The blog is back from the land of the dead! It just took 2 editors, 10 months and a cheesy title! A lot has happened since our last update, starting with the kick-off of the new vex competition for the 2015-2016 season, Nothing But Net. Details on the new competition here. In order to prepare for the new competition, our robotics club decided to have a lock-in to build our robots. We came in at 3:25 on October 3rd and left at 12:00 the next morning, with functioning robots (mostly). Since then, we've had 6 competitions, with a team taking home an award at every one of them. Now we're revving up for states, streamlining our robots and tuning our programs. ~Logan Benninghoff Programmer, Designer, Logger and now, website co-editor States 2016- Who's Going?
How are the teams preparing?7316B- Added a high speed motor to the intake, inverted the placement of the wheels and gears to fit up 7316C's ramp and are practicing driving for competition.
7316C- Worked on refining rpm control code, made our ramp more accessible and investigated ways to make our robot faster. 7316D- Focusing on driver practice and adjusting small issues in the construction of the robot. 7316E- Driver practice and focusing more on the log to improve our chances of winning excellence.
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Its been a little bit of time but were back and we just got back from are last competition! we now have 3 teams going to states and 2 teams in the finals! We are determined to get all 5 team to states and then worlds this year! we wanted to thank all Mr. Spak and all the parents for supporting us this far! we have another competition this Saturday details on the home page hope to see you there! -Sarah Edwards Boat Races 2015
GOODYEAR STEM Career Day 2015Way back when we used to have a parking lot, we hosted the Goodyear STEM Career Day (also known as the Women in Engineering Day, Goodyear Career Day and That Event Goodyear Hosts Every Year at Firestone) here at the high school. With the construction on the new building underway, the event has been moved to the University of Akron. After our success the past two seasons, our friends at Goodyear have invited us to host a table/panel on High School Robotics alongside groups from universities and large businesses. We're super psyched to be the only high school presenting at this convention, come on out and see us on April 18th! ~Erica Kraus Club Secretary What a way to end a season; two teams traveling to States. This year it was held at the college campus, whereas last year it was at the high school, but this was a great venue. Teams 7316A and 7316C made the trip down on Friday, arriving at 4ish to run skills and turn in notebooks. Luckily for us, that gave us time to practice before the competition and reveal any flaws. Unfortunately, that flaw list was extensive. Lifting problems, to size requirements, to driving problems and programming issues to pneumatics; anything that didn't go wrong at home, went wrong here. That night, armed with pizza, Chipotle and soda, a bunch of us crammed ourselves into one hotel room until around midnight, working in the robots. To some, but very little avail, however, neither team made Alliance Selections. Both had great interviews, and Team C was commended on their log being the neatest engineering notebook there, but in the design race, our qualifier results spoke louder than our book. All it takes is one bad day, unfortunately. Neither team will advance to Worlds, but we all had a great time. Four seniors returned to States one last time, three soon-to-be leaders of the club learned the wear and tear of State Finals, and three freshmen were unceremoniously dumped in an even more fast paced, highly competitive, confusing and wonderful world of robots. It was a great experience to be had by all, and we returned home tired, laughing and with new resolve to have Firestone return to Worlds. And the seniors? Most of us are staying local, or in Cleveland, so who knows, maybe club will have a new host of mentors popping in and out of meetings. I don't think any of us could give this up. More information (and pictures from the event) on what club's activities will be once school recommences; today was a snow day, making our weekend a five day, so who knows when we'll be back? Congratulations to all the winners on their qualification, and congratulations to all those who came together to be a part of this amazing event! It's absolutely awe inspiring what happens when students set their minds to something. ~Erica Kraus Club Secretary
Second to last competition of the season, and we have one State Qualified Team! We had a few hiccups here and there; team C had a faulty solenoid and the missing keys were an issue again, but overall, it was a good competition for us. At the end of Qualifiers: 4.) 7316D 4-1-0 (8/62) 10.) 7316A 3-2-0 (6/87) 14.) 7316E 3-2-0 (6/58) 18.) 7316C 3-2-0 (6/48) 38.) 7316B 0-5-0 (0/81) For the first time this year, all five teams made it to Alliance selections. Unfortunately, they were all eliminated in Quarter Finals, but we all walked back to the pits satisfied with our efforts. And about an hour of 'Motorcycles and Merry-Go-Rounds' videos and Trivia Crack later, it was time for awards. Not only did Firestone take home the Design Award for 7316C's log, which was a State Qualifier, team 7316A was awarded the Sportsmanship Award and 7316D received the Judges Award! Also a good turn for us, after the competition the judges spoke to a few of us personally and commended us on how lovely ALL the logs from Firestone are. When I have time, I'd like to make a post with all the pictures of our logs together, I feel like each one reflects it's own team. Next weekend, we have the Zane State II Qualifier, which is the last competition to qualify for States in Ohio.
Good Luck to all teams competing! ~Erica Kraus Club Secretary VEX does this really cool thing where you can track matches in real time on their site! Each competition has its own Robot Events Page, so here's the one for the Cleveland State Competition that is taking place right now:
CLICK HERE Qualification Rounds are about to begin! All five team have passed inspection. In case you are unaware of how competitions work, here's a rundown: Every team is required to pass an inspection that usually consists of a check to make sure your robot meets the 18"x18"x18" maximum size requirement, a check on your VEXnet (autonomous and driver control), and making sure all your parts are legal and within regulations. After inspection, the qualification rounds will commence. These are matches in which your alliance and your opponents are randomly generated by a computer, and each team usually has between four and six of these matches. Qualification matches decided the rankings for Alliance Selection. Scores are calculated by win-draw-lose, and while wins are the highest scoring points, there are also skill-points, or SPs, that are calculated based on how you match up against your opponent. For instance, if you lose 6-37, you were clearly not on the same level as your opponent, and you still lose, but you get higher skill points than a match that you lost 35-37. After Qualification Matches, the top teams get 'first dibs' on who they want to align with, and they take turns (based upon the winner's hierarchy) choosing their alliances. Each alliance is usually either two or three teams, depending on the size of the competition. At this point, teams not chosen for alliances are eliminated from the competition. Game Over. These teams that are selected as Alliances move on to the Finals. Finals matches are won by winning 2 out of 3 games in a standard bracket face-off. Winner moves on to the next bracket until the final two alliances meet each other in a showdown. Same deal, two out of three games for the win, and the winner is the Tournament Champion. Usually, at local tournaments (at least in Ohio), the winning alliance of the tournament is awarded with qualification for State Competition. Other awards that may qualify a team for States vary from tournament to tournament, but usually are one or both of the Excellence Award and the Design award. The Excellence Award is awarded based upon robot performance, interview quality, design and engineering log. The Design Award is awarded based upon the overall design process employed during the course of the season, and is mainly judged and awarded by the engineering log. ~ Erica Kraus Club Secretary And we're off to the Cleveland Competition!
Its currently 7:24, we're all on a yellow school bus, so far have sung 'Call Me Maybe' and 'Call Me Maybe', and decided that the white girl trifecta are Sarah Edwards, Carissa Eplin and Steven Edwards. Congrats to the winners of that vote. By posting this post, it is now 'so canon, it's sourced', according to Alex and Haley. So we're having a lot of fun already, and that's a good sign. Maybe it's just a matter of it not being 3am. Maybe we all are just in snyc again. We've just got a real good vibe going, so I think we're gonna walk into this one kicking. Here we go! ***Also, thank you so much to everyone that's voted for our website! I haven't had much time to keep up with the blog, but we're gonna be working harder on staying up to date. Thanks for putting us in the lead by community votes! We all appreciate your support. ~Erica Kraus Club Secretary
Nothing to report, we're actually on break right about now, but to anyone who's reading; Merry Christmas from the Firestone Engineering Club!
Whew-ee, that was a rough competition. Unfortunately for us, there were only 4 slots left open when we registered, so we had a big decision to make; which team to divide or leave behind. We all agreed that it would be unfair to leave people behind, so we made the decision to have each team take one or two of the remaining team, which would turn out to be team 7316D. Early in the morning, we trudged onto the bus and quickly proceeded to pass out as we drove the two or so hours to Zanesville. I'd be lying if I said the trip there was encouraging, it wasn't awful, it was just a sleepy bus of pure exhaustion, and in my experience, sleeping on the way to a competition leaves you groggy, short tempered and a wee bit crabby when you wake up-not exactly the best combination for working as a team. Unfortunately, travel is NOT something we can control, so we can merely do our best to work through our moods when we wake up. When we got there, we set up in our classroom, and my experience of bus sleep held quite true; irritable engineering kids. So we tried as best we could to work well, but we were also very unprepared. The past week leading up to this was Midterms, for both us and the students in our club that are taking college courses in post-secondary. If that's not enough to make people crabby, I don't know what is. Inspection went fine, and the driver's meeting went well, but it was immediately after that that things started to go sideways. Team B's first few matches were decent, but they pulled a wire during a match, and that became a recurring issue. Team C had some internal issues, causing their driver to be defaulted to another member of their team who had very little experience on this particular robot. Team E's robot refused to move. All four teams were sharing the same two sets of VEXnet Keys, and let me tell you, THAT took some juggling. The moment one team's match ended, they would pull their keys, even before the match was done being calculated, to pass them off to the next team. The only team that seemed to be in good health was Team A, who made Alliance Selections and eventually reached quarter-finals. As they continued to compete, a good grouping of some member from all the other teams enjoyed a meeting of the minds. This competition had stressed everyone out so much, that our group dynamics that are usually our proudest aspect, were in very sorry shape. An optional group de-stress session was in order, students found an empty study room tucked away near the cafeteria, and mandatory quiet time was enacted. It didn't last long as we began to slowly sift through our laundry list of issues.
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AuthorsAnyone who posts should sign off their name, you can find more about us in the 'About Us' section. This is the overall club blog, full of our usual shenanigans and plots and schemes and occasionally funny stuff. Archives
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