Pirate dinner is an event that our team has every year. The team, their family, and their friends come together to consume a feast created by their own hands, enjoy the use of board games, and celebrate our accomplishments throughout the year.

For the past 2 months we have been hard at work ensuring that our team can finalize our robot for the off-season competitions, as well as ensuring that we know everything there is to know about operating and programming a swerve robot. 

During the Contra Costa Regional that we hosted here at Pittsburgh High School, we tried our best when competing as much as we could. With our robot fixed from the last time we competed we managed to place 37 out of the 40 teams that competed!

In the San Francisco Reginal we learned many things about our robot that we didn't before, like its weaknesses and how to drive it in general. We also learned that our robot had many errors with both its programming and its wiring and we managed to fix most of them by Sunday for our final match, in doing so we believe that for the competition we will be hosting this week we will perform even better and wont be a full defense robot!

On this final shop week we have been fine tuning our robot to ensure all the faults we found with our build are completely taken out so we may be more efficient, and are able to get as many points as we can for the teams we may ally with through the matches!

the final week until build season, we work hard to prep the robot for the San Francisco reginal, and Monday is the only day we have to work directly with the robot. on Thursday we spend all day packing it and on Friday we set sail for competition.

on Monday the sewing continued sewing and completing 2 pairs of bumpers, the principle went by our team and had a talk with us on Thursday, and on Friday we completed the last blue bumper and began to animate our robot bird, mecha George Mc Waffles 

there are no pictures of such week so we have added pictures of our bird art designs to this point, we plan on making new button designs based on mecha waffles 

Yar! Sorry for the lack of blog updates as we have been hard at work building the best robot we could make! For starters, this week we have begun drive training for the final away trip of utah and have been finishing up all our systems and the bumpers! 

in this another exciting week of robotics, the team strives to finish up on the remaining of the mechanic of the robot as game season drives closer to us, by this week we plan on having the robot be able to fully drive, and for the next  a functional reef/coral mechanisms!

In another exciting week of build season, we completely finished the algae mechanisms, and have finished the coding and CAD of the elevator piece. 

This week of build season, we were able to finished our bumper construction, and now all we need to do is fit the fabric and cushioning onto each one. We have also bought more materials for electrical and have (nearly) finished our algae mechanism. Electrical was able to cut 

Programming has been able to 

In this exciting build season week, we continued our prospects into building our coral and algae systems for the next competition, and we begun work on our new bumpers for our swerve robot!

The team this week presses onwards, able to make progress on projects like making a reef structure, practicing with getting our swerve drive aligned, as well getting progress on major parts of the robot. We were able to get our algae intake located on the robot, and are now able to start making physical prototypes. Our CAD was also started, and we designed our structure and motor placement, as well as our pivoting systems.

This week, we continue off of the base that we have made at kickoff, bouncing ideas around each other for things like intake mechanisms, as well as general planning on projects, and how are they going to work. Alongside that, we also continue to readjust our swerve drive after our Capital City Classic run.

The team meets up again for a new game, this one being called Reefscape! We go from watching the trailer with Alumni and current members together, to brainstorming basic ideas for mechanisms, as well as our goals for the season, to strategizing how our matches will go. Overall, we got to not only experience the new game together as a team, as well as make a great start for strategy, and mechanisms.

In todays meeting, we discussed the priorities of the team and have decided the main focus of our team should go into grant writing for the time being before build season so we may get the materials necessary in our next robot as well as enough to go to more games and build more money for future purchases. 

At Capital City Classic, we used our new swerve robot which we have been working on first time in a competition! we learned a lot of things about this new type of movement and what to change to make it even better! our rookies learned a lot from this experience and we hope we can teach them more about robotics and engineering as a whole!

Members of the team, alongside students part of our GEARS, engineering, and robotics students almost every year go to a event called maker faire, this event is a place for robotics teams. peoples personal projects, and science shows take place to show off the wonders of robotics and science to kids and adults alike!

The team this week continues to integrate the new members into different subgroups, with things like spirit (which includes making new posters for the team, as well the website), or drive training (practicing the procedures of the different drive team roles, as well as understanding what different signals mean). Work also continues as our programmers are hard at work with our swerve drive chassis and rookies practicing on their own chassis.

Work on chassis also continues, with the rookies starting to work on their own chassis, while the veterans mainly focus on the swerve chassis for the time being. 

This week we have been training up our rookie son all our stations, for Programming they are programming a motor for Chassis Dismantle they are dismantling a chassis and Electrical swerve are now powering all wires and CAD is learning how to put a design on a blueprint Finally Maintenance is working on drift they are focusing on left and right movements

What we did for the Showcase we build robots for 7 weeks, and we will build robots together as a team you will know new robot skills as well as working with technology. Also, for the Club Rush we set up our robot and worked on the same table and some people were waving flags to recognize our robotics club.

The Robotics Team went to the School Board Meeting to discuss how Robotics differs from other clubs, how the school board can help, and how collaborating with us can benefit from their help. The team also had some interactive experiences for the school board, like showcasing the robots and playing The Price is Right. Overall, the school board loved the presentation, and we can hope that they will be glad to help us as our club continues to thrive.

The first week of robotics was great success on our Pittsburg High community. For our first rotation, the rookies had to learn about robotics first before we were going to rotate. Then, the rookies learned how robotics works and learned how to use the shop works. 

Our team works over the summer to get more long-term projects either done with, or at least worked on. To start, we are able to get the classroom changed a bit, as well as continuing on swerve module building, and cleaning up the shop a bit more. 

The entirety of the robotics group is now checking in with our student body for summer activities. Our goals are mainly staying on swerve and summer shopping in preparation for the next Calgames, which we are hosting here at our school. Until the summer dates listed on our calendar. We are just about closed for the rest of the school year. Since we are closing for the year, feel free to email us at frc5430@gmail.com for any question and the like, thank you!

Shortly after our team's month of competition, we had time to focus on primary areas such as implementation for future pirates, our upcoming swerve bot, and more. Our team divided certain subgroups and had them create a document that contains the fundamentals of every aspect of robotics as a whole. Browse Subgroup Whitepapers for more information. In addition, the team has recently bought the materials required to craft a swerve bot, fulfilling the long-time goal of the crew. It is all now a matter of building the physical chassis, learning the code, and making a functional swerve robot. 

Due to the changes in our team and the annual rotation of grades for our crew, some seniors are heading off to college, resulting in our student-led eboard to have shrunk. Therefore, we held eboard elections and have successfully voted in committed and dedicated individuals on board. 

As soon as the current handling for the future was tackled, we focused on our shop and inventory. Our shop needed a deep clean, and we needed to know what we had to work with. We got everyone on the team to help clean and shift our shop to a new working space. It felt like a good new change as we prepare for our next school year with new students. In order to know what we need, we need to keep track of our inventory and mark down parts and tools we need. Until then, time to fish! 

The team has been preparing for our final competition of the official season, the East Bay Regional. Our robot- not fully complete- was ready for the challenge nonetheless. We got to talk to different teams and their work ethics, robot function, team organization, and more. Our crew was dedicated to adding a working intake on the bot for at least one round. Therefore, our intake crew was at the pit non-stop until they had a complete and functional intake, completing one of the main goals the team had from the very beginning at kickoff. Through these searches we also got to hang out with them at the team social; a fun experience that not always means winning first place- we got to take aboard an official season Imagery Award! 

The team makes a final push before their next voyage to Berkeley. Even with some aspects of the robot being in production still, the team is able to make progress in many other aspects. While the red bumper was being repaired, we were able to get some more driver practice which was still good even though we had to slow down a bit because of the missing bumper on one side. While that was going on, we were able to get more progress in terms of the design of our intake, and were able to finish it off with some CADing and button making.

Although we were going to come into the shop more than just one day, we unfortunately couldn't, but we definitely were able to get a lot done in just the one day. The team was able to get a good sense of what needed to be done next week before the next competition. Looking at what could be done, we were able get started with some projects such as repairing the red bumper, which had broke during our Arizona competition, and also started to design our intake system now that we have the chance.

The regional this time took us to the warm waters of Arizona, the state with the 5 C's. The team was able to get some team bonding and more memorable moments with everyone before, and during competitions. We first were able to experience many Arizona exclusive locales before the competition. During the actual competition, we were happy to see that we still had a lot of diversity in terms of cultures of people, having some from Mexico, while others all the way from China. The different interpretations and help from everyone was amazing, allowing us to reflect on what we should do once we get back to California. Overall, the experience was an amazing time away from home, that allowed for learning and bonding for the entire team. 

This week is one of the last weeks leading to the Arizona East Regionals! The team has started the packing process as we start making our voyage to Arizona! Competition starts late into the week so we'll definitely enjoy our time before game starts. In the meantime, the team makes its final push to finish up everything we can before the competition. We also get our new team shirts just in time for us all to wear. We had different projects getting finalized, namely our intake system, as well as our climbing system. On the electrical side, we were able to finalize a new system for the placement of everything. 

This week we received one of our best creations. Besides our robot, we got our Team 5430 merch! Anyways, the pieces of our puzzle came together and everything is coming out nicely.

This week, the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to come together. Especially in the last few days, things have really sailed as the shooter and programming had successful tests. While the shooter mechanism increased their power and propelled the note at an angle, the central autonomous program exceeded expectations. On the other hand, hang and electrical teams are in the works with fixing motors and installing the electrical door sliders. Additionally, the ground intake is nearly done as the team works to fix compression and test new gears. 

The team gets super close to being done this week, making the final touches on each department. To start, the intake assembly is finished, leaving just the testing for the rest of the week, as well just putting it onto the robot. Running into a problem, hang needed to spend some time making it shorter. Luckily, the designs for not only the team shirts, but also the banners have started, with the former almost being completed. On the programming side of things, the team is now able to test out every aspect of this game, from auton code, to teleop and shooter. Speaking of which, the shooter is in the middle of being fabricated, with some clean up required to get it ready to put on the robot. The broadside of the robot is completed, and the legs of the drawer system are also being fabricated. With the legs of the system being worked on, the electrical team is also almost done, finalizing placement for everything. Finally, the bumpers are able to essentially finish the blue bumpers, and the driver station is now around 95% done, leaving just the placement for the controllers.

The team this week was able to get even more done, even being close to finishing with a few projects. The driver station is finalizing their designs in CAD, all the while programming is able to have their first auton test, alongside shooter and intake tests. The hang mechanism is about ready to get mounted on, while the drawer concept is starting to come out of planning. New designs for the team's shirts are being thought of, and will soon be shipped to print. Expect a fresh design for this seasons apparel! Our award nominations are starting up, and we will soon be having people ready for each. E-board is also getting their new members soon, causing more people to have to be in a bigger role than normal. 

The week has been really productive for the team, with many stations getting a bunch of progress done again. Bumpers were able to finish sewing some of the fabric, as well as both auton and intake code is nearly completed. Intake tested their prototype, and are working to finalizing designs. Hang has drilled all the holes needed to start finalizing the build as well. Driver station was able to get about 87% done. Hang alongside many other stations are now in their fabrication phase, leaving a very little amount of things still needing to be made in CAD. 

This week, the team continues to push through to make even more major progress on the big projects and necessities. So far, we have made started on the autonomous, shooter, and intake codes, and are starting to get those tested once they become ready. Mechanical was able to finish up once they had bolted in the batter, and hand off the robot to electrical, who has been teaching more people how to work with wiring, made mock-ups, and are almost done finding where pieces will end up going on our drawer. Bumpers is reaching its final stages, with numbers being painted on, and the blue cover being almost completely finished. CAD as well has been able to make major steps in their process, having each piece made separately, and is now looking at combining everything. Speaking of CAD, the intake assembly in CAD was also able to get finished, allowing us to move on to looking at what we still need to get to build the intake. Hang was also able to make a cardboard prototype, as well as being able to make a working 1st prototype of a hang concept. Driver station was able to get to about 80% done, business is stating back up again, and we were able to 3D print some of the prototypes that were mentioned before. 

The team has now started constructing and coding parts of the robot! We have made lots of progress since starting and everything is going well! So far, we have been able to paint the numbers on the bumpers, practice as the human player outside, made progress on coding the shooter, and major progress with CAD, as prototypes for pieces done with CAD are being finished up and ready to use. To finish, we were able to get about 75% done with our new driver station, as well as getting multiple lights working for the cannons! 

The team goes to various elementary schools to give early exposure to smaller pirates on VEX, amd robotics in general. The team was able to go to Parkside, Stoneman, Foothill, and Willow Cove elementary schools. We are really grateful to show what people can do when in STEM, and are striving to get even more people into the program to better the world!

The team is able to start designing parts of the robot, and had a discussion as to what exactly we should be focusing on during matches. We were able to make progress in projects such as parts of the field to use as practice, including the microphone and amp station. We were even able to make simple prototypes of pieces needed for the robot, such as the chassis. Even with it being just a short while after the start of kickoff, the team was able to make a lot of progress in a short time.

The new season this time is Crescendo! Kickoff commenced on the 6th of January, 2024, a day earlier than last year. Kickoff is saved for the team planning what the robot is supposed to do in the game, without us ever into how we will for the time being, as we are still very early in development. Luckily, the majority of the class was able to make it for this important day for us, full of making decisions that will set the course we will be taking for the season. If you would like to get information on this years game, you can go to the game manual, which is linked here:

--->Game manual<---

The team is able to get a last push in before kickoff starts. We mainly focused on making sure the shop was clean and ready for kickoff, as well as getting any last remaining tasks either finished, or put to a stopping point for the time being. Some of those tasks were getting the 2 speed chassis troubleshooted, as well as the new driving station getting its last new adjustments.

The team was able to get a new Ultimaker for free from connections that we had with people at MakerFaire. Joe, from 3DPrinty, was the one who had gave us the printer after being exposed to our team at MakerFaire. We would like to thank Joe for the fantastic gift, and willingness to help out with the team.

Here is the link to his YouTube channel:

--->Youtube<---

Even during Thanksgiving break, some team members are still determined to get working on their respective projects. For today, the team focused on getting the shop ready for good work flow, alongside coding the 2 speed-chassis, and getting in our orders for FIRST choice. 

The team continues to work on their respective projects in their groups. The grant writers finish up several grants due at the end of November. CAD continues to finish up the name tags with job tags for every group. Origination made major progress with labels and general cleaning, while mechanical research got 5 intakes researched. Driver station has worked on the prototype, and have used polycarb to give it more durability. Programming is hoping to turn on limelight again, and have the members fully understand what they are programming.

After car parade, CAD began creating a drive station that looks like a treasure chest. Programming was busy with rookie training, getting encoders to work, and working with limelight, while others did even more. To be specific, shop organization was able too reorganize and clean, but the big one was the fundraising team getting us a grant from Intuitive Foundation for $1000! The driver station crew finished the CAD model, and made a prototype of the new driver station. 

On Friday, the entire school left early to go to a car parade for clubs, the robotics crew alongside the coding club teamed to for a float based on the 1999 classic The Matrix. Alongside having our decorated car, we got to drive our robot during the parade!

On Wednesday, the school was having our juniors do the PSAT test and seniors learned how make bank account, however, anyone else who wanted to come to school despite not being mandatory went to the robotics room to continue working on our off-season projects.

Different from the Maker Faire trip with all the CTE (Career technical education) classes, the Maker Faire outreach event was where a small team of our robotics students showed the people of Maker Faire a taste of what it is like to work in FRC, and our personal experiences from the previous competitions. The team was even able to be a part of the parade that they had towards the end of the day, the video for which is to the left of this text, give it a watch!

Students from some CTE (Career Technical Education) classes take a great excursion with some members of the crew to Maker Faire 2023 in Mare Island. We were all able to experience a vast variety of activities from the greatly inventive creators in the S.T.E.M. program. The trip was a nice way for all of us of the fellowship of science and technology to have a hearty and wellful time.

 This is the website for the event that we went to: https://makerfaire.com/bay-area/

The team's final voyage for the season was to the shores of Woodside High School. The team finished with a rank of 40, but, we ended up winning the Imagery award! We were also able to get a bunch of our rookie mateys to get experience with the robot, and competition in general.

During this Saturday, the team was able to get the robot working and start the drive training. A lot of progress was made today, and we can't wait until the competition starts!

 On Saturdays, if members aren't busy, they can come to the workshop and have more time to finish any ongoing projects. This was our first shop Saturday this year, and we managed to finish up a few projects today.

It's Club Rush here at Pittsburg high! Us and many other clubs flood the quad to recruit as many new people as we can for their respective clubs. We Interested at least 10 people as of the afternoon of the same day. We are hoping they all joined.  We brought out our current robot, a VEX robot, our drive station, and as well as many other objects and trinkets to help visually explain what we do in our class.  

With our crew of 38 members, 16 being new coming rookies, we prepare the ship for our voyage to Cal Games in the seas of Woodside High School. We have divided the crew into groups along the deck, allowing for training and preparation for the upcoming season. Some of the groups include: CAD (digital aided design), electrical, tool training, intro to programming, pit setup, outreach, and business. 

After our voyages to the great shores of San Francisco, CA and Nampa, ID, the team has been hard at work to further improve our craft and crew. We are accomplishing this by reorganizing our workshop for a better workflow. Our programmers have been working on encoders for our current robot and switching our robot from time based to command based system. The business departments worked hard on a new sponsorship packet and building our bountiful website. We are also training and prepping the current team for our new hearties next year!

The teams out-of-state travels to the beautiful state of Idaho, also known as "The Gem State" for its rich source of gems. We had a handful of special gems of moments ourselves during the week, including traveling by car there and back, exploring animal sanctuaries and a museums of the highest degree. During our actual competitions, we had an amazing time, being able to talk, work with, and compete with teams from seas close and far. It was amazing seeing the diversity of teams, and the different insights they could all give us. 

Our very first official competition has commenced for our 2023 season! Our team has been waiting for this time and so have our team rookies, who are officially veterans of the team! Although we did not win a physical prize, we won the satisfaction of achieving our set goals during kickoff. Our robot proved to be worthy and durable, causing easy and less stressful maintenance between matches. 

Week 10 is all about preparing for the San Francisco regional. We are working on getting our robot done in time for the competition. We are also working on buttons so we can have a small gift to give to other teams that we meet at competitions. So far, our robot is almost completely finished and our team is inspecting it to see if it matches up to the tournament standards. Other than that, our team is very successful and all our departments have been working efficiently to make it to the deadline.

In week 9 we can see are robot starting to look complete.  This week we have almost finished working on our bumpers, and thanks to our team pulling many extra hours this week, we have finished one bumper so far. Also, our team finally managed to get our robot's systems up and running so that it is able to drive and do other things.  We even installed a camera so our drivers can see better on the arena! 

Here in week 8, we've started to finish up the manufacturing of our very own bumpers. These bumpers will most definitely look awesome! We've also set up our key electronics and wires to enable our robot to do the things we really need to do.  

Entering week 7, we have finished creating the basic structure for our bumpers and began sewing our red and blue tarp that'll go over our bumper to make us look nice and good. We have also finished the platform and structures for our robot's most important components. 

As we enter week 6, our programing is really coming along as the programmers of our FRC team have really been putting the burners on. We've also planned out how our robot will function as to grab the game pieces and how we'll drive. 

As we enter week 5, we start to really see our robot come along. Our chassis is now made and we can really start building our key parts and components that will give us that pirate boost we really need! 

We organized inventory and we also decided on what our robot should look like. Our team is also coming up with new designs, working on the chassis and programming, as well as working on building a new practice area for our robot. We decided that the robot is going to be a small, rectangular robot that would be kind of long. We also decided on our strategies and mechanisms, which is going to be classified until competition season begins. Finally, the entire school is going into an open house for 8th graders, which should help promote our team and bring in a wave of new rookies.

We renovated our classroom with royal tables and comfy office chairs! Compared to our old chairs, these new ones are a major improvement. Our tables are also much bigger, have built-in outlets to plug our laptops into! For some reason, some of our tables are also trapezoid shaped.

One of our lead grant writers, Luna Zarco, won the BWC Agricultural Idea design contest! Her idea for the contest was a system that would automatically check for diseased/dead plants so farmers wouldn't have to check the plants manually. Since she and another student won, Pittsburg High School as well as Ygnacio Valley High School has received $1,000 each, while Luna and the other student will receive $250 dollars each.

You can also view the timer as well as the event plan on these links!

https://cafirst.org/frc/sanfrancisco/

https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2023casf

We received a holiday letter from Team 3134, the "Accelerators and Regulators". We also got much more accomplished today. We made more team decisions this week that heavily influenced how our robot is built as well. Our team also built a model charging station in order to help our drive team practice and help determine our robot's strategy when the tournaments start.

In order to be able to dock, we have began to build a half charging station to help us envision the aspects of our robot as we are still planning. It is also to help our team learn how to balance on the charge station when we are training our drive team. Along with this, we have decided for our team to use the old "bag day" in order to have plenty of time to modify anything we'd need to change. Our goals are to create CAD models of different parts of the robot to start "prototyping" the functions of these. 

As the first week opened our way to build season, we discussed options for our chassis and what our robot should focus on. We have decided to be able to dock every match and be able to score at the top nodes. Likewise, we had to create new departments—which has really gotten us busy! This has resulted in major progressions including designs/mechanisms to collecting game pieces. 

As kickoff got announced, and all of our guesses and nerves were to be let go, we got introduced to this year's game! The team had a huge discussion, moments of brainstorming, and more time to plan out for our new year. We looked through the game manual, rules, arena, and important parts that contribute to the game. Due to kickoff being on a Saturday, not all of us were present. We had begun making designs and decisions on ways to make the most points. 

This year's season is Charged Up. Kickoff for the season commences January 7, 2023. During the kickoff, our team will come over to the workshop and get ready to discuss, brainstorm, design, and create a robot following the game explained for the season. You can join the nerve-wrecking excitement at

http://www.twitch.tv/firstinspires! 

Our branding team has been doing a lot of work in the offseason! They've been writing grants, updating this website, and contributing to the team's image. Branding's most important purpose is to raise money for the team. A robotics can't thrive if there's no money to buy materials!

After off-season games, our robotics team has been very busy. Our programming group has been learning Java and vision processing, our branding group has been making themed accessories using 3d printing and they've also been doing grant writing, our mechanical group has been designing and prototyping different mechanisms such as floor ball intakes, our shop group has been  inventorying our parts and pieces and recording which materials we need more of, and our scouting group has been researching how other teams are organized and how they design their robots.

"As a rookie working in the Branding department, I've been tasked with maintaining the website! However, I also have to help the team write grants to obtain money to fund our robotics team, so I'm double-tasking. For me, robotics is really cool and it could help me get a job in the STEM field!" -Adriel 

"For me, joining Robotics allowed me to learn what could help me in the future. I learned computer-aided design, or CAD, to learn general design and improve my productivity." - Antoine

During the offseason games, CalGames 2022 was held in Pittsburg High School for the first time ever, and we won the judges award! In the Capitol City Classic, held in Sacramento, we won the competition as well and got the award. In CCC, our team was chosen because an alliance saw our robot's defensive capabilities and decided to choose our team.

Alliances race to score as much cargo as they can into the middle port, and then climb rungs to earn points for their team.

Our Team's Competitions This Year: https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/5430/2022 

This year since we don't have access to Inventor (since we are not on site), we had to make a few changes one being the change to OnShape the learning curve was different with rookies compared to some veterans since it was similar but different but the rookies had to learn it in general.