Valley Robotics Exposition! On Friday, 2/18, Team 20 members presented their 2006 dodgeball-launching robot to Shen high school students for Respect Day.

Do you often bring your camera to meetings? Do you have build season or preseason pictures from this year? Are you hanging on to pictures from previous seasons?

If you have any Team 20-related pictures, the website could use them! Please send pictures to me or Mrs. Barra. Thank you!

Build Season Schedule

During build season, we will have a lot more meetings: every weekday from 7pm to 9pm, and Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 4pm. However, Team 20 members do not need to attend all of them. All members only need 40 hours of build participation, including kickoff and the Tech Valley Exhibition. Thursday meetings are still mandatory.

Team 20 Members in Global Online Town Hall Meeting

Several Team 20 members participated in a global online Town Hall meeting about science, technology, and math education in the U.S. The event was hosted locally by Time Warner Cable, and featured Al Gore, Barack Obama, and FIRST founder Dean Kamen. They discussed why the U.S. is lagging in STEM education, and how to fix this problem. More details here.

Team 20 Wins River Rage!

Team 20 won the River Rage preseason/postseason competition on October 30th, 2010! Thank you to Team 175, Buzz Robotics; and Team 172, Northern Force for being the best of alliance partners! Pictures here!

Reminder: Safety Glasses

All Team 20 members need to get ANSI Z87 approved safety glasses! We are not allowed to use the Shen tech room safety glasses this year, so every student needs his/her own for build season. Also, safety inspectors will not allow students into the pits at competition without proper glasses. Good safety glasses can cost $3 or less, though the ones in the picture above will set you back more.

Picture from www.kingwayhkglasses.com

FIRST Wins Major Google Competition

Congrats to FIRST for being one of 5 winners of Google's Project 10¹⁰⁰! FIRST been selected as one of 5 ideas most likely to positively impact people around the world, out of over 150,000 ideas nominated. For this, Google is donating $3 million to FIRST. Project 10¹⁰⁰ has ended its epic 2-year search, and all of us FIRST teams are thrilled that our program has been chosen! More information can be found here.

Colonie Center STEM Expo

Team 20 was in the Colonie Center STEM Expo, part of the 2010 Back to School Expo. We demonstrated our robot to the public, including the future engineers shown above. A big thanks goes to our friends at Time Warner Cable for sponsoring the expo!

Team 20 at ITT Tech FIRST Robotics Expo

On September 9th, Team 20 participated in the ITT Tech FIRST Expo, along with teams from Albany, Shaker, Schenectady, and Colonie. Guests included Congressman Paul Tonko, posing with team members in the picture above.

Team 20 on the FIRST Website

Team 20 members are on the front page of the FIRST website! Two of our students, Eric Hexemer and Spencer Po, are currently featured on usfirst.org for the scholarships they recieved through FIRST.

Team 20 in the News!

YNN has a story on our 2010 Tech Valley Robotics Exhibition . The exhibition, now in its third year, is a friendly practice for local FRC teams before competition season.

Team 20 has been featured in the Saratoga Spotlight, a weekly paper. The article, "Robotics Club isn't just for geeks", covers our 2010 kickoff.