Page 2 – FRC Team 980 ThunderBots

July 28, 2023December 11, 2023

The Significance of Singing Robots

“STEM Lego Robo Camp,” Central Library, Summer, Off-season, 2023

After weeks of planning and pulling people from within and outside our team, we’ve reached the conclusion of our Lego Robo Camp!

Returning in person was a challenge, but our team pushed through in developing updated curriculums for Mindstorms and OnShape CAD as well as a new curriculum for 3D Printing.

With over 30 students and 20 mentors, every team competed with a unique robot of their own, many with fun design details (so many swords…) or songs (one Rickrolled us…) to present to our judge.

In the flurry of action, young students and our older students alike experienced how overcoming the challenges of mentorship can be rewarding, both professionally and personally.

Thank you to all the mentors, people behind the scenes, and extra hands from friends of 980 and 1148 Harvard Westlake Robotics for all their hard work!

— Luci, Captain of Team 980

July 20, 2023December 11, 2023

Psst! That box? I think it’s actually our s-[REDACTED]

“What’s happening with the ThunderBots?,” Burbank High STEAM Lab, Summer, Off-season, 2023

For a few months now, we’ve had a nice “not-a-box” box tucked away in controls that we had to ignore to focus on working through the rest of the season with Frankie. However… now we can talk about it as a “box” box!

People… we’ve got swerve drive!

For those who don’t know what swerve drive is, imagine a swivel chair and how it can go anywhere at any time — that’s what our robot can now do. Compared to our standard tank drive, we’ve a major challenge ahead of us when trying to figure out how this works.

No more rectangular frame. Individual swerve modules mounted to corners. And finally an electronics board. We’re now ready to move onto the hard part: coding.

Surprisingly, we already have a name: Prototype-Swervebot 1, aka, PS1.

Throughout the rest of the build space, we’ve been working on a major redesign, using summer to not have to worry about people going in and out during the school year. In Fabrication, we completely rearranged our shop, creating a dedicated storage space and different project tables. Business and Design have switched spaces, moving Design into the newly rearranged (former) Business office and Business into the larger area of the build space. Although Controls has not been the victim of a major redesign yet, there are talks of switching up the room’s layout while they work outside for the electronics board on PS1.

All in all, we’ve had our hands full with getting things done during the past few months as we prepare for the new school year, a more efficient work cycle, and fall off-season competitions.

Next up: Lego Robo Camp!

— Luci, Captain of Team 980

June 20, 2023December 11, 2023

New website, new projects, new job on the team

If this is your first time here, Welcome! If you have been here before, welcome back! There have been a lot of changes going on in Team 980. Our build space is being completely reorganized and new projects are being worked on. However I will let our team captain handle all of that in her next post because this is about our new (-ish) website and lead mentors.

Let’s start with the website. Underneath it is the same one we have had for years (hacks and all…). But the 980 web design team has been busy changing its look and content to bring it up to date with everything we have been doing and to make important information easier for people to find. It’s not fancy, no animation, no cutesy cartoon mascots, no background pics with text scrolling over them. But all of that just isn’t us. It’s the content that matters. So make sure you catch up on the blogs, check out the team history section, read up on all of our past robots (ok there’s only 1 past robot up there right now but more will come, just keep an eye out in announcements on the main page), mainly look around and see what we have done. We hope you like it.

The other thing is new jobs. The lead mentor position recently opened up and it took 2 mentors to take on a massive job like that. So welcome to your new roles Robin and Alex, Co-Lead mentors of Team 980.
-Team 980 Web Design Team

June 12, 2023December 11, 2023

There are no words to describe how much we will miss you!

I originally met David Brinza and David Toyne around 2010 when my son visited Team 980 with his Webelos Scout den. I was impressed at how they took the time to talk to the 10-year-olds, answer their questions, and encourage them to pursue their interests in robotics and STEM. My son was doing FIRST LEGO League, so seeing the high school robotics team was pretty inspiring. And I was pretty impressed with them, myself – JPL! Universal Studios! These guys were heavy hitters! Little did I know then how much they would influence the course of our lives!

Flash forward to January 2013. My son has now aged out of his FLL team and is ready to join “the big team.” To say he was the proverbial “deer in the headlights” would be an understatement. It’s a big step to join a FIRST Robotics Competition team. But Brinza and Toyne had been mentoring Team 980 for a decade by that time, so they knew how to take a motivated rookie and turn him into an engineer. The photo is from my son’s first competition in March 2013 in which he’s working on the robot in the Team 980 pits with David Toyne, listening and watching as Toyne shows him something. It’s such a perfect Mentor/Student image, and one that was repeated so many times over the 2 decades that Brinza and Toyne were Lead and Design Mentors for Team 980. Two skilled, dedicated, caring individuals who inspired so many young engineers to pursue their ambitions.

Andrew winning Dean’s List with the mentors that guided him there. 2017

Thanks to David Brinza, I’ve now been a mentor on Team 980 since 2015. FIRST has become a huge part of my life – mentoring, volunteering and advocating. I’m not an engineer, so this isn’t anything that I ever thought I could do, but just as Brinza and Toyne encouraged so many young engineers, they also encouraged me as a mentor. And the skills that I’ve developed as an FRC mentor I use in all aspects of my life.

Which brings us to June 2023. David Brinza has retired from a 35 year career at NASA/JPL and is relocating out of the area. David Toyne is overseeing an amazing green technology project in Africa. While they remain mentors for Team 980, they will no longer be with us in person on a daily basis, and it falls to me and my co-lead mentor, Alex, to continue the tradition of inspiring the future at Team 980.

I can’t fully express my gratitude for all that Brinza and Toyne brought to Team 980, except to compare my “deer in the headlights” son to the confident, capable Team Captain that he became 5 years later. I speak for the whole team when I say, “Thank you.”
-Robin, Co-Lead Mentor of Team 980