January 2012 FTC Championships

Washington State FTC Championship

January 14/15, 2012

There were 24 teams at the Washington State Championship.  Every team had seven matches in the qualifying rounds.  This tournament was the time we have been at an event that ran ahead of schedule!  It was even more surprising that there were no significant lost connections or matches that had to be restarted.  The Field Volunteers did a great job!

Our new robot, Ralph, had a basic 4 wheel drive system that we used at the December event.  For this event, our new ball collector was installed and was much more efficient that the arm we used in December.  Ralph's crate lifter worked well, but we're going to add some grabber arms to reduce the time it takes to pick up a crate.

We had fun on our 5th match playing the 417 Swerve against both Cyber Knights and Cyber Daze.  We were all at the World Championships together in April 2011.  By the end of the match, no one was sure who had won.  There were only 2 points separating the teams.  Congratulations to the Cyber teams!

In one of the final matches, two robots lifted crates high in the air and got a score over 350 points.  

We were delighted to be nominated for the Connect Award, and even more excited when the announced that 3491 FIX IT had won the Think Award!

Nevada State FTC Championship
January 27/28, 2012

It's been a great couple of days.  

Shockwave Robotics (FTC 3848) invited other teams to join them for a robotics assembly at Walter Bracken Magnet Empowerment School.  We joined about eight other teams to show off our robots and talk with lots of students about robotics.  For us, it was a good opportunity to meet the teams and see the robots we would be playing against at the Championship.

On Saturday, there were over 40 teams split between two field competing at the Nevada State Championship.  The FIX IT team won 4 out of 6 of our matches and were ranked 7th on our field.  Our Alliance lost their semi-final match by 1 point!

Our robot had some odd electrical problems.  We couldn't find any wiring issues, but adding extra grounding wires.  From talking with other teams, we discovered that static electricity was building up in many of the robots.

There were some robots lifting crates up 7-8 feet in the air.  Shockwave could score a magnet ball, and the bowling ball as well as lifting a crate. The fifty points they earned by playing with balls made the difference. They won both of the games in the finals.

3491 FIX IT won PTC Design Award!

Find out more about who are the FTC team 3491  FIX IT.

Do you know a student in the Victoria area who would like to be part of a FIRST team?  We're helping students find a team, or start a new team if there isn't one in their area.