Lego Stormers

Canadian FTC Championships

2015-02-16T16:07:17Z

The Canadian FTC Championships were held in Edmonton on Feb. 8, 2015. We had been looking forward to playing with Canadian teams at an event.

We had a chance to get to know the teams and their robots during a full day of practice on Feb. 7. It was a great chance for us to fine tune our autonomous programs and make some new friends.

Our first couple of matches went well, but our autonomous program was blocked. Then came the perfect match. We scored both balls in the centre goal in autonomous and then knocked out the kickstand. It was great to see that all the testing on Saturday paid off.

By the end of the qualifying rounds, we had a perfect record (no losses) and were the top ranked team. We invited 5009 Helios, the second ranked team to our alliance, and they accepted.

Unfortunately, they had mechanical issues and sat out for most of the semi-final matches. It took three matches, but we won and went on to the finals. Fortunately, Helios had fixed their problems, went through re-inspection and were ready to play!

The first match of the finals was our high score for the day, 493 points. After winning the second match of the finals, we were Captian of the Winning Alliance, received the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award and had qualified for St. Louis!

Thanks to Phillip and his volunteers for a great event!

State 2015

2015-02-16T15:37:42Z

The Washington State FTC Championships were held at the ShoWare Center. Thank you to the City of Kent for donating the space. It was an amazing venue for the State Championships!

Only three of our team members were able to be at this event, so we 'adopted' some team members from the Swerve Robotics. Katie (FTC 417) and Jack (FTC 8923) helped us with scouting, runing back to the pit for fresh batteries and talking with judges while we were on the playing field. Then Katie went and helped solve some wiring issues for one of our partners so they were able to play with us. Most of all, they brought a lot of fun to our team!

We won 4/6 matches. Our two losses came as result of mechanical issues, one with our partner, and once with our robot. In our best match of the day, our alliance got a high score of 529 points.

Team 7198, Cyborg Ferrets, was the fourth Alliance Captain. We had played with and against them in Leagues and at District. They had showed us their lights during the morning, and had planned to use the green lights if they were allied with us. Their robot was lit green when they went up to up as alliance captain. We were delighted when they choose us as their first pick. Team 5961 completed our alliance.

Our alliance was ranked fourth going into the semi-finals. We won our first two matches and then were off to the finals.

Our opponents in the finals were 2856 Tesseract, 7364 Mindbot Maniacs, and 3805 Atomic Robotics. Again, our alliance won in two matches.

At the end of our long, exciting, day, Team 3491 was part of Winning Alliance, won the Connect Award and had qualified for the Super Regional in California.

Thanks to Washington State for hosting a great event, and for the live feed of the whole tournament.

District 2015

2015-01-20T00:44:33Z

This season, the FIX IT team was part of the Knuth League in northern Washington State. After playing two league events (16 matches), 3491 was ranked 7th in our district. The next event was the Pasteur District Championship on Jan. 11, 2015.

We were delighted when the Swerve Robotics teams invited us to spend the day before the District Championship at their work shop. It gave us lots of time to test on an actual field.

Our day started with check-in, when we found out that our judging time slot was less than half an hour away. The whole team focused on getting the robot set-up and ready for judging. The interview went well and Larry worked so that we could demonstrate all the mechanisms.

From there it was inspections and testing on the field. Most of our matches went very well, with our alliance often scoring over 300 points. Being able to fill the centre goal in end game makes a big difference to the out come of most matches.

We knew the matches had been going well, but we were surprised to discover that we were top of the rankings. The final match of the day changed the rankings again, and we were delighted to be the 2^nd ranked team once everything was totaled. Helen was our Captain and made the final choices about who would be in our alliance.

For the alliance selection, we chose 6257- 2 Saints and 9093- Decaforce. We lost the first elimination game but made up for it by winning the next two matches.

In the finals, our alliance lost the first match, but were delighted to win the second match. After two and a half suspenseful minutes and then about five more nerve racking minutes we lost the final match 338p to 374p.

During the award ceremony, we were nominated for PTC Design, Motivate, and Innovate awards.

We were thrilled to win the Inspire award!

Thanks to all the officials, volunteers, and teams for making it such a great day!

Kick-Off 2014

2014-10-31T23:30:00Z

The kickoff was held in the Microsoft campus in Redmond on September 6, 2014. There were a lot of teams; more than last year. The game was revealed!

It's name: Cascade Effect. Our first impression was the surprising complexity in the game. The sheer amount of points possible to score in each stage was much more than last year. There were many ways to score points, meaning strategy will be all-important.

Thanks to Swerve Robotics for hosting us the night before and inviting us to share in their Strategy Session.

FTC Block Party Season

2014-06-20T14:03:12Z

In December, we were Central League matches 1 & 2, where we were ranked first in our league and fifth in all Washington State! In January, we competed in the East District Qualifier where we were thrilled to win the Inspire Award. Unfortuately, our robot had major mechanical difficulties at the State Championships. But it was fun to see all the teams competing.

In February, we competed at the Nevada State Championships. Duncan and Helen were our drive team and they did great. We ended up as an alliance captain, but then had mechanical difficulties in the elimination rounds.

FLL Event 2013

2013-12-12T14:47:09Z

The FIX IT team helped at a practice tournament for the local FLL teams on December 7, 2013. We helped by running the tournament field, getting teams to interviews, and doing odd jobs.

It was fun bringing the teams to the interviews because we got to spend time with the teams as they were getting ready for the interviews. It was interesting to be involved in running a tournament, not just being in the tournament. We got to see more of an overview, rather than just the narrow focus on what we need to for the competition.

Cathedral School in Victoria was a wonderful host!

EV3 vs NXT

2013-05-02T18:52:23Z

EV3 vs NXT

We had an opportunity to see and handle the new LEGO MINDSTORM EV3 at the FIRST World Championships in St. Louis. We didn't not have a lot of time to evaluate the EV3. These comments are just initial impressions from FLL and FTC team members, who have been working with the NXT for 6 years.

LEGO has posted a comparison of features for the EV3 and NXT. The comparison includes lots of new features that we didn't get to test. Mostly, we were quickly checking to see what we thought for our FLL and FTC teams. FTC has announced their competition won't be using the EV3 in fall 2013.

The EV3 itself and its motors, are larger than the NXT and its motors. The difference isn't huge, but if you are trying to build a very small robot, the difference is noticeable. There are two larger drive motors and then a smaller motor that can be used for attachments. The option to have a smaller motor for attachments is a good idea.

There are many new sensors, but we didn't get to work with them enough to form an opinion. The speakers look like they should be much better.

The software uses icons, similar to NXT-G, but they are wired more like Robolab. They can be automatically connected like NXT-G, or you can specifically wire them like Robolab.

It is Linux based, and has a different way of selecting which program to run. Likely that will just take some adjusting for people familiar with the NXT.

EV3 software screen layout seemed better. Rather than blocks down the left hand side, there were 4-5 categories across the bottom. Within each category were the actual icons.

There are four motor ports and four sensor ports. The EV3 has a SD slot so that you can increase the memory. There's a USB hub that we didn't get to explore. The cable to connect to the computer had different plugs.

We talked with one of the testers. The EV3 has very long turn on and turn off cycles. The estimate is 30 seconds from when you push the on button, to when it is ready to start. The NXT takes about 3 seconds.

We're all use to laptops taking a few minutes to boot-up, but it will be harder for kids who want to push a button and get started. The extra time will add up during competitions when a team doesn't turn their robot on, or even worse, it automatically powers down while they are waiting in line.

The turn-off cycle takes about 45 seconds. Again, it's not a huge amount of time, but compared to about 3 seconds for the NXT, it is a significant change.

We talked to one tester who said that any time the battery was replaced, the EV3 reset the firmware and all the stored programs were gone. This 'feature' has significant implications for competition teams who want to have fresh batteries for each match. Many FLL teams just plug in their robot between matches, they should be fine.

FTC teams usually replace their batteries frequently at events. This 'feature' is a disaster for those teams. It is reasonably quick, maybe 2 minutes, to remove the NXT from the robot and pop in a new battery just before a match starts. With the EV3, the team would have to replace the battery (2 minutes), turn it back on (30 seconds), connect to a computer and download their programs again. It will easily take over 5 minutes, possibly delaying a match.

A staff person from the company that wrote the software 'thought' that if you waited completely through the shut down cycle (minimum 45 seconds) before removing the battery, it might not reset the firmware. Unfortunately, we didn't get to test it.

Some of the issues with the EV3 could be fixed with a software update, but the size and battery/firmware issues are hardware and there is no easy fix. It would likely take a hardware upgrade to correct it. At this point, we haven't decided if we will order one of the early EV3s. It's tempting to wait 6-8 months and see how they do.

St Louis 2013 - Day Three

2013-04-27T13:10:58Z

Today we only had two matches and they didn't start until the afternoon. That let us fix a problem we had with some cables on our lifter getting snagged, and let us have some time on the practice fields where we developed a new autonomous program to go to the far side of the field, mostly to try and mess up the other alliance, but with a chance to score too.

Our first match was in alliance with Swerve 6220. In the autonomous mode our robot did manage to go interfere with the other team's robot. But the other alliance did manage to grab an early lead, and then played good defense to keep it, so we lost that match.

In our last match we were partnered with team 5843 Auto Vortex from Romania. Their robot had been held up customs in Europe. Another team loaned them a robot they used for practicing with and they borrowed parts from various teams including ours. They did really well at the tournament. Here we are setting up with them.

We won our last match. Our final tally was five games won out of eight for 10 qualification points and 940 ranking points for a final ranking of 16 out of 64 teams.

We're really pleased with our results. But we were disappointed not be selected for one of the final alliances. So we'll be going without our robot to watch the final games on Saturday morning.

St Louis 2013- Day Two

2013-04-26T14:27:31Z

Today, the team had six matches. We won four and lost two.

The good news is that all the matches were tough, that means we have lots of ranking points.

All 64 teams in our division will play 8 matches. It's 2 points for a win, 1 point for a tie and 0 points for a loss. So all the teams with four wins have 8 Game Points. Ranking points are based on the actual score of the losing teams.

If a team wins a match with a score of 150 to 35, they get 2 game points and 35 ranking points (the losing score). If a team wins a match with a score of 240 to 195, they still get 2 game points, but now they get 195 ranking points. It means that teams that play in tough matches get ranked higher than teams that win easy games.

FIX IT finished the day with 4 wins (8 game points) and 733 ranking points. We are third in the ranking of the 11 teams with 4 wins

At this point, FIX IT 3491 is ranked 11th out of 64 teams. We are delighted!

Now we just have to see what happens with our last two games on Friday.

Our complete match schedule is on the main Saint Louis page.

A lot of time is spent queuing for matches.

Here we are scoring two rings on a high peg.

Here we are scoring weighted rings in the corner goal which we were doing in every match. One of the few teams to do that.

St Louis 2013 - Day One

2013-04-25T03:45:10Z

Today was set up, judging, inspections and opening ceremonies. We have borrowed some extra team members from Swerve 417. Here are a couple of them helping us through inspection.

Our robot got some time testing on the practice fields.

Our first match is tomorrow, it's match #3 and should start at 9:11am (Saint Louis time). Our complete match schedule is on the main Saint Louis page.

ST. Louis 2013

2013-04-09T16:36:41Z

FIX IT, Team 3491, is going to FIRST® Tech Challenge World Championship Event in St. Louis, Missouri on April 25-27, 2013!

FIX IT will be on the Edison Field. The other FTC field is Franklin. FIX IT will be playing in 6 qualifying matches on Thursday and Friday. They won't print a match schedule until all teams have checked in. We'll post the times as soon as we get them.

Round	Day	Match	St. Louis Time	Victoria Time
1	Thursday	3	9:11am	7:11am
2	Thursday	27	11:23am	9:23am
3	Thursday	36	1:11pm	11:11am
4	Thursday	52	2:39pm	12:39pm
5	Thursday	74	4:40pm	2:40pm
6	Thursday	93	6:24pm	4:24pm
7	Friday	110	1:11pm	11:11am
8	Friday	125	2:33pm	12:33pm

There will a live feed from six different fields to cover all the FIRST competitions. All FIX IT matches will be on the Edison field. You can watch FLL matches on Friday afternoon. They may show FLL practice rounds on Thursday.

Remember, all posted times are in St. Louis. They are 2 hours ahead of Victoria. To see a match listed at 10am, you should start watching around 8:50am Victoria. Matches at the start of the day or after lunch are likely to start on time. However, the matches run in match# order in sequence so actual start times may be a bit early, or more likely a bit late.

Watch the Matches!

Crystal, our robot!

On the way to St. Louis, we stopped in Seattle to spend some time with FTC 417 Swerve Alpha. Their sister team's robot, Mr. Pickles (Swerve Sigma 6220), is already on his way to St. Louis. So we had team members being partner and opposition robots, while we ran some practice matches with Crystal.

It was fun listening to the field coaches telling the 'robots' what to do!

Swerve will have extra team members at Worlds, so they're going to help the FIX IT team with everything from scouting to pit crew to field coaches. Tonight was our first chance to work together and it seemed to go well.

Robot Make-over

2013-04-04T20:26:54Z

Getting Ready for the FTC 2013 World Championship in St. Louis

There will be 128 FTC teams from 16 different countries around the world competing at the World Championships this year. It's an amazing opportunity to see how different teams solved the same challenge.

Our team has been busy getting the robot ready. While Crystal, the robot that competed in Las Vegas, did well at playing the game. She's getting a make-over for the World Championships. Here's a picture of Crystal just before she left for Las Vegas.

Thanks to our newest sponsor, Reliable Controls, we've ordered some new tires that should improve the stability of the drive system; new sensors to use in our autonomous programs, and upgraded some of the electronics.

Usually we only post photos of our finished robot, but here's a picture of Crystal part way through her make over. Without the side plates, it's easier to see what's going on inside.

Of course, Crystal is still a work in progress. We'll post another picture when she's all finished.

Las Vegas 2013

2013-02-17T01:39:27Z

After much discussion, debate, rebuilding, and testing, we'd like to introduce our newest robot, Crystal.

Crystal is a 6 wheel drive robot, with omni wheels on the front and back for smoother driving. She has a narrow chassis for maneuverability. Her ring holder moves vertically on linear slides to reach the top peg. Crystal has two touch sensors that are used to identify weighted rings, and an IR Sensor used in some of her autonomous programs. Crystal sports zebra print side panels in striking green and black colors.

Crystal played the game well at the Las Vegas FTC Tournament. She was able to identify and score a weighted ring during our qualifying matches. She had a few challenges but ended up in the middle of the rankings after qualifying rounds. We were delighted when the 4th Alliance choose the FIX IT team as the first pick.

It was a rough match with Crystal getting knocked over during the driver controlled period. In the second match, the alliance captain's robot was badly damaged. The other alliance had won two matches and we were knocked out.

We were delighted to be nominated for two awards (Think and Innovate) and very excited when the FIX IT team won the Inspire Award.

We're off to St. Louis for the FTC World Championships in late April.

FTC Washington 2012/13

2013-02-17T01:10:22Z

Washington State has over 80 teams this year, and wanted to try a new format. They created a league system so that all teams got to play more robot matches.

Every team was assigned to a league. The league would play three rounds of 6 matches. Most leagues would have one or two weeks between their rounds so that teams could work on their robot. Three leagues would merge into one district, with the top teams going onto the State Championship.

Central League

The FIX IT team was part of the central league which was for teams that were too far apart for frequent meetings. We met once in central Washington to play the first two rounds.

Our robot, George, did well in the central league matches. In the first two matches, he was able to score on the lower and middle pegs, and had a ramp that our partner could climb in the end game. His autonomous program worked 100% of the time.

George was the first robot to score during autonomous and the first to score the IR bonus. During the driver controlled time, he was the first to score a row bonus. Best of all, we had no major repairs during the 12 matches.

The Central League held their third round the afternoon before the District Qualifier.

George scored lots of rings during matches. He could reach the top row and usually scored two rings at a time, except for when we only placed one ring on a peg to quickly place the other ring on a different peg to get more row bonuses. One of our partners drove up our ramp and we scored the lift points!

George didn't have any of the intermittent power problems that happened at home. The additional supports may have stabilized the electrical wires.

With our partners, we won 5 out of 6 matches.

North District

As expected, District matches were much tougher. Other teams blocked our autonomous program in most rounds. Overall it was just tougher to score against the more experienced teams.

With only three team members, we did some basic scouting which helped us for match play. We won our qualifying matches and ended up in 6th place after the qualifying rounds!

When two of the alliance captains choose other captains, suddenly, we became an alliance captain. At this point, we realized that our match scouting really wasn't enough information to be an alliance captain.

As the fourth ranked alliance, we were playing against the first ranked alliance. They won the first two matches and our alliance was out. But it was fun being an Alliance Captain, even if we only lasted for two matches.

Our team was surprised and delighted when we won the Inspire award for the North District!

Washington State Championship

One of the best parts of the day was seeing friends on other teams who weren't in our district. Of course, we liked getting to check out their robots too.

FIX IT was in one of the highest scoring rounds (300 points). Unfortunately, it was our only good round. George had connection issues, and a variety of unexpected challenges. The best teams have good scouting, can block simple autonomous programs, and have defensive strategies making it harder for us to score.

By the end of the day, we were at bottom in the robot rankings. It just wasn't a good day for George.

Fortunately, Washington State Championships are fun even when your robot isn't winning!

FLL Kick-Off 2012/13

2012-07-26T21:14:20Z

FIRST^® LEGO^® League

2012/13 Season Kick-off

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams design, build and program an autonomous robot to compete in the Robot Game, and do a Research Project about problems or opportunities facing the world today.

FIRST will be releasing the 2012/13 FLL Challenge Senior Solutions on August 28, 2012

Join Victoria area teams as we learn about this year's robot challenge and research project. You'll be able to see the mat and mission modules for this year's Robot Game. Students who would like to find out more about FLL, or are looking for a FLL team, are welcome.

There will be short workshops on Building Robots, brain storming how to Solve the Missions and even how to Start a New Team.

You don't need to be on a team to come to Kick-off. New teams are still being formed.

When:	Tuesday August 28, 2012 5:30 - 8:00pm drop-in
Where	Emily Carr Library 3500 Blanshard St.
Who:	Students age 9-14y (please bring a parent)

Admission is free. Adults are welcome with or without students.

Finding a FIRST Team

We often hear from parents or grandparents who would like to find a team in their area. Now is the time when teams are looking for new members, or maybe there's enough interest to form a new team in your community or at your local school.

If you know someone who would like to get involved with a FIRST team (from K-grade12) please complete the new member form. If you are an adult who would like to volunteer to help a team, go ahead and fill in the form for yourself.

If we know of a team looking for new members, we'll pass your information along to that team. When there's enough interest to form a new team, we'll try to get everyone together and talk about how to form a team. It's up to you to decide if it's the right team for you.

Workshop Topics

Workshops will last about 20 minutes. Some will be hands-on, others will be more of a Q&A format. Most topics will be offered at least twice between 5:30 and 8:00pm.

Robot Design - learn about different robot designs (3 wheels vs 4 wheels, pivot wheels vs skids, ...) and find out the pros and cons of each design.

Programming Robots - Learn the basics of programming robots in NXT-G.

Robot Attachments - what are some multi-purpose attachments that have been useful in previous FLL challenges

Using Sensors - Which sensors are the most useful for FLL teams, and how to read sensor values on the NXT. How robots can use sensors in FLL competitions.

Brainstorming Missions - See and talk about the missions for this year's Robot Challenge. Test out the modules to find different ways the robot might score points.

Coaching Tips - Talk to experienced coaches to find out what FLL teams do, and even how you could become an FLL coach.

Research Project - What are the requirements for the Senior Solutions project? Share ideas for field trips or experts in the community.