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

Heading to Australia

Getting Leia ready for her first flight proved to be more of a challenge than expected. Fortunately, a Times Colonist reporter was there to take pictures.

Our team is excited about heading to Australia, both for the competition and to see different types of flora and fauna.

Leia’s journey started with a trip on BC Ferries to Vancouver then a flight to Fiji, and finally arriving in Sydney Australia. The whole journey was tracked using an Apple AirTag.

Leia seems to have arrived fine, but the team was looking a bit tired…

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.

Victoria Scrimmage Nov. 2022

The Victoria Scrimmage was held at St. Margaret’s on Nov. 28, 2022. It was very exciting to see all of the teams in person and to check out their robots before the matches started.

It felt like we were queueing constantly. It felt like there was a lot we were bringing to the queueing table (beacon, sleeve, robot, driver station) which was stressful but the matches were very fun and overall it was great to see some of the rookie/underdog teams absolutely dominate with all of the experience and skill they had obtained. It goes to show that you can always compete no matter how long you’ve been involved with FIRST.

FIX IT Team with the robot at the Victoria Scrimmage

For all the results of the Scrimmage, check out the FIRST BC website!

FIX IT is a Fair Play team

What is Fair Play?

Fair play is a new program for FIRST Tech Challenge teams It was started by Mark Eldeman to “provide encouragement (and maybe a bit of extra incentive) to “do the right thing.”

In order to be a Fair Play team, a team must be:

Honest
Transparent
As a team, take the Fair Play for FTC pledge

Fair Play teams will publish robot match videos with scores and encourage comments and feedback from other FTC teams. It’s a great way for all teams to get better at scoring their own robot matches this season.

For more information regarding the Fair Play initiative, please visit:
https://firstroboticsbc.org/ftc/fair-play/

COVID Heroes

In March – May of 2020, FIX IT was part of the Vancouver Island COVID Printing Group who 3D printed face shields and ear protectors for medical facilities and front line workers.

It was a opportunity for our team members to use the skills they had developed by being on a robotics team, and do something to help make the lives of front line workers a little bit easier. We could use our CAD skills to create a new design for ear savers that would work better for people with straight hair, and then use our printing skills to create the ear savers.

In place of their popular annual awards for the Technology Industry, VIATEC held a celebration of the people and organizations in Greater Victoria that have made exceptional contributions to our community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our COVID 3D Printing group was recognized as COVID Heroes!

STEM Leaders of the Future Contest

BC students (Grades 1-12) are invited to celebrate all things science, technology, engineering, and math with Engineers and Geoscientists of BC by taking part in the STEM Leaders of the Future: Engineering and Geoscience contest!

Check out the list of challenges to help get those creative thoughts flowing. Using items you can find around the house, students are encouraged to create something brand new that solves one of today’s big issues.

Here are the basics of the contest:

How to Get Started: 6 steps to becoming our next STEM Leader of the Future
Challenge Topics: Thought-starters to help you identify a problem and think about a creative solution.
FAQs: Find answers to our most commonly asked questions
Project Submission Tips: Wondering what it takes to make a great project submission that is clever, original, and inventive? Here’s some tips to help get started.

Prizes will be awarded to the top entries in the following grade groups: Grades 1–3, Grades 4–6, Grades 7–9, and Grades 10–12.

Deadline to enter the contest is October 30, 2020.

Launching Planes

Our team spends a lot of time working on robots, but in the summer, we like to try some different types of projects too.

As a fun, design challenge we decided we wanted to do a paper airplane competition, with a twist – we would also have to build separate launching devices to launch the planes instead of throwing them. We ended up using 3 different forms of potential energy. Our first team used elastic potential energy pulled back into a Tetrix based launch to launch their plane. Our second team used air pressure by making a closed-air system which launched a plane by pushing down on a soda bottle. Our final team used chemical potential energy from the reaction of Coca Cola™ and baking soda to launch a rocket-shaped plane.

We had a lot of fun planning our strategies for the competition and painstakingly assembling our planes and the launcher. Our elastic plane launcher ended up taking the prize for the most accurate, landing in the nearest target hoop twice, and in the farthest hoop once. The plane that launched with air pressure wasn’t too accurate, but it managed to land in the near hoop once (unfortunately the soda bottle broke immediately after the first accurate launch). When you shoot for a moonshot you take a lot of risks and unfortunately the third plane was unable to launch, though we were treated to a pretty snazzy show of explosions.

At the end of the day, we had fun, learned lots, cooperated and had a pretty cool air show!

Water Game, Water Game

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 Engineering Showcase

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.