New Engineering & Science middle school robotics team funded by NDEP!

Thanks to the volunteer engineers from NAVSEA led by Pinkesh Bharatia, they have secured nearly $1,000 in new funding for a new middle school robotics team (Team #19120)!  We look forward to offering this opportunity to our new middle school students. 

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll 

Paid engineering summer internship next summer? Apply now for SEAP!

Mark your calendars! The summer 2016 application period for the high school level Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) program is September 15 - October 23, 2015.  

Student interns must be 16 by the end of June 2016 and a US citizen to apply!

Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) provide an opportunity for students to participate in research at a Department of Navy (DoN) laboratory nationwide including Philadelphia during the summer.  The goals are to encourage participating students to pursue science and engineering careers, to further education via mentoring by laboratory personnel and their participation in research, and to make them aware of DoN research and technology efforts, which can lead to employment within the DoN.  SEAP provides competitive research internships to over 265 high school students each year nationwide, paying $3,300 or $3,800 for returning students. Participating high school students spend eight weeks during the summer doing research at 25 DoN laboratories nationwide. The high school internship can lead to competitive research internships to approximately 475 college students (400 undergraduate students and 75 graduate students) each year. Participating college students spend ten weeks during the summer conducting research at approximately 29 DoN laboratories. 

Websites:
High School internship: https://seap.asee.org/
College internship: http://nreip.asee.org/

New FTC hardware has arrived! Kickoff on 9/12 at Temple Univ.

Hope everyone had a great summer...

The new FTC hardware has arrived for both teams, 5321 and 9570.  Mr. Koehler will be in school on 9/3 and 9/4, let me know if you would like to assist with the computer lab setup and/or configure and experiment with the new FTC Android smartphone replacing the LEGO brick.

Watch this first...

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cksv26q1q9m693ajrpgve47ij5s

Also register for free FTC online training, this is required for any potential team member: http://first.intelitek.com/

The 2015-16 FTC Kickoff event is confirmed for Sat. Sept. 12 from 10:45 to 2:00PM at Temple University - College of Engineering Building at 12th & Norris St.

See more below...

___________________________________________________

Hi to our FTC Teams in Pennsylvania,

This is one of a continuing series of 2015-2016 season email blasts that you will receive specific to the Pennsylvania FIRST Tech Challenge program. We will be sending out these mails on a regular basis that essentially augment the email blasts that you already receive directly from FIRST.

FTC registration for all FTC teams in the World opened on May 13, 2015. We currently have 54 registered teams, with 20 of them Rookies! Welcome to our new teams. With schools coming back in session we expect many more teams to join back in the fun.

As written in the last email, we are very excited this season as FTC has introduced, and we are implementing, an all new control system and platform based on Android technology and Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processors. As such, we are planning more workshops and scrimmages in the state than ever to so that teams may gather and work together to master this new technology as well s build and drive their robot creations. If you are a team that has the resources and would like to host a workshop please let us know. Just write to us at ftc@pennfirst.org.

FTC New Tech Overview

FTC Engineer, Thomas Eng will be hosting a Google Hangout next Tuesday, Sept 9th going over all of the FTCNew Tech kit components. This will be a high level overview for all of our teams interested in learning a little more about the FTC New Tech! Tune in at 5pm EST to learn more!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cksv26q1q9m693ajrpgve47ij5s

Live Kick-Off events:

We have scheduled 4 simultaneous live and webcast Kick-Off events around the state on Saturday the 12^th. We would love for our teams to come, engage with other teams in the community and get to see, touch and feel the new game challenge. At each event we will also have an official FTC Referee there to explain the game rules and answers questions. Registration is open for these free kick-off events to be held from 10:45 to 2:00PM at each of the following locations:

Philadelphia – Temple University - College of Engineering Building

East – Technical College High School Brandywine Campus, Downingtown, PA

Central – Millersville University Osburn Hall, Millersville, PA

West -  Carnegie Mellon / National Robotics Engineering Center, Pittsburg, PA

You may find the exact location for these events with agenda at:

http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2015-2016-season/pennsylvania-ftc-season-kick-off

And register your team to attend using the on-line registration form at:

http://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration

For or developing season schedule visit our website Event page at:

 http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2015-2016-season

As usual, there is a lot of information already provided and accessible to teams regarding the new platform, available grants as well as general guidance to FTC program enhancements this season. These have been provided through the aforementioned emails blasts from FIRST. They are all accessible for review through the following link. There have been 8 informative Email Blasts since June. If you have not received or read these, please be sure to do so:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/emailblastarchive.aspx

Another great and necessary link that teams should access is the Team Resources page on the FIRST website. This has been highly augmented with incredible resources to get both veteran and new teams rolling with Android and Inteletik training resources, push-bot build instructions, Notebook guides and much more.  Please visit this page, pick your needs and visit often.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/team-resources

We look forward to meeting you all during the season, and hopefully at one of our kick-off events. Please always feel free to contact us any time with questions or request at ftc@pennfirst.org. We love hearing from our teams.

Warmest Regards,

Tom Zawislak and Dave Hackett

Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics FTC®Affiliate Partner

ph: (302) 383-9925

email: ftc@pennfirst.org

Website: www.FTCPenn.org

Prosthetic Arm Engineering Design Team earns awards at MESA National Competition

We are very proud of our PA state champion MESA team lead by Jesus Davaloz, Kai Tinsley, Marcus Seawright, and Markeyes Justice. They competed in the MESA Nationals Prosthetic Arm Engineering Design competition near Salt Lake City, Utah from July 17-20th.

They placed second in ALL of the following individual categories Academic Display, Oral Presentation, AND Technical Paper!  They also earned first place in Object Relocation, one of four performance categories. The other three categories, we did not place. 

They didn't place overall this year, after finishing second last year.  It was a very competitive field with 12 states sending strong state champion teams.  The team is hungry for next year planning to return to Utah as seniors!  Next year's competition will additionally require incorporating programmatically controlled motors using an Arduino microcontroller to operate the prosthetic device.

Thanks to Dr. Jamie Bracey from Temple University and sponsor Waste Management for funding our trip. Principal Ted Domers and Dr. Amit Basu for supporting our work all year long!

Philadelphia was awarded the next MESA Nationals competition site starting in June 2017!

Online RobotC Programming Certification from Carnegie Mellon Univ. (cs2n.org)

All VEX/TSA RobotC programmers should take this free RobotC Programming course by Carnegie Mellon Univ., certification on RobotC available:
http://www.cs2n.org/activities/cs2n-learn/robotc-programming-for-vex,-best-and-tsa-teams

Good news! We were able to get a large discount for a classroom license for the 2015-16 VEX competition 'Nothing But Net' RobotC Virtual Worlds.

Message to PA FTC teams, Kickoff & Game Reveal 9/12/15

To Pennsylvania FTC teams,

We are currently working on our detailed event schedule for this season as we secure dates and venues. We will be adding more workshops, especially to assist teams with implementing the new platform (this summer), practices, scrimmages and expanded qualifiers. The new game Kick-off/Game Reveal is scheduled for September 12^th, 2015. In general, the months of September through November will be dedicated to workshops, practices and scrimmages. This is intended to allow teams more time to prepare and accommodate the learning curve for the new control system. The official PA Competition season will commence in December and end in February culminating in the State Championship.  As always, and throughout the season, please refer to our comprehensive FTC PA website for schedule details as well as event registration policies and sign-ups. Our event registration page will open shortly.

 http://www.ftcpenn.org/home

We look forward to an amazing and fun season and hope to have you all join in. Please always feel free to contact us any time with questions or request at ftc@pennfirst.org. We love hearing from our teams.

Warmest Regards,

Tom Zawislak and Dave Hackett

Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics

FTC®Affiliate Partner

ph: (302) 383-9925

email: ftc@pennfirst.org

Website: www.FTCPenn.org

Got Certification?

Congratulations to Eric Remorenko who became our first student since the testing window opened in May to earn a CAD certification in Autodesk Inventor.  Also thanks to our updated CAD lab, students have access to Autodesk Inventor which is a powerful industry grade engineering design modeler and simulator.  Eric has been our lead CAD modeler for our robotics teams for two years.  This is a great addition to your resume!

Download the student version of Autodesk software for free at home!

http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/all

Any engineering student rostered to an engineering class is eligible for free access ($70 value) to practice questions and two attempts at the exam. Certification is mandatory starting next year. Our school is an authorized testing center and Mr. Koehler is a registered testing proctor.

Inventor overview video:

http://www.autodesk.com/products/inventor/overview

Certification in Autodesk Revit is also available, also a state of the art, industry grade design and simulation tool but is focused on residential and commercial building design. Overview video:

http://www.autodesk.com/suites/building-design-suite/overview

More info on the Autodesk Certified User exam content coverage:

http://static-dc.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/www/training-certification/pdf/en/2015/Autodesk_Inventor_2015_Certification_Roadmap.pdf

http://static-dc.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/www/training-certification/pdf/en/2015/Autodesk_Revit_Architecture_2015_Certification_Roadmap.pdf