Get to know PioBytes
Our mission is to remove barriers to learning and make STEM accessible to any and all students — regardless of background, and regardless of whether they've ever touched a robot before.
PioBytes is a rookie FRC program at Sandy High School, in the Oregon Trail School District. Sandy High previously ran a handful of small VEX teams; in 2026 we combined into one FRC program chasing something those smaller teams couldn't offer on their own — real leadership opportunities, real-world engineering experience, and one shared mission instead of several small ones.
Most of us didn't know what FRC was at our first meeting. We knew a rookie team wouldn't out-build programs with a decade of history, so we set out to build something else first: a system. We started with physical scrum boards before build season even began, then outgrew them and built our own software to replace them (more on The Hub). By kickoff, we had a minimum viable product defined and a team that knew how to work together — which mattered more than experience once the season actually started.
Scrum, not just a build schedule
PioBytes runs on two-to-three week sprints followed by retrospectives. During build season, groups split by project, each led by a mentor-assigned scrum master who runs standups at the start of every class period and clears blockers — a supply shortage, a stuck design review — so their group always has something to do.
Chief Executive Officer
Sets team direction, represents PioBytes externally with sponsors, partner teams, and the district, and owns overall program health and safety.
Chief Product Officer
Owns the robot as our product — strategy, build priorities, and getting UPLOAD from kickoff to competition-ready.
Chief Operating Officer
Runs day-to-day operations — schedules, logistics, and keeping every department moving together.
Department Heads
Track the direction and needs of their department, even when they aren't personally leading a given task.
Scrum Masters
Open to any member — head a specific project like a launcher build or a CAD model, run standups, and solve blockers like a lack of supplies as they come up.
Mechanical
Cutting metal and wood, designing parts, and assembling the mechanisms that make up the robot.
Logistics
Supplies, stock, purchasing, and keeping the pit ready — including requisition forms for school funds.
Software
Robot code, vision, autonomous — and The Hub, the team's own task-and-scouting platform.
Modeling
CAD and Fusion 360 — from robot subsystems to the full-scale renders behind our practice field.
Electrical
Wiring and control systems — from the RoboRIO signal chain to the daisy-chained LED rings on our swerve modules.
Business
Brand and sponsorship relationships — built the PioBytes logo that anchors all of it.
Outreach
STEM nights, tournament hosting, and community partnerships — bringing robotics to our whole school district.
New members shadow department heads and experienced teammates from day one — no prior engineering class needed, especially early in the season.
Our name, our robot's name, every graphic and Instagram post came out of a team-wide vote — because the way we look is supposed to say something true about who builds it. From our floppy disk logo came a whole theme of data storage with a retro aesthetic, layered over our own school colors as Sandy Pioneers. That theme is why our sponsorship tiers are named things like Kilobyte and Terabyte instead of Bronze and Gold.
