Administrative

Pictures of this event have been omitted to protect the privacy of all teams in attendance.

This past weekend (February 15th and 16th), Team 254 and Team 1868 hosted their annual FRC scrimmage. In our lab, generously provided by NASA, we are thankful to have a near full-size field to practice on, so we opened up our lab so neighboring teams could practice before stop-build day. In addition, 254 and 1868 setup a full-stocked tools chest for visiting teams to work on their robots, along with snacks and drinks served throughout the day. Thirty-one teams registered to attend the scrimmage, four of which were participating in FRC for the first time. The scrimmage also gave teams that showed up the opportunity to discuss ideas about this year’s game, Aerial Assist, and preview each other’s robots ahead of competition. Moreover, we were excited to see Jim Beck, the Northern California First Representative, in attendance. We’re always glad to help out fellow FRC teams and we look forward to our annual scrimmage next February!

The event is free for spectators. Below is information about the tournament, including details on the qualifications for the state and US national tournaments.

Outline

• Changes from last year
• Schedule
• Tournament Location
• Concessions & Pizza Order Form
• Awards Given
• Information for Competitors
• Information for Novices

Changes from Last Year

• There are more teams competing, so if you can, please get inspected on Friday evening.
• We have extended the hours for the skills challenge field. It will open at 7:30 on Saturday morning and stay open through 4:30pm. High skills challenge scores can lead to a berth at the California State Championship.
• Qualifications have changed and are described in the "Awards Given" section below.

Schedule

Friday, November 22, 2013

6 pm - 8 pm

Check-In and Inspection (in Liccardo)

6 pm - 9 pm

Practice time for teams

Saturday, November 23, 2013

7:15 am

Pit Area and Registration Opens (in Liccardo)

7:15 am - 8:30 am

Inspection (in Liccardo)

7:30 am - 8:30 am 7:30 am - 4:30 pm 8:15 am

Practice Rounds (in Sobrato Theater) Skills Challenge Field open (2nd floor Sobrato Theater) Check-in closes (Teams scratched that haven't checked in)

8:30 am - 8:45 am

Driver's Meeting (in Sobrato Theater)

8:30 am - 9:30 am

Sign up for judging interview (at Pit Admin table)

8:45 am

Welcome (in Sobrato Theater)

9:00 am - 12:30pm

Qualifying Rounds (in Sobrato Theater)

12:30 pm - 1:00 pm

Lunch Break (We will have Pizza Order Forms)

1:00 pm - 2:35 pm

Qualifying Rounds Continue (in Sobrato Theater)

2:45 pm

Alliance Selection Process (in Sobrato Theater)

3:00 pm - 5:30 pm 4:30 pm

Playoffs (in Sobrato Theater) Skills Challenge field closes

~5:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Finals, Awards, Closing Ceremony (in Sobrato Theater)

Tournament Location

Bellarmine College Preparatory 960 W. Hedding St. San Jose, CA 95126//mapq.st/17Jl2d5

 

Street parking is very limited due to permit parking restrictions. On campus parking is marked with red on the campus map (linked below). The green boxes on the map represent the pit area.

View detailed campus map (PDF)

Concessions

Pizza will be available for $15 a large pie from Tony & Albas. Please order your pizzas by midnight on Nov 20 using this form. Please pay for your pizza when you check-in.

The following items will be available for purchase in the Liccardo Center (8am – 3pm):

• Vegetarian Egg Rolls
• Variety of Donuts, Muffins,
• Fresh Fruit & Oatmeal
• Cheetos and Cheez-Its & Coffee and Tea
• Oreo Cookies & Variety of Juices
• Candy Bars & Bottled Water
• Cliff Bars & Snapple Iced Tea
• Caesar Salad & Hot Chocolate
• Cinnamon Rolls
• Samosas

Awards Given

We have 5 qualifications for the VEX US Open (Excellence, Design and the tournament champions). Those teams, along with the finalists, also qualify for the California state championships.

iDesign will be offering a $100 gift certificate, which will go to the team that receives the Judges award.

 

Note that the skills rankings will be used to identify all additional teams that will be used to fill the state championship event to its capacity of 48 teams. Every team should realize the importance of this opportunity.

Info for Competitors

If you want to be considered for the Excellence or Design awards, you will need to sign up for an interview by 9:30am. Go to the Pit Manager to schedule (or change your appointment time if needed). The interview rooms are on the second floor of the Sobrato Theater building.

The skills challenge field is also on the 2nd floor of the Sobrato theater building. Teams are not limited to the number of attempts, however, any team with fewer than 3 attempts can move ahead of other teams waiting in line.

 

Teams will be scratched from the tournament if they have not checked in by 8:15am. If you are running late, please text 408-341-9066 or email [email protected] before 8:15am, or your team will not be able to compete.

 

Bring safety glasses, power strips, tools, programming cables, engineering notebook, RECF releases (available at: //content.vexrobotics.com/epdocs/VRC_ReleaseForm_012011.pdf). Be sure your robot can pass inspection!

Info for Novices

It is highly recommended for you to arrive Friday to go through the inspection and try a couple practice matches. Friday will be much more relaxed and our inspectors will be able to help you through the inspection process. Also, our field managers will be able to guide you through the competition process. Be sure to bring fully charged batteries, chargers, spare parts and tools in case anything breaks. Be sure your vexnet keys are working well. Lastly, double check your robot against the inspection check list.

At the tournament, check in by 8:15am. Check the match schedule when it is published (around 8:35am) and make sure you are ready for each match. Try to have fully charged batteries for each match. Be sure the drivers and coach have safety glasses when they arrive at the field to compete.

More information on the game is at the RobotEvents website. The current rankings for Robot Skills and Programming skills are listed there also.

Already seven weeks into the start of the new school year, we have had many events, including workshops and team meetings, to kick off the new robotics season.

 

Our first mandatory meeting for the team was at the Introduction meeting, where all incoming freshmen, new members, and existing members were formally introduced to the leaders of Team 254 and students became familiar with the expectations for this new season. There was an outstanding attendance as over 130 interested participants registered for the team afterwards. We also held a parent meeting where we presented new information to parents and answered questions.

In the following week, we officially began the VEX season with our VEX Kickoff, where we introduced this year's new game "Sack Attack" for those who have not seen it yet or were interested in participating in VEX this year. Jonathan Chang led the meeting and explained the design process each team must follow, along with safety regulations for Bellarmine's new lab. New VEX teams were released and captains then led each sub-team to discuss game strategy and begin their brainstorming process.

Finally past the busy start of a new season, we smoothly transitioned into the Zero Robotics Kickoff led by Richard Lin, different workshops including Graphic design led by Kyle Schnoor and PR/Marketing led by Avery Strand, and VEX builds. Each VEX team presented their team's robot design to the mentors, who gave their critique to each team, and teams now in the process of building each robot according to their CAD drawings. We have just begun registering teams for VEX tournaments, the first one already starting in October at San Ramon.

The mentors, leaders, and sub-captains are all looking forward to another great VEX season this year to follow up with last year's excellent performance at the World Championships. As a reminder, you should still check the calendar often for meetings and lookout for upcoming workshops that interest you.

A couple reminders:

• All students are required to attend the introductory meeting. They are on August 22nd and 23rd (come to one OR the other) from 3:00 to 4:00, in Sobrato Theater. These are mandatory meetings, as announced in the previous informational email.
• Vex Kickoff (similar to FRC kickoff, but for VEX) is also a required event. It is on August 30th from 3:00 - 5:00. Location TBD.
• Whole Team Meetings are now every Wednesdays afterschool in Andrade, starting on the 29th. Please look at the calendar for more information.
• Please make sure your account works on the website (BOTH parents and students).
• Parent Meeting on August 28th at 7:00 in Sobrato.

As you may have noticed, the Team 254 website has been redesigned significantly. We've been working hard on updating it to modern web design standards, improving content, and reorganizing the site to be more logical. We hope that users find the site easier to navigate and more visually pleasing. The team member portal has also been re-created and should be easier to navigate.

We've imported most users from the old website, so we recommend trying to log in with your same credentials. If you're having trouble logging in and cannot request a new password, contact stephen.

We heavily utilized Twitter Bootstrap in the redesign, so the site should display consistently across all modern web browsers. Behind the scenes, we're running the latest version of WordPress. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact us.

We had a very busy past week, with two outreach events/demos. On Wednesday, we had a Diversity Day event at NASA. We had a great turnout. Thank you to everyone who attended. We were able to show a lot of people our robot and many were impressed. A picture of us demoing the robot is below.

Even bigger news, we held our first Freshman Lab Day on Saturday, where over 60 incoming freshman and their families came to the lab to witness robotics first hand. It was an excellent opportunity for the incoming freshman to see if they want to do robotics before they even start school (Robotics: +1, speech and debate: 0). It was an awesome recruitment event and everything went well. Since it was such a success, we will be having more of these events in the following years. A picture is included below of Vex Leader, Jonathan Chang demonstrating a vex robot to a group of freshman and their parents.

That said, we had a very successful week and an excellent transition for our 2012-2013 season. Our first meetings will be on August 22nd and 23rd. Both of them will be held afterschool in Sobrato Theater. Please be there by 2:50 so we can start promptly. Both meetings will be the same. ALL RETURNING MEMBERS MUST ATTEND. If you cannot attend any of those two meetings, please let Mrs. Roemer know immediately. These will be introduction meetings, where we will talk about the team and the rest of the school year. If you do not attend, your membership on the team will be up for consideration. This is one of the few mandatory events we have throughout the year.

We make mandatory events, because they are integral to the development of the team. If you ever cannot make it to a mandatory event, please let a teacher know immediately and they will discuss it with you. All information after ANY meeting will be posted here on the blog under its designated category, so make sure you check here daily. In addition, and just as importantly, it is necessary that you check the blog on a daily basis. Every time you open up Facebook, think about opening up the blog. That is how you will stay connected with the team, and know what is happening.

The leadership has been preparing all year for the beginning of the year and we are alle very excite for this new year. See you all on August 22 or 23rd. Welcome to the 2012-2013 robotics season.