Blog – FIX IT 3491

K-Days 2024 – Day 3

Today were the matches that counted for the competition and things went really well. We won all of our matches and ended the Qualification Round in 1st place!

For the final matches, FTC team 10544 Cyber Eagles Silver accepted our invitation to form an alliance. Working together, we were able to get a high score for Alberta of 302 points in the finals.

Throughout the day, our team members made an effort to connect with members from other teams. It was great getting to meet students from Helios, TWOSE teams, Pumabotics and Cyber Eagles!

FIX IT won the Inspire Award and was Captain of the Winning Alliance. It was a great finish to the season, worthy of Captain Hook!

Today was the practice matches for the event and we finished in 2nd place. The start was rough when Captain Hook’s wrist fell off and we lost the first match. After it was fixed, we won the rest of our matches!

Everyone had fun playing matches with and against our parents and other mentor bots throughout the day.

Kdays was the perfect time for one of our newer team members to get some experience as a field coach and he had an interesting experience.

Our judging interview today went pretty well although a noisy band started playing next door which made it a bit hard to hear. One of the judges is also named Max!

We are hoping nothing goes wrong so we can make it into the finals as a alliance captain tomorrow!!

K-Days 2024 – Day 1

FIX IT has arrived at the Alberta off-season event, K-Days held in Edmonton. This will be Captain Hook’s last competition and we’re gonna put on a show.

We are having fun exploring the event too. Today was all about setting up, chilling in the pit with dragon’s breath and even a bit of gaming. There are lots of great foods and different pits to check out!

Jasper: My favourite food was the “dragon’s breath” liquid nitrogen candy because of how cool it looked when you ate it.

Here’s the video of us eating Dragon’s Breath!

Jason: I loved the first day at K-Days. There is so much to explore throughout the Expo, and I even got to try dragon’s breath for the first time. Can’t wait to keep exploring around and trying new things!

Kai: It was so cool to check out the indie game dev expo at the K-Days. Working on a video game myself gave me an interesting perspective on the different projects.

Max: My favorite food I saw was the giant mozzarella stick on a stick because I think it sounds gross but it looks really good!

Ryan: I love looking around the stands! There is so much to do and look at! I loved trying the “dragon’s breath”, it was amazing!

West coast invitational

This off-season FTC competition featured 14 teams, including some robots built by FRC teams just for this event. We’re super excited to share that we made it to the finals as the finalist alliance captain! It’s been a few years since we brought home a trophy for being the finalist alliance captain, so this achievement feels extra special.

Event Highlights

Field Coach Experience: Our trainee field coach had a blast being field coach at their first event. It was his first time as the alliance representative, and he loved talking strategy with new people. He hopes he will get to do it again in future competitions.

Competing and Collaborating: Playing against teams from Washington was really fun. We especially enjoyed teaming up with Wright Angle; we worked really well together in the finals.

Diverse Teams: A lot of the teams were off-season demo teams made up of students who usually compete in FRC. It was cool to see how they brought their FRC experience into this season’s game.

A big thanks to the event organizers for hosting such a fantastic competition and for inviting us to join. We can’t wait for more events and to continue connecting with the awesome robotics community!

Interesting Mechanisms – 2024

It’s great to see all the robots that different teams brought to Worlds. Here are some of our favourites.

Leo: 14179 Sushi Squad
3 stage stacked claw that was designed to only pick up 2 pixels by squishing other pixels out.

Ryan: 18139 Rebel Robotics
Their robot has a compact tape measure rolling arm. It allows for minimal space to be occupied while having long reach. The material of the ‘tape’ rolls into a tube as it extends out from the robot.

Jason: 11754 EnergySmart FTC
Their claw had a unique design, similar to ours, but instead of having a side-by-side centerpost with pincers mechanism, they had a mold like thing that would grasp all around their pixels. It would hold one pixel in the front and one in the back with two of our claws on each side; as if they were pincers; that could rotate around a wrist, making it in any orientation possible. The wrist would allow the pixels to be placed horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. In addition their arm can extend to ~3 ft.

Max: 11228 OverClucked Bots
Really cool scoring mechanism. It pinches the inside of a pixel and releases with a servo.

Jasper: 18031 Horcruxes
Mostly made their own frame, not much channel or bought parts. Might have been expensive.

Kai: 11039 Innov8rz
I saw a super helpful mechanism which I want to try playing around with. It’s called a husky lens and it’s a AI training tool. The mechanism has a chip for training AI models and a small 2 inch IPS display so all the training can be done without a separate computer on the small display.

Competition Day 3 – 2024

There’s no question that the surprise of the day was waiting in our Pit this morning. It is very much appreciated by all team members and especially the parents who do Pit Sitting for us!

We were visited by some judges. It was a great opportunity to show off our amazing posters!

Unfortunately, our matches didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. After one particularly rough match, our whole centerpost structure needed to be replaced with almost no time before our next match. Fortunately the team got it on in time, but it wasn’t fully functioning until the next match. At least we had a spare (“thanks Doug”)!

Our mascot finally put in an appearance today on Tiara Friday.

Competition Day 2 – 2024

The team had a very early start to the day playing in the first match of the morning! We were able to get a picture of the team between matches.

Dryw is an old fried of FIX IT who is now working for SparkFun. He came by to show us a new optical encoder that he’s been developing. Likely it will be available in May, in time for testing over the summer.

Here are our results so far.

Match #	Red		Blue		Score
Qualification 2	20279	19964	8872	3491	124:149
Qualification 15	22708	14179	3491	10355	214:239
Qualification 31	16008	3491	10138	25	68:161
Qualification 47	10255	11112	3491	6294	238:182
Qualification 58	3491	22801	18031	8641	149:244
Qualification 77	14793	9974	11228	3491	276:204
Qualification 97	11148	3491	11754	18549	—
Qualification 110	3491	11039	310	7842	—
Qualification 120	7105	3491	10829	16417	—
Qualification 132	23350	19706	3491	8610	—

Match Results

Unfortunately, our first two wins were followed by four losses. The good news is the robot was working well at the end of the day, and there’s still more matches tomorrow.

Competition Day 1 – 2024

The robot cart finally came today and we were able to finish setting up our pit. We also got some fancy green lights for our banner! We also got to play our first match and we even won!!!

Judging seemed to go well and they were interested in what we’d been doing this season.

Kai: I was so surprised when they told us we needed to reinspect our team prop, we never got told anything about it before and now we might need to change it. Auto’s gonna be rough

Max: I’m glad we won our first match. Off to a good start!

Leo: I did my first scouting today and I’m excited for more!

Here’s our list of matches for the Thursday and Friday.

Match #	Red		Blue		Score
Qualification 2	20279	19964	8872	3491	124:149
Qualification 15	22708	14179	3491	10355	—
Qualification 31	16008	3491	10138	25	—
Qualification 47	10255	11112	3491	6294	—
Qualification 58	3491	22801	18031	8641	—
Qualification 77	14793	9974	11228	3491	—
Qualification 97	11148	3491	11754	18549	—
Qualification 110	3491	11039	310	7842	—
Qualification 120	7105	3491	10829	16417	—
Qualification 132	23350	19706	3491	8610	—

Thanks to Kristina for the twinkling lights in our pit!

Day in Houston

Our robot, Captain Hook, arrived safely in Houston last night and right now we are unpacking it and testing every feature. We are preparing Captain Hook for competition tomorrow!

Cool things from the Pits

Jasper: We saw our team name in the FTC Hall of Fame, which I thought was really cool because its cool to see the past accomplishments of our team!

Jason: One of the teams had a LEGO globe which teams can place a flag on where there from.

Leo: A team had a tape measure giveaway that was in inches and centimeters and it was really useful since I can’t find one when I need it.

Ryan: One of the teams had a super small robot which was really surprising.

Kai: I got to talk about a really interesting experimental technology with a SWERVE alumni from Washington who is now a Sparkfun employee. The technology is an optical version of dead wheels which has a built in IMU and laser which uses sensor merging to get the most accurate results. What was really cool is the technology comes out in May.

Max: There was a team that had a raffle for a free safari trip to South Africa. I hope I win!

Tonight we went to a Vietnamese restaurant, Huynh, and the food there was fantastic! The Pho and other delicacies tasted really good and I would recommend going there again to any teams going to Worlds.

Arriving at Worlds 2024

FIX IT 3491 arrived in Houston Texas for Worlds yesterday at around 6pm (Houston time)!!!

On our flight to Houston, the pilot made an announcement congratulating us for going to Worlds, and wished us the best of luck! Thanks Sean for making it happen!

During our unpacking in the Hilton hotel, we found a letter from the TSA wishing us the best of luck and saying that they were gentle with our robot, Captain Hook.

Last night we were out on Discovery Green and we walked around, ate some pizza and had some fun!!!