FIX IT Bottle Drive for APOC!

FIX IT is fundraising for the Asia-Pacific competition in Sydney Australia in July 2023. We need your empty bottles. In collaboration with Spectrum Thunderbots, FIX IT is doing a bottle drive!

Bring your bottles to Spectrum and help us get to Australia!!

Who?

FIX IT APOC Travel Team and Spectrum Thunderbots. And hopefully, YOU!

What?

Bottle drive!! Bring your empty drink containers.

When?

May 27th from 9am-2:30 pm.

Where?

Spectrum Community School, 957 Burnside Rd W, Saanich, BC.

Why?

Because FIX IT is raising money for a robotics competition in Australia! For more information about APOC, check out our post about APOC!

So bring your bottles on May 27th, and help support a Victoria robotics team!! Or contact us by Friday May 26 if you have bottles that you’d like us to pick up.

FIX IT is going to APOC! (For real this time)

Help us get to Australia either by Sponsoring our team or through our GoFundMe. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In 2021, we were invited to participate in a robotics competition – Asia Pacific Open Championships (or APOC) – which is held at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. Unfortunately, the competition was virtual due to COVID. We lost the opportunity to experience flying internationally, and competing / working alongside other robotics teams that share the same passion.

As mentioned in the BC Championships post, we were once again invited to APOC! But due to our funding, we had to choose between World Championships in Houston, Texas, or Asia Pacific Open Championship in Sydney, Australia. Having gone to Worlds last year (and APOC being a more exclusive and rare event), our choice was Australia.

This trip will teach us about innovation around the globe, and allow us to demonstrate all the skills we have learned through robotics. We’ll get to compete with 48 great international teams.

The competition dates are July 13-16th, and FIX IT needs to raise about $40,000 before then to participate.

You can donate to FIX IT by writing a cheque to “Victoria Robotics Club” or donate directly under “Sponsor Us!” in the top right corner. Your contributions would be greatly appreciated!

Koala with Canada Flag
From FIX IT’s last trip to Australia in 2015.

BC Championships!

After Victoria Qualifiers, we were able to go to Vancouver for the FTC BC Championships! The event was a lot bigger, and we met some old and new friends!

Setting up our pit (not struggling at all)

The first day of the 2-day event was practice matches. We did really well, but this day it didn’t matter because it was all practice.

FIX IT and PARABELLUM! BC’s 2 World’s teams reunited.

After the practice matches came the team social event, where there was some intense ping-pong, Mario Kart, and Indian food eating. This was super fun and also a good de-stress before the actual competition the next day.

Amren about to get smoked by Jackson in Connect 4
Bryce thinks he’s the GOAT (he is)

Competition!!

The following day we had our qualification and elimination matches. For some reason, we did a LOT better during our practice matches than we did in the qualifications. We did not finish with a very high placement, but we were still selected to be on the 1st place alliance.

FIX IT and Reynolds against the 4th Alliance in Semifinal Match 1!

Our alliance was unfortunately eliminated in this semifinal. So that was the end of the road for us, but then the award ceremony happened…

INSPIRE?!?!?!

FIX IT won Inspire!! Upon winning 1st place Inspire at BC Championships, we received an invite to World Championships ion Houston, Texas (again). But we declined this opportunity, and it was passed to Forces Unknown.

We declined World Championships because we were one of the 48 teams across the world that received an invite to the Asia Pacific Open Championships! APOC takes place in Sydney, Australia. It takes a lot of time and money to get ready for this competition, and we have already been to World Championships. So we wanted to dedicate our time to getting ready for Australia. We wish Reynolds and Forces Unknown the best of luck with their fundraising and we hope they have fun in Houston!

As for everyone else in the competition, you all did amazing and should all be very proud of yourselves, because we are all proud of you! We look forward to seeing you all next season!

This is what happens when Christine leaves for 0.001 seconds

Victoria Qualifiers

Competition time!! After gathering inspiration from some insane robots and ideas at the Washington Interleague, we came back and made major improvements to our robot, strategy, and programming. This was all preparation for this event.

FIX IT chilling with a member of Reynold’s Reybots after trying to figure out why driver stations don’t treat us nicely.

It was a huge jump from our last Victoria competition (the scrimmage in November) to this. All the teams had new things up their sleeves, and it was amazing to see how far everyone has come. New strategies, new mechanisms, and so much more swept the competition. We taught other teams, and learned a lot too.

FIX IT was the 3rd place alliance captain!

Shoutout to team 20025 Esquimalt Atom Smashers, who were our alliance partners for semi-finals against teams 16195 Guild of Builders, and 22557 Mount Douglas. While the journey ended there for us, the competition was a thrill to be a part of, and a great opportunity to show and test our robot.

There were some shenanigans happening while waiting for awards…

Great jobs to all teams, coaches, judges, and volunteers!! None of it would be possible without everybody’s contributions. We’ll be seeing many of the teams at BC Championships on February 28th and 29th in Vancouver!!

Inspire Award at FTC Qualifier - Victoria

Oh right, we also won the Inspire award.

Washington Feynman Interleague

We may not have been able to compete in Washington this year, but we still wanted to go check out what the Washington robotics teams are doing. We took a ferry and drove for many hours to watch some amazing matches, talk to some awesome teams, and eat some Subway.

FIX IT on the ferry and barely awake…

It was great to meet some of the Washington teams that we haven’t seen since World Championships, or that we haven’t seen since we last competed in Washington. Everyone had amazing robots and performed great in the competition!

FIX IT talking to Sushi Squad (collab of the century?!?!?)
Bryce giving Kai the FIX IT blessing (this is very prestigious according to nobody)

Unfortunately we had to leave just after watching the semi finals, but we watched a huge chunk of matches and learned a lot from the visit. We took our fresh knowledge back to Victoria and we will use it to improve our robot! Huge thanks again to all the Washington teams for making the journey worth it!

Also, you will NEVER GUESS who we ran into on the way back!!!!

Team photos with Santa
HE’S REAL!!!!

Hope everyone has a happy holidays!!!