Building Something During Offseason? Check out the Hack Club Arcade!
June 21, 2024
Hear from Rhys (age 17, he/him), programmer for FIRST® Tech Challenge Team 23302 “Coconut What,” and FIRST® LEGO® League Explore team coach of “The Clever Fishers,” and Saran (age 18, she/her), business and outreach for FIRST® Robotics Competition Team 10021 “Guerin Catholic Golden Gears.”
Hello, FIRST® friends! This past summer was pretty epic and now that we’ve caught our breath, we wanted to share an update.
FIRST things first! The knowledge and lessons we’ve learned being a part of FIRST were front and center (stage) for us this summer when we had the chance to work behind the scenes on Arcade, a summer project of FIRST friend Hack Club, along with GitHub and Adafruit, that became the world's largest online coding event for high school students in 2024!
How large do you ask? Let us share a few details:
- 19,500 teenagers in 119 countries, including hundreds of FIRST community members like us!
- A whopping 134,000 hours of coding to build 2,027 projects submitted to Arcade - perhaps not surprisingly, many projects were geared toward robotics similar to FIRST Robotics Competition.
- Participants earned Arcade tickets redeemable for $150,000 in prizes including Flipper Zeros, Raspberry Pi, boba and 30 other prizes to help us build future projects.
Here’s a sample of projects made by fellow FIRST community members:
George T, FIRST Robotics Competition 840, age 18, San Mateo, Calif., (he/him) built the Omnikart T83, a rideable swerve go kart, notable for its omnidirectional movement. With a combined 20Kw of driving power, it can achieve a max speed of 24 mph!
Brandon K, FIRST Tech Challenge 21936, age 16, Santa Monica, Calif. (he/him) built a wheeled, self-balancing robot named “Weeble” using leftover FIRST Tech Challenge parts, a fully 3D printed body, and a fully articulated head with a camera in his right eye!
Jazz A, FIRST Tech Challenge 27971, age 17, Paxton, Ill. (she/her) worked on the Community Edition fork of REV Hub Interface, which, designed for FIRST users, allows you to manually control an Expansion Hub from your computer to prototype mechanisms with realistic conditions.
Are you bummed that you missed out? Well, fear not, maties!
FIRST, Hack Club, and GitHub just launched another challenge: High Seas takes coding to the open waters of adventure to build and collaborate with others! High Seas provides a great opportunity to make international connections, hone your skills, and build projects together. Here’s the scoop:
From now until January 31, 2025:
- Everybody earns Doubloons for each hour of code you contribute, which can be redeemed for prizes.
- Code projects for prizes such as Raspberry Pi, Flipper Zeroes, Framework Laptops, iPads, Dremel kits, 3D printers, Pinecils - and much more!
- Check out what other hackers are making and support teen coders by voting their projects up. The highest voted projects earn additional Doubloons.
This is a perfect activity for FIRST team members looking for something technical to do. Even if you don’t have a project in mind, check out the more than 20 free workshops available for inspiration – build a web OS or design a game, create PCBs or make a USB hub.
So, me hearties, what’re ye waitin’ fer? Will you join us on the High Seas and ship code together?! Unfurl the mainsail and see ye there!
(Note: Only high school students or teenagers under the age of 18 are able to participate in Hack Club and Hack Club High Seas. Adults 18+ who graduated high school are not eligible to participate.)
