Competitions – FIX IT 3491

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!!!

FIX IT is heading to FTC World Championships

It’s exciting to win the BC FTC Championships and find out your team has qualified for Worlds!

But then the planning starts. How do you all get there? Where will you stay? How do you improve your robot to make it ready for World Championships? How are we going to pay for everything?

Fortunately, our season plan started with a complete game analysis and robot strategy with improvements for each of our events. We already knew what we’d need to change to be ready for Worlds.

Our robot, Captain Hook, now has a much for effective claw and an extending are which should double our scoring in tele-op.

Our other priority is fundraising! If you’d like to support our team, please check out our GoFundMe. If you know a company who might want to sponsor the team, please contact us with the information.

Follow our journey in at World Championships on our website. We’ll be making new posts each day.

Team FIX IT – BC Championship – Inspire Award

BC Championships 2024

FIX IT was in the BC FIRST Tech Challenge Championships held in Surrey BC. The top 24 teams from British Columbia and the Yukon were competing.

Some of the highlights for our team were:

playing in the highest scoring match of the Qualifying Rounds. With Guild of Builders, we got a high score of game of 220 points including a 100 point perfect autonomous.
we had fun hanging out with other teams at the social on Saturday night.
thanks to FTC 18841 KSS One for choosing us to be on their Alliance.
Mecha mustangs had a really cool under glow on their robot.

Of course, winning Inspire was our favourite moment of the day.

FIX IT will be competing at the FIRST World Championships in Houston Texas on April 17-20, 2024. Check out our Go Fund Me to help or contact us if you have a suggestion about a company who could sponsor our team.

November Scrimmage

On November 18, FIX IT was part of a CENTERSTAGE Scrimmage hosted by St. Margaret’s School in Victoria. It was our first event of the season, and the first ever event for two of our three drive team members!

Overall, we had a strong autonomous program that worked in most matches. Our robot could hang in end game. Unfortunately, our drone launcher lost the drone during the matches.

Our robot, Captain Hook, is very fast on the field. Even with a rookie driver, it was able to score lots of pixels in the backstage.

APOC Day 4

Today was a much quieter day with lots of packing. First was packing up our pit, then our suitcases so we would be ready to leave.

The Award Ceremony started at 10am. FIX IT won the Motivate Award!

After Awards, we spent some time exploring Macquarie University.

Personal highlights of the day

Max – winning the motivate award. It was exciting to see our hard work pay off.

Garrett – Going to the arcade with Project R. They introduced me to taiko no tatsujin, a drumming game that’s loads of fun!

Food/beverage highlights of the day

Garrett – Got my favourite food Chicken Alfredo from Bondi Pizza. It was clear that the sauce was made in house. Would recommend it.

APOC Day 3

What an exciting day! FIX IT won all three of their matches for a record of 5/6. We were in sixth place at the start of Alliance Selection and invited to join the fourth alliance.

Unfortunately, our alliance was eliminated in the semifinals.

After the final matches were played, it was time for the block party! There was dancing and even a photo booth. Here’s some pictures we took with some of the RoboKings.

Personal highlights of the day

Bryce – My favourite part about today’s competition was having to test our alliance partner candidate’s Autonomous in order to assist us in deciding who to pick.

Garrett – Explaining the Event and what FIRST is to a pair of curious university students that had wandered in.

Max – seeing how happy team VORTEX was after we chose them to be on our alliance.

Food/beverage highlights of the day

Garrett – Drinking Max’s 7 dollar green apple juice. It definitely wasn’t what he wanted.

APOC Day 2

The mornings start early and the nights go late!

Today we were up early to make sure everything was ready for our judging interview at 9:30, which went well.

Then there was time for practice matches before lunch, including our match with Gong Invaders who are an Aussie team we’ve gotten to know.

This afternoon was Qualification matches. Leia is doing well, but at this level of competition, you need two good robots to stand a chance. Our first match of the day was with a team 20870 Matrix from Mumbai, India. It was our high score for the season of 265 points.

The second match was a tough with our partner largely disabled in the substation making it very difficult for us to get cones to score.

The third match was against the US team, 8644 Brainstormers, who were one of the top teams at Worlds. Both FIX IT and our partner 11022 from Romania were excited to win that match. Currently we’re ranked 10th, which is great at a very competitive event!

With the competition wrapped up for the day, we had a quick dinner and headed to the Walangari Karntarwara Aboriginal show. It turned out to be an audience participation event!

The night wrapped up with a Trivia contest. Two of our team members came in second and third!

And just in case we forgot where we were, there interesting birds to see on campus and even visiting our hotel balcony!

Personal highlights of the day

Garrett – Winning our third match against The Brainstormers, we were not very confident but we pulled it off.

Max – We meet a really fun competitor from India! His name is Pai and he’s part of team Matrix 20870

Bryce – Since I was called to the field due to log file issues after matches ended, I was able to take some beautiful robot photos with the field in the background!

Food/beverage highlights of the day

Garrett – Got some brown sugar bubble tea at the university. Pretty good!
Max – I had a lamington for the first time ever! It was decent.

More photos from APOC Day 2