The 1st FIRST Community

In honour of the 10th anniversary of FIRST Robotics Canada, Team 1334 hosted a ceremony on December 20, 2010 to recognize the accomplishments of FIRST participants as well as the community service provided by all FIRST teams in the town of Oakville. All FRC, FLL and Jr. FLL teams in Oakville were invited and well over one- hundred people were in attendance for the event, including His Worship Rob Burton Mayor of Oakville, Mr. Kevin Flynn (MPP for Oakville), Mr. Terence Young (MP for Oakville), and Mr. Mark Breadner (Executive Director for FIRST Robotics Canada).

At the event, His Worship Rob Burton presented the FIRST community with a proclamation recognizing and honouring "... the tremendous accomplishments of our many FIRST participants in Oakville for encouraging our youth to become science and technology leaders...". In recognition of the community service provide by FIRST participants in Oakville, Charles Woods (Teacher Mentor of Team 1334) and Cory Sulpizi (Student Captain of Team 1334) unveiled a sign to be displayed announcing Oakville as "The 1st FIRST Community".

All FIRST teams in Oakville then joined together to recognize two private sponsors as Flagship Sponsors in Oakville - Hatch and Ford Motor Company of Canada. We also recognized twenty-one past and present members of the Oakville FIRST community by naming them “FIRST Robotics Heroes” for their outstanding contributions to FIRST, as well as to the broader community.

Team 1334 OTHS Robotics has also received a Letter of Recognition from the Regional Municipality of Halton on behalf of all FIRST participants in Halton and has requested similar recognition from Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada. Team 1334 OTHS Robotics will be issuing a challenge to all FRC teams world-wide to have their communities named "A FIRST Community".

Ontario Science Center: Robots Rule Weekend

On the 21st of November OTHS Red Devils were at the Ontario Science Center to demo our robot to hundreds of children and adults. With us were two other FIRST Robotics teams who we worked with to show the audience what FIRST Robotics is all about. We had children of both genders that were very intrigued by the robots and got to see them up close. We answered numerous questions and we received a lot of interest from everyone that attended. This event turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for us to spread the message of engineering and technology and we hope to do it again in the future.

Oakville Santa Claus Parade

On November 20, team 1334 took part in the annual Oakville Santa Claus Parade. It was the first year that the team participated in the parade and it was a perfect, blue sky, mild temperature day; we couldn't have asked for a better one! Some team members walked alongside the float entertaining the crowd by spelling “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays!” with letters worn on their fronts and backs and handing out candy. But it was the float that stole the show. The theme this year was movies and of course, famous robots from the big screens made a guest appearance on our float including Optimus Prime, Wall-E, and C-3PO. But the real show stopper was a life-size model of R2D2 made by our very own build team. The team worked long and hard to make sure everything was finished and ready on time, and in the end it was worth all the effort to see the looks of pure joy and enchantment on the faces of the children in the audience. It was priceless!

UPDATE: We tied with White Oaks Secondary School for the Best School Float Award!

FLL Practice Tournament a Great Success!

On November 13, team 1334 hosted a FIRST Lego League practice tournament at Oakville Trafalgar High School for 5 FLL teams that will competing in regional FLL tournaments over the next few weeks. Local teams and the Pretty River Predators from Collingwood joined us to perfect their missions and hone their presentation skills with thoughtful and supportive judging from our team members and mentors. Mrs. Peggy Scott joined us as head referee for the matches, and we concluded our day with a presentation from the Professional Engineers for Oakville which introduced the use of robots in biomedical engineering and a demonstration of the 1334 robots. Congratulations to all the FLL teams that participated for your hard work, and good luck at the FLL regionals!

Halloween 4 Hunger

Oakville Trafalgar High School’s Red Devil Robotics team organized a contest with the rest of OT to collect as much food as they could as a donation for the Fareshare food bank. In order to increase donations this year, every classroom at OTHS was encouraged to collect food and the class with the most food won a prize. The contest, Halloween for Hunger, has filled an entire trailer of food from top to bottom including canned foods, dry pasta and other non-perishable items to help the food bank.

Canadian National Exhibition Demo

On August 31st Team 1334 displayed our robot at the FIRST demonstration at the CNE along with nine other FRC teams and two FLL teams from Ontario. This year, we were indoors in the Direct Energy building and had a partial Breakaway field set up to simulate a competition. Many people came to our booth with questions about our robot construction, team events, and funding. Our robot performed superbly in front of thousands of observers all day, and we generated a lot of interest in our team and in FIRST.

November News

The Oakville Trafalgar High School Robotics team has been all over the region, volunteering and taking their time to help other people. Some of the things that we have done is to celebrate the FIRST Canada 10th Anniversary Robotics Symposium at St. MildredÂ’s Lightbourne School on October 16th, where Robotics Team 1334 member, Eric Atkinson, presented a seminar on controlling omni-directional robots. Also, the Robotics team is hosting a practice tournament for FLL (FIRST Lego League) on November 17th, helping children discover the world of Lego robotics. The Oakville Christmas Parade is coming up soon! The Robotics team is hard at work on our float, making R2-D2 to centerpiece our display of robots from the silver screen. Come check us out on November 20th! Also, come see our presentation at the Ontario Science Center on November 21st, during Robots Rule weekend and watch our robot in action. Go devils go!

Midnight Madness

July 16 was a gorgeous summer evening, and over 30,000 people enjoyed the tastes, sounds and demonstrations featured in downtown Oakville during the Midnight Madness celebration. Team 1334 was joined this year by team 3161 (our spawn team from Holy Trinity) and team 771 from St. Mildred's- Lightbourn School to help promote robotics in our community. This year we were located in front of Circus Chocolates on Thomas Street, and we had lots of room to run all three robots and demonstrate our prowess at this year's soccer like game "Breakaway". Crowds enjoyed watching the robots block eachother and kick soccer balls, and the younger kids explored the NXT Lego robots which were programmed to perform tasks on our FIRST Lego League tables set up to feature last year's FLL competition challenge. We answered lots of questions, introduced many people to the FIRST program and enjoyed seeing many of our current sponsors and friends again at this fabulous event! If you missed Midnight Madness, you can join us for our next presentation at the CNE on August 31 which will feature several FIRST teams playing matches of soccer! Hope to see you there.

Ford Test Drive Event

Thank you one and all for participating in our fund raiser on June 12! It was a fabulous community event which featured Oak-Land Ford and Kennedy Ford providing ten new vehicles for our guests to test drive. A barbecue, bouncy castle, face painting, music, and drive simulator added to the all day festivities at Oakville Trafalgar High School. 

Team 1334 robots were on display, and hundreds of kids and adults had a chance to drive our robots from the 2009 and 2010 seasons and test our Lego robot creations with the help of our team members and the students they mentor on our affiliated FLL teams. 

We are incredibly appreciative of the support from our sponsors for this event which included Ford who donated funds to our team for each test drive, Circus Chocolates and Black Forrest Pastry Shop for the scrumcious desserts which were donated to our barbecue, Dietrich's Meats which donated hot dogs and hamburgers, buns donated by Cobs Bread, and Sobey's and Fortino's markets which each donated beverages. Special thanks to Drivewise for the drive simulator and Airbounce for providing the bouncy castle.

Devils Went Down to Georgia

Team 1334 has returned from a successful and inspiring trip to Atlanta to participate in the 2010 FIRST World Championships. Over 350 FRC teams competed from April 15-17 at the Georgia Dome, and it was fabulous to work with the best FIRST teams on the planet. We attended seminars which delved deeply into the details of design, strategy, team building and specific mechanical areas of interest, and is was truly amazing to see the vast array of other robots displayed in the pits and on the four playing fields. Working with members of other teams and the many important professionals who attended this event made this a unique learning experience which further heightened our enthusiasm for robotics, science and technology.

Many thanks to all the sponsors, mentors and parents who made this exceptional experience possible!

Devils Win Engineering Inspiration at the GT Regional

Team 1334 was honoured to receive the FIRST Engineering Inspiration Award on April 3rd at the Greater Toronto Area Regional for our exceptional work in spreading interest in the field of science and technology to our school and community. The winner of this award earns a spot in the World Championships in Atlanta, Georgia, and we will be competing with some of the best FIRST FRC teams from around the globe on April 15-17, 2010. We are busy finalizing travel plans and finishing technical details, and we look forward to this great experience for our second season in a row! Thanks to the hard work of our mechanical and drive teams, our robot competed successfully in the Greater Toronto Regional. We advanced through the ranks of fifty two teams in the qualifying rounds to be appointed one of eight alliance captains and chose our partners for participation in the final rounds. 

Thanks to all the support from our sponsors, parents and mentors, and congratulations to all other FIRST FRC teams for their success this season.

Team 1334 at the 2010 Waterloo Regional

Team 1334 was honoured with the Gracious Professionalism Award for strong execution of the ideals of FIRST through our outreach work and team spirit at the Waterloo Regional where we competed this past Thursday through Saturday. In addition, one of our team members, Evelyn Wainewright, was honoured with the Dean's List Finalist Award. This is a new award that is given to only two outstanding students competing at each Regional.

The competition field was fierce, and unfortunately, due to intermittent robot problems throughout the tournament, we did not progress into the elimination rounds this time. We were able to fix several issues in between matches and measures are being taken to ensure that we are fully operational for the Greater Toronto Regional next week.

The FRC team we helped to start this year, the Tronic Titans aka “The Devil Spawn”, from Holy Trinity Catholic School (team 3161), did exceptionally well. They qualified as an alliance captain and formed a strong alliance with 610 and 1535. They were also honoured with the Rookie All-Star Award that earned them a place at the World Championships in Atlanta, Georgia!

Our next competition is at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga on April 1st through 3rd (9-4) where we aim to win a spot in Atlanta. We hope you can come out to cheer us on!

2010 Build Season

Efforts are underway to complete the robot with plenty of time for programming and testing, luxuries previously unknown in our team's (or for that matter most team's) histories. Students are working through the exam break, immediately after having finished off the gruelling end to semester one. The team has set up a system for the ordering and implementation of parts, and is starting to put turn the plans and ideas of last week into reality. Decisions on wheels and gearboxes have been made, and the team is also constructing a practice game field to work out strategy and later practice driving the robot. Work is really expected to kick into an even higher gear next week, as students come to start semester two refreshed and ready to take on any robotics challenges that face them.

While the techies are working on the robot, the publicity group is working with the Oakville Chapter of the Professional Engineers of Ontario in preparation to host their annual National Engineering Week event on Saturday, February 27. A fantastic, all-day event is planned focusing on the theme of renewable energy. Speakers from Engineers without Borders will be featured, along with a competition to build a wind turbine. Students from all local high schools will be in attendance.

2010 Kickoff: Breakaway!

January 9th was the FIRST 2010 kickoff, and we are intensely brainstorming to decide on a design for our robot, developing strategies to play our new game-Breakaway- and building components of the practice field. We are at OTHS working just about every afternoon and evening during build season, and we have some very exciting ideas about how this year's robot will function. Ship date for the robot is February 23, so we have six weeks to perfect our machine!