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We’re Back!

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What a great start of the season with many new recruits. This year, our team will be participating in the off season Minnie Trails event Beach Bash! An amazing opportunity for our new team members to explore the experiences of build season! We won’t just stop there, our team will also be a part of the Minne Mini where we’ll showcase our previous season’s robot! Huge thank you to Hopkins High School for hosting such an amazing event!

10 Thousand Lakes Recap

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A little more than three weeks ago we loaded into William’s Arena for the 10 Thousand Lakes regional (10k for short). This is our last regional of the season and with how our season has been going so far we were all very excited for this regional.

How we did

At the Duluth regional, we struggled with our robot crashing and becoming unresponsive, and we have also struggled with similar issues in past years. At 10k we had an unprecedentedly low number of these “Rock Mode” matches. In one of our practice matches we lost power to our roboRIO (that’s the main controller in our robot, it is very important), aside from that, our robot was running in every match we played. That is to say our robot was, at a bare minimum, operational and moving around in all but one of our matches. 

Now, that doesn’t sound very impressive at first, but considering the treatment Snuffy has been through, especially with this being its second regional, it’s a win in my book. However, we did have some mechanisms fail over the course of the weekend, namely the Vanguard intake, and the climber (both pictured below).

(The Vanguard was designed to improve the consistency of the intake. The front section jammed halfway through qualification matches and prevented us from intaking. The best solution we could come up with before the next match was sawing off the offending section of the Vanguard. As the one who designed this mechanism, I will say it was not a fun decision to make).

 

 

 

 

(The joints of the climber have shattered and been replaced several times now. If we run with it, it is very likely it will fail during a climb and drop the robot onto the floor. We have since redesigned the climber to increase its strength, hopefully allowing us to climb more than once before breaking it).

 

 

 

 

 

We were not able to repair these mechanisms during the course of the competition. However, the core mechanisms (the shooter and the main intake) were operating well and we were able to keep Snuffy up and running.

After the qualification matches we were ranked 5th, more than high enough to qualify for the semi-finals. During the semi-finals we lost our first match, but ended up winning twice in the lower bracket. Our last match was very close. Before the results were revealed the scoreboard actually showed that we had more points than the other alliance. But after some last minute points were added, we lost to the first seed alliance, who would go on to win the regional, by a mere 4 points.

After everything, we were the fourth place alliance in the playoffs, which means that we were somewhere between the 13th and 4th best robot at the regional (Robotics is a complicated sport).

We were also awarded the Excellence in Engineering award, given to teams who demonstrate “a professional approach to the design process.” This is one of the more prestigious awards our team has received (special thanks to Bailey and Duncan for talking to the judges in the pits).

What all this means

We made a very good robot this year, everyone on the team should be proud. Because of our performance at this regional we qualify for the state competition, and we stand a good chance of doing well. The competition will be on Saturday May 4th (that’s next Saturday).

With the world championships wrapping up a week ago, we are moving towards the end of the robotics season. The state competition is the last competition we will attend this season, and team activities will start to slow down until next year (and Snuffleupagus will get a well deserved rest).

Some highlights of the competition

(Jeremy deputizing a shark)

(The team walking on the field to receive the Excellence in Engineering award)

(Something very exciting happening away from the camera)
(The view from the pits)
(Ari embodying gracious professionalism)

A Successful Start to the Competition Season!

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Our beloved robot, “Snuffy” took a good swing at our annual Duluth competition this year! Qualification matches started a little rough on Friday morning, with a new species of code issue and some encoder problems. After trying to implement some of our “magic” shooting position code into our autonomous routines, we encountered a bug that caused our code to crash. Normally, you would be able to reboot this code, and the robot would just be out for a portion of the match. However, in our case, we also encountered a bug on the system side of things- a bug that didn’t allow our code to reboot. This meant that we went “rock mode”, and essentially played the role of a fancy statue for the remaining of our matches after a crash. We had another issue with encoders (sensors that tell us where our robot’s wheels are in relation to the field), causing it to be immensely difficult for our drivers to control the direction of the robot, but regardless we still cycled nicely. Despite these difficulties in our first few matches, we were coupled with some amazing partners and remained undefeated. 

After a few code and encoder fixes- we were ready to roll, flying through our qualification matches. On our 9th and final qualification match, we were faced with a powerful alliance, we knew it would be tough. In autonomous, our alliance had shot into the speaker, but the scoring mechanism had been jammed. This meant that even though we had made the shots during the allotted time frame, they had been scored as if they had happened after the time. When the match concluded, our alliance had been scored as 10 points behind our opponents. We quickly sent members of our alliance up to the question box, to ask judges to review the match and ensure that our points were scored correctly. The judges were able to see the jamming of the speaker scoring mechanism and adjusted our points accordingly. We were still defeated, but only by one point! Here we finished our qualification matches 8-1, ranking number 6 out of 55 teams. 

Then came the fun part- eliminations. After picking, we stood as the captain of Alliance 4, alongside our partners Team 5690 SubZero, and Team 2861 Infinity’s End. We did well in our first match against Alliance 5, but were stifled by defense in our second match against Alliance 1. Due to the nature of double elimination- Snuffy was still going. We did well in our 3rd match, defeating Alliance 6, and put on a beautiful winning show against Alliance 8. Our drivers worked hard to catch up, and overcame the talents of Alliance 8, by 1 point!! We owe this to Ari for his last-second park, bringing us to our final match of the competition. In this we faced Alliance 7, and ultimately succumbed to them, finishing this competition in a well-earned 3rd place overall. 

Even then- we were still not done. As we were leaving the field from our losing match, heads hung high, a voice from our alliance partner rang out,“Guys! Come back, you won an award!”. Sure enough, we did. Team 2823 was honored with the award for autonomous, wowing the judges with our code. To this, we owe the programming team who has worked tirelessly to help get our robot moving- all by itself, and to every other person who has contributed to our amazing team, and our amazing robot!

Well, we’ve partied hard but there is much work to be done- catch us at the Minnesota 10,000 Lakes regional in a couple short weeks, or at the Minnesota State Competition in early May!

We’re Back!

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It’s been an exciting start to the year with lots of new recruits. We are so excited to give them a taste of what competition with our robot Chomp is like at the MRI on Saturday at Roseville High School! A huge thank you to the FireBears for putting it on! 

Another awesome season has wrapped up!

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We participated in the Lake Superior and 10,000 Lakes Regionals, and made it to semifinals in both! At Lake Superior, we had a few problems but learned a lot. We were alliance captains at 10,000 Lakes and worked with teams 3630 and 2450. Double elimination brackets were a new experience for us, but the strategy team was up for the challenge. Unfortunately, we lost in match 12 but ranked 4th!

We also won the Creativity Award, sponsored by Rockwell Automation, thanks to our washing machine, which allows our robot, Chomp, to rotate cones from any orientation so we can place them on the field. Credit goes to Bailey Beedle, the mastermind behind the mechanism, and Julian Burns who helped out every step of the way. Bailey is pictured to the right helping out as another team fixes their intake.

We took some time off but then came together to celebrate with an end-of-year picnic to reflect on our season, give out awards, and honor everyone that lettered in robotics this season. Lots of food and fun!

But the year’s not over yet, and robotics goes year-round. Just last week some of the team volunteered at Allianz Field to raise money for next season, and soon another group will go. Later this summer we have some fun outreach events planned, including a spot at the State Fair! More info to come on social media, so don’t forget to follow us @hprobotics2823 on Instagram! 

Preseason Robotics

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This year has started out strong for Team 2823! We competed at Prior Lake’s Minne Mini, a regional competition to show our newbies the ropes, and what a real FIRST event looks like. It was our introduction to double-elimination matches, and we had a blast. Although we didn’t win, it was still an awesome experience and a day full of fun! 

Our team volunteered at Chocoholic Frolic, a race with a 10k, 5k, and a KidsK. We helped set up, sign the runners in and give them their numbers, passed out water and medals, handed out snacks, cleaned up, and got some cool t-shirts too. The day was filled with lots and lots of chocolate, and we made some money to support the team!

CADurday (CAD day on Saturdays) aka the best day of the week, where we learn how to use CAD software. We always have donuts to keep the spirits high (plus get people lured in), and there is lots of frustration fun and learning too! If you don’t know, CAD stands for computer-aided design, and it can be used to create 2-dimensional sketches or 3-dimensional models. So of course, in order to have the awesome benefits of having models to demonstrate and improve our work, we need to learn how the heck to use the software, and it has a pretty big learning curve. Thanks to our amazing mentors it is very fun, and the learning makes it all worth it. 

And finally, huge thanks to everyone that donated on Give to the Max day! Your donations go straight to the team and help keep the Automatons running. They get us the parts, snacks, and pay the fees we need to compete. Your support is truly appreciated. Thank you!

New School Year Robotics

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Team 2823 HP Robotics returns with the new school year! We had a great season last year (3rd at state), and we are looking forward to an even better one this year. We have many new students joining us and our team is looking stronger than ever. We are so excited for another year of innovating with First robotics, we look forward to working together with other teams!

Today is Give to The Max

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Give to the Max day is on November 18th–which is today! You may already know this if you have been receiving a bunch of similar emails from other organizations. But how many of those organizations can say they have built a beautiful, capable robot that can launch balls in all directions and hang from various heights? Also, one of the strongest principles our team upholds is that STEM education and opportunities should be universally accessible, regardless of economic class, gender, race, or location. Because of this, we do not charge activity or membership fees to our students so that there is no monetary barrier to joining our team. This requires us to work hard every year on fundraising. Please consider donating to HP Robotics Parent Org, a non-profit 501c3 solely focused on supporting robotics at Highland Park. Your tax deductible donations can be submitted either directly to the team by check or online with GiveMN.  Share this link with family and friends: https://www.givemn.org/story/I0ba6f Or mail to:
HP Robotics Parent Org
PO Box 16414
St. Paul, MN 55116 And don’t forget to check with your employer for company match opportunities! Thank you for your generosity,
HP Robotics Parent Organization Inc
Tax id:  81-4584912

Give to the Max Day is Soon!

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Give to the Max day is on November 18th–about a week away! You may already know this if you have been receiving a bunch of similar emails from other organizations. But how many of those organizations can say they have built a beautiful, capable robot that can launch balls in all directions and hang from various heights? Also, one of the strongest principles our team upholds is that STEM education and opportunities should be universally accessible, regardless of economic class, gender, race, or location. Because of this, we do not charge activity or membership fees to our students so that there is no monetary barrier to joining our team. This requires us to work hard every year on fundraising. Please consider donating to HP Robotics Parent Org, a non-profit 501c3 solely focused on supporting robotics at Highland Park. Your tax deductible donations can be submitted either directly to the team by check or online with GiveMN.  Share this link with family and friends: https://www.givemn.org/story/I0ba6f Or mail to:
HP Robotics Parent Org
PO Box 16414
St. Paul, MN 55116And don’t forget to check with your employer for company match opportunities! Thank you for your generosity,
HP Robotics Parent Organization Inc
Tax id:  81-4584912