Over the years, FIX IT enjoys helping teams from all around the world. We hope to continue this work with our new project: FIX IT Tips and Tricks.
FIX IT Tips and Tricks ( https://fixit3491.com/ftc-resources/fix-it-tips-and-tricks/ ) is our new resource library filled with information to help robotics teams from all around the world for any questions they may have. Although the website does not currently have a lot of Tips and Tricks, we will be updating the website frequently to upload and add more Tips and Tricks.
The next 3 posts will be:
How to write an Engineering Notebook Entry
Robot Design Process
What to expect in the FIRST community
We will also be open to answering questions anyone might have through our Google Form:
Thank you and we look forward to creating more resources and helping as many teams as we can.
An Engineering Notebook Entry is the page or pages written every workday which is put in a section of your Engineering Notebook to keep track of the season.
Why is Engineering Notebook Entries important?
To keep track of what has been done
If a team member misses a meeting, they could check the Engineering Notebook and know what they have missed and where to keep going.
Judges review a team’s notebook when considering awards.
Engineering Notebook Tips
Make sure every team member documents what they did at every meeting. You don’t want one single person being in charge of entries, and making sure the team is consistent in documentation helps in the long run. Judges like to see different team members writing entries.
Check in and make sure the entries are done in a timely manner. Some teams have rules where you can’t touch the robot until the previous entry is done.
Document competitions – You can learn a lot at competitions and documenting things you learn can help you reflect and improve your robot.
Document the points your robot earned, what went well and what didn’t, as well as what other teams did well
Format
There is no right or wrong way to format your Entries, and all teams will format their Engineering Notebook Entries a little bit differently. Entries. However, date and members names are required for every entry.
How FIX IT 3491 does Engineering Notebook Entries
Over the years, FIX IT has changed the way we format our Entries, currently ( 2019 – 2020, ) we format it as:
Heading
Title (Work day, programming, competition, etc)
Who was there?
What kind of meeting was it?
What date and time was the meeting held?
Reflection
A short but relevant reflection on tasks that has been completed throughout the meeting. Our reflections could be anything from a very detailed and thought out reflection, to a small funny comment about the task at hand.
Entry
You are not only saying what happened at the meeting. FIX IT likes to follow a formula similar to this one, for every task.
Description of the task
Changes made and why changes are made
Pictures of the Mechanism ( both in real life, and in CAD ).
Try to include all sketches and pictures of the robot when new mechanisms come on the robot. Notes and calculations should be also put in the notebook!
What kind of difficulties did you face and how did you solve them?
What did you learn?
What was the final result? What’s next?
To do List – List of tasks for what’s next
What is the agenda today and what are our goals? These often come from the next steps from the previous meeting.
What decisions did your team make?
How did your team make those decisions?
Why did you make that choice?
What was the impact?
What is the next step?
Being able to reflect on the future at the beginning and the end of the meeting allows us to always be moving in a forwards direction and learning as we go through our robot design process.
Additionally
In the past, it was a requirement to have each team member sign each Engineering Notebook Entry, although that is no longer required, some teams still have each team member sign to acknowledge that every member has read every Entry.
Special features
Some teams also like to add a personal flair to their Engineering Notebook Entries, like adding a fun fact in each entry. FIRST Tech Challenge team “PrestidigiTaters 9761” adds a new potato dish/ snack in each Entry.
It can give the judges something special to remember you by. If you can think of something special that links to your team branding, even better!
Thank you for reading “How to Write an Engineering Notebook Entry,” we hoped that we have helped you. If you have any more questions or comments please feel free to let us know through our Google Form:
This was last updated on the 9th of August. 2020.
For anything more recent, make sure to check the current Game Manual Part One and Engineering Notebook Guidelines which can be found here.
This post is only applicable to the FIRST Tech Challenge.
It was great seeing all the teams at the Washington State Championships. Technova’s autonomous program was amazing, even if it had a few difficulties. We liked Perpetual Velocity’s fun team introductions, Bearded Pineapples had a great slideshow with CAD and of course, Safety Steve.
We like this year’s game since Alliances really have to work together to score the most points. Lots of teams were working with their Alliance Partners on the practice fields which was fun to watch.
Our robot had good matches (successful autonomous, stacking and end game points) and challenges (dragging a tape measure around the field during tele-op).
14179 Sushi Squad (2nd Alliance Captain) choose 12611 TechNova and FIX IT for their alliance partners. Unfortunately, we lost out in the semi-finals.
FIX IT was very excited to win the Inspire Award and qualify for the Houston Championships!
In spite of some weather challenges, FIX IT was able to go to Interleague but one of our team members missed the ferry. We were very exited to see the Washington State Teams who weren’t in our league.
FIX IT worked well with their partners and were ranked 1st at the end of the Qualifying Rounds. We chose 12611 TechNova and 6541 Titan Robotics II, which was a great alliance with all the teams and robots working well together. It was very exciting to win the final match and be the Captain of the Winning Alliance.
Our team members were surprised and delighted to be nominated for the design award and win the Control Award. Best of all, we’re going to the Washington State Championships on Jan. 26, 2020.
Rather than waiting for FIRST to create a Water Game, FIX IT decided to go looking for their own Water Game!
The 34th Annual Slegg Building Material Build-a-Boat Competition was on July 1st, Canada Day, in Sydney, British Columbia. Teams (must have three people) have a maximum of $115 worth of materials donated by Slegg Building Materials to build their boat. We entered with two teams; FIX IT with Joel, Mythri and Duncan ( FIX IT alumni) and Water Game with Ines, Bijou and Linday (a friend).
We had 4 hours to build our boats from the materials. Both boats came together fairly quickly, even though they were very different designs. The real question was ‘had we used enough caulk and duct tape to make them water tight?’
It was an exciting opportunity, and a chance to try our carpentry skills which turned out to be a challenge. But both boats were finished in the four hours allowed.
There were about 10 boats in the race around Sydney harbour. Fortunately, Search and Rescue were onsite, which turned out to be a good thing when one of the other crews needed rescuing.
One of the FIX IT team boats launched well, and completed the course. The other boat, named Caulk Monster, had some launching issues. The team was pretty happy to have their boat float, though it wasn’t hydrodynamic and it didn’t go very far. It was water tight until they tipped and let the water in over the sides.
Bijou and Ines decided to have some fun and went for a swim so they could escort the other FIX IT boat as it crossed the finish line.
Everyone had a great time and learned something about boat building. Our coach hoped that it would end the Water Game talk, but we may just try it again next summer!
Rainhouse sponsors the FIX IT Team and many of the Engineering Clubs at the University of Victoria. We’re all invited to enter this friendly competition to showcase our innovations on June 21, 2019.
This year, FIX IT set-up a full FIRST Tech Challenge playing field, and extra robots so the crowd could all get the opportunity to drive robots. There were lots of employees from tech companies, but also everyone from small kids to seniors. Everyone had a lot of fun, it was a really cool volunteering event.
We met some VIPs like the Dean of Engineering from the University of Victoria. He was interested in our robot and our future plans.
FIX IT competed in the Pasteur Interleague event in Washington State on Dec. 15, 2018.
We started the day by setting up our pit. We were excited and ready to go. We then had time to practice our interview a few times before getting queued for our judging interview. It was little scary, especially for our new team members but we did pretty well. Even though there were a few hiccups, everyone was confident and we made it though alive!
We had a lot of fun at Interleague! Some of the highlights were:
Switching wings and hats with the Rose Dragons.
Autonomous working in every match, including the final qualifying match. Encoder turns were perfect, finally!
Dancing to YMCA
Ines and Emily read it was T’was the Night before Interleague and received much applause
Flipping our hats onto our heads at the beginning of every match
Walking in the middle of the auditorium with the Canadian flag for the playing of “Oh Canada” amid much cheering
It was very exciting to be chosen for an alliance in the Elimination Rounds. Unfortunately, we lost out in the first round, but just being chosen added to the excitement of the day.
After a long and eventful Interleague, it was time for Closing Ceremonies. We won Motivate and 2nd Inspire and qualified for the Washington State Championships! You will see us there!!
