Get a GEARS Membership.

Become a GEARS member and stake your claim on a fun future with robotics and technology.

GEARS is Garrett County’s year-round engineering & robotics “club”, which supports the existing FIRST Robotics teams as well as creating its own engineering competitions, camps, and robot construction projects.

Our motto is: Inquire – Invent – Construct - Compete

Membership fees are as follows:

SimPerch. First public release.

Hi everyone.

Although it's SimPerch 3.0, it's the first Official release of the Seaperch Simulator that Kendrick Bender has written.

Download the installer from here: http://tinyurl.com/simperch

It's 29MB, so it may take a while on a slow connection.
Once you have the file, just run it to install the program.

FRC Software Information

  • Control System intro: Link
  • What's New in LabVIEW: Link
  • NI Community: Link
  • NI Support: Link
  • FRC Mastery: Link

FRC Electrical Information

  • Control System intro: Link
  • Drive Systems: Link
  • Motors: Link
  • General Parts: Link
  • General Parts: Link
  • Sensors & Stuff: Link

FRC Mechanical Information

  • Chassis assembly: Link
  • CAD part models: Link
  • Hardware Supplies: Link
  • Drive Systems: Link
  • Motors: Link

Important FRC Links

  • FIRST FRC Website Link
  • Game animation/video (visual game explanation) Link
  • Competition Manual (these are the rules.... read them) Link
  • Official Q&A (these are the EXTRA rules.... read them)

Gearing Up. A 4-part FIRST Robotics Movie

Here are 4 YouTube links for a cool FIRST Robotics Competition Movie.

It follows 4 FRC teams from around the country from Kickoff to Competition.

Miss Daisy, (a Baltimore MD team) is one of the 4 teams.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

G-FORCE playing in MD FTC Finals

G-FORCE playing in MD FTC Finals

I love this picture. It's the essence of a great match.

The G-FORCE robot (2818) is in the process of shooting for the outside goal. The drive team looks extremenly relaxed, and the crowd is going crazy.

What a great showing by G-FORCE and their supporters.

The team also won the "Think" award for doing a great job of documenting their journey to the competition.

G-FORCE captains Winning Alliance at MD FTC Competition.

G-FORCE captains Winning Alliance at MD FTC Competition.

G-FORCE (FIRST Tech Challenge Team 2818) competed at the College of Southern MD last weekend and was victorious in the Robot Performance rounds.

The team was the number 1 seed at the end of qualification, and was undefeated during the eliminations.

The team is shown here with their award.
Front: (Left to right)
Team Members: Nathan Tichnell, Kevin Haenftling, Zach Frick & Kendrick Bender. Pit Crew: Kevin Maust

Great video of "Little Dog" robot

This cool video shows MIT's "Little Dog" in action over various terrains.

Click for Video