Granite City GearHeads

09/12/2021

Some of the best pictures from 2020 and 2021.
We still need a new Coach and/or a new home. Please consider whether you or someone you know could be the one to save this team!

09/11/2021

Here are some of the best pictures from 2010-2019. I already had them sorted for a "10 years" video. I will have to sort through 2020 and 2021 to select the best from those 2 years. That will happen in a few days. I hope that you like these, and for those who were on the team during those years, that the pictures will bring back pleasant memories!

09/11/2021

From the Blog: Save Our Team! -

This is a difficult post to write. I hope that you will forgive my writing in “first-person” instead of the traditional journalistic “third person” that I usually strive for, in light of the subject of this post.

The Granite City Gearheads need your help right now or we will cease to be as a team. I believe that St. Cloud area students will lose something very valuable. It will leave this district as the only district in our area (with the exception of Royalton, which is much smaller) to not have an FRC team.

This is happening because the district has made the decision that all sports and activities must start by 4 pm. Our wonderful Coach, Corey Applegate, and all of our mentors, with the exception of myself, work in the community and therefore are unable to be at Apollo until 5:30. The district speaks of putting the team on hold, but that is essentially a death sentence. Once that has happened teams rarely if ever come back.

So we need a new Coach. The ideal person would be someone that will have the support of many excited team members with many of the following skills of engineering, business, critical thinking, and other life skills that can be mentored using robotics. If you know of someone with those skills who might be interested, please have them contact the school district. They could also look for the job posting on the district’s available positions pages. it’s job ID 5815, I don’t see a way to create a link to the individual job, but here is a link to the page. When I load it, the position is at the top of this page.https://www.isd742.org/Page/1052?internaltransferform.Url=&all=1

Another possible solution would be to find a new location. We are exploring a couple of alternatives, but so far we have not received a response to our inquiries. If you know of a location where they will allow us to meet after 5:30 please let us know!

Finally, if you want local students to be able to be a part of the original, largest, and (in my opinion) best robotics organization, and the only one in Minnesota where students can letter in Robotics, please talk to or email a school board member. I am convinced that if the district understood what they will be losing they would make greater efforts to keep this team alive.

As someone who has been a part of this organization for 10 years, first as a parent, then as a mentor, I have seen what this team can do for kids. I have seen students grow in skills and confidence. I have seen students find their direction. I have loved being a part of this team, and I retain a passion for FIRST. That will not change. I am a “lifer”. I am all in. I am beyond disappointed that something so valuable can be lost because of issues of meeting times and places. Please consider what you can do to prevent this loss for our district and students.

Here are a few of the pictures that I will retain from my time with the Gearheads. I am a bit of a “paparazzi” with the team, so I have literally thousands of pictures that I could share. However, Word Press only allows a few, so I had a hard time picking photos. I will try to add a few under “comments” on our Facebook post.

2013 10,000 Lakes winners!

With our alliance partners as finalists in 2018. This qualified us for Championships

All smiles at the 2018 Regional.

2020 “bag and tag” (not all members were present when the photo was taken)

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

08/19/2021

FLL Cargo Connect has begun!

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

08/10/2021

he Granite City Gearheads were a part of the Benton County Fair. We hosted a FIRST Showcase at the Fair and, in addition to our robot, we were fortunate enough to have Sauk Rapids-Rice Storm bring their robot to show how different two FRC robots can look in the same year. We had a lot of fun showing off our robot, and the crowds seemed impressed.
We also were joined by FTC teams the Iron Gears team 9972, The CyberHawks team 14188, Spontaneous Construction team 14779, and Cat in the Hat Comes Back team 10273.
Additionally, Ryan Hedlund from the Northwest Metro shared his EV3's with us so interested adults and children (especially the kids) were able to try their hand at driving them.
We would love to see some additional team members join the Gearheads because of our work at the Fair. We would also love to see some FTC teams formed or additional LEGO League teams formed. If you saw the robots and are interested in starting your own team, you can email us for more information at [email protected].

07/05/2021

From the Blog: Hot Fun In The Summertime! -

The Float in staging, before the parade

Today the Gearheads participated in our second parade for this year. It’s always fun to hear all the excited comments about Candybot. This year we premiered our upgraded Candybot with a new control board to make it easier to drive. We also had our flagbot in the parade and on the float an FLL Robot. FLL stands for FIRST LEGO League and is the FIRST program for middle schoolers. It uses LEGO parts to introduce engineering in a fun way. (As I always say, “who doesn’t love LEGOs?)

If you look at the red platform you can see the FLL Robot

In other news, we will again be a part of the FIRST Robotics Showcase at the Benton County Fair. If you come, we are in the Discovery Building. The showcase will feature robots from FIRST LEGO League (FLL), FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). We hope to have some demo matches in our FTC area, FLL Robots (EV3’s) for visitors to drive, and FRC demos and possibly to drive. We have teams coming from around the state to share the love of all things FIRST. Come see us and say ‘Hi”!

Finally, we would like to show off the robot we built this year. It was a slow process with all the Covid restrictions, but we think that we built a great robot. We would also like to thank our Platinum Sponsors who shouldered the biggest part of the financial load for this year. They are Boston Scientific, Grede Foundries, and Pellco Machine, Inc. Here is a link to the video.

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

06/07/2021

From the Blog: Summer Plans -

Now that school is out for the summer, the Gearheads are making plans for our summer.

We will be participating in the Granite City Days Parade on June 26th. We plan to bring the ever-popular Candybot, with some new updates! We also plan to be in the St. Joseph parade on the 4th of July. If you plan on attending either parade, be watching for us!

This is a picture of Candybot from 2018, along with the robot from Albany (team 4226)

Additionally, we are working on plans to have a FIRST Showcase at the Benton County Fair. Which happens on Aug. 3-8. We are still making plans, but we hope to have representatives from FRC, FTC, and FLL programs, including robots.

Visitors driving FLL robots on FTC field

If you are a mentor or student on a FIRST team and would like to be a part of the Showcase, please contact us at: [email protected]

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

06/04/2021

We have just discovered that we have been the victim of a redirect hack for our website on some devices. We are working on it. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

04/18/2021

From the Blog: Signs of Life in the FRC -

As Spring brings new signs of life after a long winter, so it is with Robotics. It’s been a long journey through Covid-19, and while it’s not over yet, there are signs of life returning to “normal”. It may be a ‘new normal’ but it’s a start.

This weekend, the first in-person FRC competition in the US happened in our own state. Bemidji hosted the Northern Minnesota Robotics Conference Championship. The event was mostly for teams in their conference, but fellow Central Minnesota Robotics Hub team, 4607 CIS from Becker was there and made it to the elimination rounds, and nearby team 4480 UC Botics from Upsala made it to the finals. They nearly won, taking it to 3 matches and losing by the slimmest of margins, by a “hang”. Congratulations UC Botics! Hopefully, there will be more competitions to follow. We all have the “itch” for a chance to get back onto the field.

The team from Upsala

If you would like to see the competition it can be viewed on Twitch TV. Here is a link to the event:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/990827946?t=01h53m25s

Meanwhile back in Gearheads land, we would like to thank our Sponsor Grede Foundries for a second donation. We really appreciate your generosity with us! We couldn’t do it without your help!

We are in the process of finishing the almost total rebuild of our robot. The turret is done and we are working on getting the fuel from the intake into the turret. As soon as that is done we will release a robot reveal video and post a link here.

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

03/01/2021

From the Blog: Turret Prototype and NASA STEM -

This week we tested out the prototype for our turret. We were able to feed a game piece through the prototype of the mechanism when powered by a drill. The next step is to make the hood movable and motorize it.

In other news, many of us have been watching the videos of the rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. It’s all pretty exciting and is the first step in seeing if people can someday live on Mars with special shelters. NASA is looking to the next generation of students to be the future scientists, engineers, and explorers to “Dare Mighty Things”. One way that they are doing this is to have links to STEM materials on their website. This includes pages for students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. If you would like to check this out, here is a link to the page. Scroll down just a bit because its not at the very top of the page. https://www.nasa.gov/stem

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244

02/15/2021

From the Blog: It’s Alive! -

The Gearheads have been meeting twice a week since Kick-Off. We have torn the robot apart and are working on upgrading the intake with the goal of adding a turret.

Braydon working on the turret

CAD drawing of a possible turret

We also got the robot running. Aiden has written new programming, and it seems to be working. Since he wrote the program Aiden had the first chance to drive the robot. Next came Braydon. We seem to have two good drivers ready to go! We still need to layout the obstacle course, but that should happen soon.

We would also like to thank returning sponsor Grede Foundries. They have been a Gearheads sponsor since 2013. We really appreciate their faithful support.

St. Cloud Robotics Team 3244