WIRED FTC 5035

Who We Are

Welcome to our team page. WIRED is a home based First Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team of five students, located in the St. Louis, Missouri area. We would like to share our team’s biography to help you understand who WIRED is. We started an FLL team thirteen years ago and added an FTC team six years ago. Our coach is a homeschooling mom with no training in engineering or mechanics. When our team started, our coach had to learn right along with us. It wasn’t long before we knew more than our coach and that’s the way it should be.

WIRED is not affiliated with any schools which means the funding comes from our parents or local businesses that we gain as sponsors. Because of this, WIRED has a tight budget. This requires us to use all our materials wisely. We use cardboard in the place of metal when prototyping in order to save resources.

Meetings are in our coach's basement. Her family built a wall to separate the basement into two sections. This allowed us to have separate FLL & FTC meetings on the same night. The FTC portion of the team has a space 20' x 12' which may sound big, but when you insert a 12' x 12' foot field, it isn’t. WIRED’s selection of tools is limited as well. We have a dremel, hacksaw, jigsaw, sawzall, drill, glue gun and heat gun at our disposal to build a winning robot. To understand our position, you need to know that most teams have a school machine shop.

It is a challenge to find students because FTC isn’t as developed in our area. The expense is also a deterrent. In a normal year each family pays approximately $350 for supplies along with travel costs ranging from $400 - $2,000. Being on an FTC team is a huge time commitment as well. Our season starts in August and ends somewhere from February to April, depending how well we do. A typical week is a 3 hour meeting during the week and 3 – 5 hours on the weekend, beginning in late August. WIRED has mentored FLL teams for three years, given numerous public demonstrations, and attended many events as volunteers.

During the summer, WIRED organizes and runs FLL Summer Camps to share the FIRST programs with younger kids and raise money for our team. It is an inexpensive camp compared to those offered in the area, this way more kids can afford to attend. Camp has been a huge success and by the end of camp there were families who wanted to start their own FLL team or join existing teams. One year WIRED didn't have an FLL team, since coach’s kids had aged out, so an FTC member came up with the idea to sponsor an FLL team. We chose a family close to coach's home to sponsor by loaning NXT sets and Legos as well as having FTC kids mentor them. This makes starting a team much more affordable and was a great experience for WIRED.

This is WIRED FTC’s 6th year, winning eight awards; the Inspire Award, Winning Alliance 5 times, Connect Award, and Judges Award. We have developed bonds with other teams, judges and referees and learned many skill we can use the rest of our lives.