[FTC]: Off Season
 

Hi, now that we need to wait a long 4 months for the next FTC season I thought i'd ask what you's all are planing to do on the off season?

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

We're gonna do outreaches and an FLL training camp, maybe experiment with different chassis designs, and teach the hardware people on the team how to CAD. We'll also be teaching training classes for teams at the workshop days here in August.
I was considering having us release all our robot performance secrets on our website (we already released some earlier in the season) to help team's robots be more reliable. This way, it won't be a competition of whose robot doesn't mess up, but of who has the most innovative robot. What would be cool is if this spurred teams on to release their fixes as well, as Technoguards graciously did in this instance.
My team may need some convincing, though...

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

Thats GREAT :D, and if you need any help on showing new teams on what the main things you need to make a robust robot, that can take a beating and not break, or just want to talk then just shoot us an email at FTC4240@hotmail.com :) or on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FTC-Te...79771482067531 because i'd love to keep in contact with as many teams as I can on the off season :). See you next year :)

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

Thanks for the comment about what we did, we had a blast this year!

As far as the future goes, the Techno Guards are actually retiring. This was our last year of competition and the team members are going off to different places next year. (2 seniors graduating - other 2 members are starting three new teams at their schools next year). We will probably be opening up our website fully and letting people read our engineering log, see our RobotC code, etc, and see all the stuff we've done some time in the next month.

The two seniors (and the coaches) are also still going to be heavily involved with FIRST. One senior will be a mentor for another new team that we started this year, the other plans on being a judge at FLL and FTC events here in NorCal. Both coaches are going to be involved in supporting FLL and FTC events anywhere they can (in fact they're both judging at the FLL US Open in three weeks).

PS -- For anyone using the online engineering notebook, that will still be ongoing as well.

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

Our team had 7 seniors this year, including myself, so we'll look quite different next year. Members from our sister team (basically our underclassmen/JV team) might move up to our team to keep it going.

I would really like to start experimenting with different designs I've seen throughout the year and saw at worlds, so I plan on building another robot for fun. Our sister team took apart their robot and redesigned their chassis, so they'll be putting that together now and I'll probably pass on some building tips and tricks to them.

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

Offseason is experimentation and outreach time - we're experimenting in holonomic drives and scheduling demos as often as we can. (There'll be another thread on the holonomic drive bot somewhere soon).

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

For those teams in the Southeast (or wherever and want to make the trip), we (Georgia FTC) hope to be hosting an off-season FTC event where we play Get Over It! one more time. Keep your eyes open for announcements for this event to hopefully take place in July or August.

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

I'm hoping to get with the hosts of SCRIW (South Carolina Robotics Invitational) and get a FTC division set up. more than likely I will be in charge of it if we do it. contact me for info.
surfingkidjohn@yahoo.com
John Fogarty
Team 3864
Global Force (Formerly GForce)

Re: [FTC]: Off Season
 

I am saddened to hear this because I am inspired by what your team has contributed for the NorCalFTC community. I am also going to start a new team in San Francisco for the next season of FTC in my high school, there hasn't been any high school teams in San Francisco yet!

Anyway, I hope to see your team come down to the Maker Faire.