2019-2020 VEX Robotics Competition - Tower Takeover

A two weeks before school starts the gathering of robot nerds begin. As a new game means new mechansims to figure out. The tough part is 99% of middle team from last year has transitioned to the high school and I'm left training a new batch of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We spent a week researching and building several prototypes. At the end of the week we built a chassis that can go up the goals and intakes for the cubes.  I wish we could have more hours to finish up but there will never be enough time.

Team 68689A our all girls team. As a rookie team, this is all new to them and represents BPUSD all girl team for both Middle and High School. Everybody on the team has some type of PLTW course work as prior skills before coming on board.

Team 68689X our upper classmen boys team. They are composed of 2 veteran members from last years 68689X squad and two additional 8th grade members that have some PLTW experience but no VEX competition experience at all. It will be interesting to see if these boys will bring back last years experiences to help them be more successful this season. 

Team 68689D is our special team of brand new 6th graders. This team is our rookie team of the season as they are all 6th graders with no PLTW exposure and no prior VEX experience. Building and programming will be a huge hurdle for these kids as there is so much to learn in such a small period of time before and in between tournaments. Lets see how these kids will fair when the season truly is on!

On November 02, 2019, The City of Baldwin Park celebrated Jerry D. Holland's Middle School success in the 2019 "Turning Point" Season by honoring us at the local city parade. It was a bit of a celebrate on the part of Holland as we did not just include the current members of each team but include any members from previous seasons as they laid the foundation of our success that we currently reaping. Team 68689A from "In the Zone" was present as they were the first year we had ever competed and ended runner up at the California State Championships in 2018 and the first year we (Holland MS) had ever been the VEX World Championships in 2018 bringing home the "Teamwork Award". We had one member from Team 68689B from "Turning Point" as they were one of the California State Championship Tournment winner and also went to VEX World Championships and ranked #23 in the World for Skills in Middle School. Finally, the current teams were represented in the parade: Team A "all girls team", Team X "all boys team", and Team D "6th grade rookie team". It was the first time we ever been in a parade so we under prepared for the day but we did have fun and enjoyed seeing follow community members cheering us on the route. We hope to be able to continue this tradition next year by continue having successes in our public school VEX teams.

Round #2 for 68689D, they did not have much time to do some heavy modification as being thrown together with no or very little prior knowledge or skills in VEX EDR. Everything is new to everybody so it takes 10x more time to complete a simple task which would have taken a skilled team only minutes. With that in mind, the team did not replace their robot with a design they wanted but slow using the design process modifying key functions of their robot; especially the intakes and the tray. We found out with A, D and X team the swing intake arms does not give enough compression to intake more than 5 cubes with ease. But, with the lack of skill we did not want to change this function at the current time. We did change the arm mechanism to have a better lift capacity then before and a better tray mechanism. But, with little practice and a whole lot of downtime were not able to determine the drive team as of yet. During the tournment team D ended the day 2-3-0 as we went against more skilled teams in the rotations. Hopefully, this team can make some large leaps before the next scrimmage.

Saturday before Winter Break and kids are all reved up and ready to win some matches today. During the last scrimmage the D team has make sure the tray deploys before the intake swivel around 75% of the time and the tray now easy removes the cubes from the tray when moved forward. But, the team neglected to practice their autonomous program and lost 4 out of 5 autonomous part of each match. With such a large team it was difficult to have anybody on the drive team. So we developed a matrix so everybody would have a role on the drive team. But, again the tray not deploying and being out driven by other teams were our make issues we need to solve before the league finals which are coming up on 1/25/2020. Maybe the D team will have some fire and make out like bandits at the next tournament. D team ended the day 1-4-0 mostly by losing to their 1point autonomous program that had a bad starting placement. 

Team 68689A - Girls had a rough time at Ayala High School. So many things did not run their way on Sunday. First, they had issues with sizing their bot up in the morning. They know how to go through inspection but, when their bot did not fit into parameters they stood there and took it laying down. It took about 45 minutes for the girls to finally gather up enough courage to go through inspects and argue their point and finally pass inspection. The day did not go any smoother, team A lost some simple matches based on the fact they have not competed in like 2 months. The lack of competition throughout the mid season has made Team A a bit soft on the battlefield. Another thing we recognized is the fact the driver only practiced on the red side. After several matches on the blue side the drive team noticed they lacked the experience to drive well on the blue side something that the girls expect to fix when they get back to the practice field. The day was not kind to the girls today ended the day ranked #25 out of 32 teams 2-4-1. They did go into the round of 16 and losing on that round to not being able to drop a stack of 7 cubes. The girls noticed that the tray had issues all day and found out it was a loose tray motor causing the tray not stack properly. There were so many lesson learned this day and we hope to learned from this day forward. 

 

 

Team 68689X- We thought the girls had a rough day. The boys had an even rougher day. Inspection was not the issue. Not having uploaded their competition codes the night before was the major sticking point of the day. Team 68689X programmer totally forgot to convert his codes from test mode onto the competition template during the week. To make matters even worse at the competition location he forgot to pack the flash drive which is his physical backup for his codes back in the classroom. So during the first 2 hours of the competition team's 68689X programmer was trying to load a basic drive code and a basic one point autonomous to the robot. After all that we thought the worst has past but it got even worse. A by product of not having the be planned autonomous code and using the last minutes one point autonomous we did not anticipate the robot flipping over during the deployment of extended tray. We lost several matches trying to figure out the best method to deploy the tray while not using our preplanned maneuvers. We thought that was it for the day but it gets even better. There was a miscommunication with 68689A, about who will be packing their batteries for the tournament and team 68689X did not pack any batteries for the tournament and was forced to share batteries with their sister team. Which costed 68689A one match and skills challenge as the batteries were never fully charged. With all these setback and some major bad luck we ended the day ranked #31 out of 32 teams. They did go into the round of 16 but lost sololy to bad driving and decision making on the field. We chalked today's lose and will live another day.

Boy has team 68689D come a long away since their first scrimmage in late fall. During the last month since their last scrimmage. We have noticed their bot was not optimized to be the best, but with their limited skill set and background knowledge they understood it was a competition to just survive and beat as many evenly build teams as possible. We have finally setup our drive team and it was difficult as a rookie team all members wanted to be part of the drive team. To be fair to everybody on the team, we setup tryouts for each position on the drive team and selected the best for each position. At the finals those decision paid off. The team drove 100x better than in the past. Even when things did not fall in our direction, intakes getting stuck in the closed position, the drive team was able to think on their feet and drive to their best abilities at the time and even winning some impossible matches. They even scored 3rd in the Skills Challenge with a final score of 27 points a huge accomplishment for this rookie team that did not understand the rules of skills. They ended the league with a rank #13 out of 34 teams. The fun part was they were alliance captains for the first time and had to choose a partner which was totally foreign to them. In the round of 16, they lost in the first match sololy not to bad driving but a superior autonomous the opponents had performed or the match would have needed up tie. As the end of the tournament came several team members left home the coach and just couple members stayed behind to pick up their engineering notebook from the judges. While, waiting the most unexpected honored was rained upon team 68689D. They had won the hearts of the judges at the tournament by winning the "Energy Award." It is awarded to the team that showed the most enthusiasm on and off the field apparently 68689D oozed it today. Pretty special to be recognized like this by a rookie team. Now they can not wait for the next tournament in Chula Vista in two weeks.

Team 68689A - Following last weekends learning experience. Team 68689A came to CSUN with a different lens a more focused len. As this tournament the girls finished ranked 19th out of 32 teams with a record of 4-4-0. They went through inspection with flying colors, when into the first set of matches with a winning attitude and it showed today. The loses start coming in as their autonomous program did not make a single point in all their matches. They did change some motors out to torque motors but that should have made that much of an impact on their basic programming. It did not help during this tournament their programmer was out for the Lunar New Years and was not present to hotfix any issues they had on the field. I believe if she was their they would had concluded at a better position. They did finally completed their first skill run and ranked #5 with a total score of 10. We know they could have done better and will force on Skills on their last tournament next weekend. Just like 68689D the girl team won the hearts of the judges. They won the "Judges Award" at the tournament a much needed confidence boost for this all girl team. With this "win" they have enough confidence to hit their last tournament win a bang!

 

Team 68689X - With a disappointing result from last weekends tournament this team also had something to prove. This time all programs were preloaded before hand. All items were packed with someone double checking. But, in one area they did not check was the gear box were the tray was using. Apparently, stacking 9+ cubes on the tray cause some teeth on the gear to strip and slip as the tray moved forward. During the competition we did not have a spare 84 tooth gear and had to rotate and reset after every 3 to 4 matches to keep the gear from chipping or slipping. The team did well and was able to drop stacks of 8 cubes easily and was able to win a 1 vs 2 as their alliance at one match was a no show by dropping two stacks of 8 cubes and playing defense verse 2 robots. Autonomous scoring still did not work so its something we have to look at in the upcoming week. By the end of the day we placed #12 out of 32 with a 4-3-1 record ranked #12 for skills score of 5. But, alliance ranked 4 recognized we could power our way through and issue early with our tray picked us for alliance team. Went into round of 16 with a win 10 to 8 an ugly win but all bots had issues with autonomous and score as defense was heavily played. In Quarterfinals beat out two 3064 teams 23 to 16. But lost in semifinals to ranked #1. Overall, a promising turn of events for this team this year. A major victory just to get that far into elimination rounds. Lets see what next weekend brings.

 

As the tradition our school celebrates our achievements by having an end of semester Honor Roll Rally for students that did particularly well. We were chosen to represent our teams to do a small demonstration in front of our fellow peers during the assembly. It was unique because we drove it without our field and was outdoor. Happy to note that about 80% of all teams received at least some sort of a reorganization or award that day. 

 

Team 68689A - This was A teams last official tournament of the year. They had some issues to work out but all in all did finish well enough to make it into the elimination rounds. The girls had problem with the cubes not intaking well, issues stands out to be the flaps not gripping on the cubes. So during the competition our autonomous program only worked 40% of the time. We looked for advice from other teams as our head coach was not present at the tournament. Some teams suggested to clean the flaps to see if that would make it stick better to the cubes. It turns out that cured 50% of the intaking issues. Dirty cubes! We ranked 24th out of 34 teams with a record of 3-4 and a skill score of 21. We ran out of time to que for the program skills so we could not increased it by an additional 4-5 points. We were eliminated unfortunately by our sister team X during the quarterfinals. At this point in time we will have to see if our skill score is high enough to qualify for the California State Championships in March.

 

Team 68689X -  What a day! Our bot had so many issues at the beginning of the day based on our tray mechanism having so much issue moving our high compression intakes that it sheared off 3-4 teeth on the tray mech. We had to rotate the only gear we had as the teeth chipped during matches. But, we got into a way to turn it several degrees efficiently between matches. Our matches unlike the girls were horrible. Many of our matches were 1 vs 2 and for some reason our bot with issues out performed the other teams. We ranked 9th out of 34 with a skill score of 33 points. We were hot enough that day with a low ranking to be picked by the 2nd alliance captain. We beat round of 16 with a score of 29 to 12, we also won quarterfinal with a score of 42 to 13, we also won semifinals with a score of 22 to 0. Then everything fell apart, everything was going our way up until the finals. We won autonomous and only thing we need to do to win now is to keep even with the opposing alliances. Then all hell broke down. Within seconds of the driving period our tray does not open up and stays in the closed position and its laid over that we could not flip the tray up. With over 90 seconds of use trying to get the tray up. We finally do. With the remaining seconds we managed to score several points but it was not enough to win this day. We had such a grand day up to this point. We hoped to win. Now we prepare again for next weekends tournament of the season.