I am volunteering again to help with a FIRST Robotics team.
This time I’m volunteering as a mentor for American Christian School. This is the same school I teach technology to K through 6th grades once a week. The robotics team is for the high school students and is located at another school building.
Important: I hope to update this blog post as more information becomes available.
First Year Challenges
Because this is the first year for this team, it’s a challenge to figure out where to start and how to plan steps.
Because it’s been difficult to figure out the steps and plan a path, I decided to record some of the steps here so hopefully it will help other people who are new to this program like our team is.
I’ll cover some of the following points in sections below:
- Understanding how the program works
- Reading about the FIRST robotics challenge
- Steps to assembling the Robot and getting it working
- Links to information about how our team is doing
This page has information giving an oveview of the program.
- Basically a team needs to be formed: application needs to be filed, coach(es), Mentor(s) and students need to be identified and registered.
- Then, on a “reveal” day in January, the challenge for the year is unveiled via online video.
- The teams then start work on assembling the robot (mechanical, electronics, software), adding any customizations, practicing and making adjustments.
- Then, in March the competitions occur.
2. Reading about the FIRST robotics challenge
Use the link above to explore information about the costs, video animations of the challenge, schedule and more.
- Scroll way down to expand the "kickoff kit" on the following page. These documents are helpful and important to check that all the parts the team should have are all received. https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/kit-of-parts
- Virtual Kit - Lists various parts that can be ordered along with credits/vouchers and a file with a checklist if the vouchers are exercised by the team
- Kickoff Kit
- Season specific Box Checklists
- Black Tote Checklist
- Drive base checklist
- Grey tote checklist
- Kit bot
- link to https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/kitbot
- link to the kickoff info: https://www.firstinspires.org/programs/frc/game-and-season#kickoff
- There are also links to Drive base optout and Black tote optout
- There is a link to Missing or damaged kickoff kit items
- First Choice
- Link to Andymark for optional parts available to teams to use their credits given to all teams
- The following page mentions the items that need to be purchased that ARE NOT in the kit. This following page also links to an updated list of tools needed and suggested. Important note: this following page also stresses the suggestion to buy a 3D printer for future competitions. https://community.firstinspires.org/2025-kitbot-shopping-list-for-2026
- This page seems to be a starting point https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/season-materials?view=calendar and links to the following pages
- Kit of Parts https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/kit-of-parts - has links to the following
- Additional game specific assets
- Kit of Parts: https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/kit-of-parts
- Virtual kit
- Kickoff kit - this has the Parts lists for the boxes in the kit and links to the following too
- This page https://www.firstinspires.org/resources/library/frc/kitbot explains the parts of the mechanical and electrical build and has software information. It links to the following among others:
- This document has links to the various assemblies and focuses on the 2026 mechanism for collecting and tossing “FUEL” (actually FUEL is a ball made of plastic). https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.net/frc2026/KitBot/2026-kitbot-build-instructions.pdf
- Page with "CAD, Drawings and software" (see box with this label on the kitbot page above)
- “Additional Resources”
- This page has a link to the manu for the robot base unit list of parts and assumbly instructions: https://s3.amazonaws.com/docusync-files/ba4541200a971b9831639ab2d15fd7976e32a7bc67ccb858a5261d40d9ac33e3/am-14U6%20UserGuide%20Jan%2010%202026.pdf
- Playing field details
- Kitbot details
- Team updates
- Q&A system
- Translations
3. Steps to assembling the Robot and getting it working
Our team had a difficult time figuring out how to find the steps to get started. It may exist, but we were not able to easily find a roadmap that is already laid out to provide the steps. Here’s some rough ones that we found. I might update this as we find more information.
- Check to make sure all parts were received (compare the physical parts to the parts lists)
- Decide teams to form
- Mechanical building
- Electronics
- Software Programming
- Plan meetings to do build
- Find materials that need to be ordered and order them
- Start building with various teams. The following items could be worked on in parallel or series depending on team menbers
- Kitbot base
- Kitbot season specific mechanics
- Kitbot electronics
- Kitbot software loading and programming
- Ordering additional parts needed
- Using team points to order from Andymark
- Using the vouchers to order from the various suppliers
