Metal Makers Week 2025

Starting on Monday, campers worked in teams of two to learn the basics of programming each individual component of their robots: the LEDs on the robot controller, the motors, the servos, a distance sensor, and a line following sensor. After working through the example code, we created mini challenges for campers to work through to test how well they comprehended the code. These were small challenges like making the LED lights blink hello in Morse code and switching the distance sensor from centimeters to inches. After the basics were completed, campers started to build their bases of their robots.

Picking up where they left off on Monday, campers worked to finish building their robots on Tuesday. Wednesday was when all the robots came to life! Campers then worked on making their robots drive forwards, backwards, making circles, and making squares before adding complexity by starting to work with the sensors. By adding the sensors, they were able to stop on a line, follow a line, and detect walls and objects.

Using everything from earlier in the week, campers started to work on the big challenge Thursday and Friday. The big challenge was to place a ball in each of the four buckets lined against a wall. Campers had to design and build a way to manipulate the ball that would attach to their servos and also program their robot to come back to the starting point after each bucket to get the next ball. Each group came up with a slightly different way to complete this challenge and all their programs were unique.

Thank you to Little Debbie for sponsoring our event and providing snacks for our campers! Thank you FTC Team 7209 Tech Hog Robotics and FTC Team 8373 Diva Force for volunteering and working with our campers!