Please help support our team! $40 buys a motor, $55 buys a new battery, $150 adds controllers and sensors, $500 pays tournament fees, $750 upgrades our chassis

Iron Reign

Welcome to Iron Reign at Dallas ISD's Science and Engineering Magnet

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Another Great Robotics Resource!

Another Great Robotics Resource! By Aarav

Recently, one of our readers, a girls STEM club, reached out to express their appreciation for our online blog and how they used it for their robotics research project. We’re really glad that people find the...

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First 2024-2025 Meeting

First 2024-2025 Meeting By Aarav, Anuhya, Sol, Elias, Jai, Krish, Nalin, Georgia, Ren, and Fernando

Today marked the first full program robotics meeting of the Into the Deep season. We had about 20 new recruits come into...

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Robot in 2 Days Gripper

Robot in 2 Days Gripper By Anuhya, Sol, and Fernando

One major component of the intake system we designed during robot in two days was a pincer gripper claw. Attached to a linear slide outtake, there is...

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Robot in 2 Days Code

Robot in 2 Days Code By Jai and Elias

Since we chose to build on the swerve platform that we developed over the summer, we needed to make some additions to the code for the swerve platform. The swerve module is built...

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Robot in 2 Days Chassis

Robot in 2 Days Chassis By Aarav, Anuhya, Sol, and Fernando

Robot in two days (Ri2D) is an ideation process Iron Reign goes through to explore the new seasons and brainstorm designs and ideas for the game....

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Townview Interest Meeting

Townview Interest Meeting By Anuhya, Sol, Elias, Jai, Krish, Aarav, and Nalin

Yesterday, we hosted our first interest meeting! We were able to introduce a lot of kids to robotics, and got a lot of new recruits...

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2024 Flyset Workshop

2024 Flyset Workshop By Anuhya, Jai, Aarav, Fernando, Sol, Alex, and Nalin

This past Saturday, we presented at the 10th annual Flyset Workshop, hosted by team 8565, TechnicBots and UTD.

We were given the opportunity...

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Code/Art Outreach Round 2

Code/Art Outreach Round 2 By Tanvi, Georgia, Anuhya, and Ren

On August 6th, we presented to Code/Art. Code/Art is a non-profit organization that introduces young women from underrepresented backgrounds to STEM. They specialize in teaching programming using...

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Kinwest Summer Robotics Camp

Kinwest Summer Robotics Camp By Anuhya, Aarav, Jai, Krish, Sol, Ren, Fernando, Elias, and Tanvi

These past three days, we hosted a Robotics camp focused on CAD and coding Lego Sumo robots at Kinwest Montessori, a school...

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Frontiers of Flight Moon Day Outreach

Frontiers of Flight Moon Day Outreach By Anuhya, Georgia, Alex, Tanvi, Fernando, Ren, Sol, Jai, Aarav, Krish, Bhanaviya, Darshan, and Jayesh

This past Saturday, we had a very fulfilling day at the 16th annual Moonday, honoring the...

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Girls in Robotics with Code/Art

Girls in Robotics with Code/Art By Tanvi, Georgia, Anuhya, and Ren

On Thursday, June 13, our robotics team presented a Girls in Robotics presentation to Code/Art. Code/Art is a non-profit organization that introduces young women from underrepresented...

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Applying Forward/Inverse Kinematics to Score with PPE

Applying Forward/Inverse Kinematics to Score with PPE By Elias and Alex

Task: Explain how we use kinematics to manipulate PixeLeviosa (our Outtake)

This year’s challenge led Iron Reign down a complex process of developing...

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Support for the FTC State Championship

Support for the FTC State Championship By Aarav and Anuhya

Iron Reign’s state bound! At NTX Regionals, we proudly got Inspire 3, and were the 5th advancement to FTC Texas UIL and the State Championship!...

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Meeting with a Program Management Director at Lockheed Martin

Meeting with a Program Management Director at Lockheed Martin By Anuhya, Sol, Krish, Elias, Alex, Nalin, Fernando, and Aarav

Task: Meet with the a professional from Lockheed Martin for advice

On March 8th we...

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2nd Meeting with the Director of R&D at HOYA

2nd Meeting with the Director of R&D at HOYA By Aarav, Anuhya, Sol, Krish, Jai, Elias, and Fernando

Today, we had our second meeting this season with the Director of R&D at Hoya, Abhi Patnaik....

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DPRG Presentation Review Meeting

DPRG Presentation Review Meeting By Aarav, Nalin, Anuhya, Elias, and Jai

Task: Meet with the DPRG and review our judging presentation

Today, Iron Reign mock-presented at the DPRG weekly meeting and received tons of valuable...

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Lessons We’ve Learned Switching from CAD to a Physical Model

Lessons We’ve Learned Switching from CAD to a Physical Model By Anuhya, Sol, Krish, and Fernando

Task: Overview the issues with PPE V3 and the changes that need to be made.

This past weekend, we...

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Meeting with the Stanford Salisburg Lab

Meeting with the Stanford Salisburg Lab By Aarav and Nalin

Task: Meet with the Salisbury Robotics Lab and discuss their work

Today, Iron Reign met with four members of the Salisbury Robotics Lab at Stanford...

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Mentoring FLL Teams at Sudie

Mentoring FLL Teams at Sudie By Tanvi, Georgia, and Fernando

Task: Help the Sudie L. Williams Academy FLL teams

Today, 3 Iron Reign team members met with three Sudie L. Williams FLL teams...

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U^2 Tournament Post-Mortem

U^2 Tournament Post-Mortem By Aarav, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, Georgia, and Anuhya

Task: Analyze our performance at the U^2 Tournament

After we advanced to Regionals by winning Inspire 2, we sat down as a team and discussed our...

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U^2 Tournament Play-By-Play

U^2 Tournament Play-By-Play By Aarav, Anuhya, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, and Georgia

Task: Review our performance at the U^2 Tournament

Today, Iron Reign competed in our U^2 League Tournament. We won Think...

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Meeting with the Director of the Dallas College STEM Institute

Meeting with the Director of the Dallas College STEM Institute By Georgia, Anuhya, Sol, Aarav, Krish, Alex, and Jai

Task: Meet with the Dallas College STEM Institute

Today, we met with Dr. Jason Treadway,...

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Meeting with the Director of R&D at Hoya

Meeting with the Director of R&D at Hoya By Tanvi, Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, and Alex

Task: Meet with the Director of R&D at HOYA

Today, Iron Reign met with the Director of R&D at...

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League Meet 3 Post-Mortem

League Meet 3 Post-Mortem By Aarav, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, Georgia, and Anuhya

Task: Analyze our performance at our 3rd League Meet

After our performance at Meet 3, Iron Reign sat down as a team and discussed what...

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League Meet 3 Play-By-Play

League Meet 3 Play-By-Play By Anuhya, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, and Georgia

Task: Review our performance at our 3rd League Meet

Today, Iron Reign had its third league meet. It was more successful than our last league meet,...

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Meet Our Field Class

Meet Our Field Class By Jai and Alex

Task: Explain how we map the field and use it in our code

A huge focus this season has been navigation; each scoring sequence spans the...

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Positioning Algorithms

Positioning Algorithms By Jai and Alex

Task: Determine the robot’s position on the field with little to no error

With the rigging and the backdrops being introduced as huge obstacles to pathing this year,...

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Mentoring FLL Teams

Mentoring FLL Teams By Georgia, Sol, and Alex

Task: Help the Sudie L. Williams Academy FLL teams

Today we met with four FLL teams at Sudie L. Williams TAG Academy: the Code-iators (11978),...

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Portfolio Workshop with 9161 from Aledo, TX

Portfolio Workshop with 9161 from Aledo, TX By Tanvi, Aarav, and Anuhya

Task: Give portfolio tips to 9161 Overload

Today, Iron Reign held a portfolio workshop for team 9161 Overload from Aledo, TX....

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League Meet 2 Post-Mortem

League Meet 2 Post-Mortem By Aarav, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, Georgia, and Anuhya

Task: Analyze our performance at our 2nd League Meet

After our performance at Meet 2, Iron Reign sat down as a team and discussed what...

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League Meet 2 Play-By-Play

League Meet 2 Play-By-Play By Aarav, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, and Georgia

Task: Review our performance at our 2nd League Meet

Today, Iron Reign has its second league meet. It was, in general, a helpful experience and a...

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Explaining Drone Launcher V1

Explaining Drone Launcher V1 By Tanvi and Aarav

Task: Explain how we arrived at our current drone launcher design

The first iteration of the drone launcher is a simple servo-powered elastic launcher that is...

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League Meet 1 Post-Mortem

League Meet 1 Post-Mortem By Aarav, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, Georgia, and Anuhya

Task: Analyze our performance at our 1st League Meet

After Meet 1, Iron Reign met to discuss their performance as a team and make plans...

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League Meet 1 Review

League Meet 1 Review By Anuhya, Vance, Sol, Georgia, Krish, Tanvi, Jai, and Aarav

Task: Review our performance at our first league meet!

Today was our first league meet, which means all our wins, losses, overall...

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AWS Solutions Architect Connect Meeting

AWS Solutions Architect Connect Meeting By Aarav, Krish, Anuhya, Jai, Alex, and Georgia

Task: Get Advice from a AWS Solutions Architect

Today, 6 members of Iron Reign virtually connected with Bilal, an Amazon Web...

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Woodrow Scrimmage Presentations

Woodrow Scrimmage Presentations By Aarav, Jai, Vance, Krish, Sol, Alex, Tanvi, Anuhya, and Georgia

Task: Share our Portfolio Advice and Summer Adventures with other Teams

Today, at the Woodrow Scrimmage, in addition to participating...

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Scrimmage Review

Scrimmage Review By Anuhya, Vance, Alex, Sol, Georgia, Krish, Tanvi, Jai, and Aarav

Task: Review our performance at the first scrimmage of the season

Earlier today, we had our first scrimmage at Woodrow Wilson! This was...

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10/7/23 Meeting Log

10/7/23 Meeting Log By Aarav, Anuhya, Tanvi, Sol, Vance, and Jai

Assemble and Test our Pixel Intake System

Today, Iron Reign focused on turning our ideas and designs on CAD into real-life prototypes in preparation for our first scrimmage on...

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Solar Prep for Girls Recruitment

Solar Prep for Girls Recruitment By Sol and Vance

Task: Recruit Future Members at Solar Preparatory for Girls

Today, Iron Reign members Sol and Vance represented Iron Reign at a recruiting event at Solar Prep...

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9/30/23 Meeting Log

9/30/23 Meeting Log By Aarav, Anuhya, Tanvi, Georgia, Vance, Krish, Jai, and Alex

Task: Start prototyping our robot

Today, Iron Reign continued working on designing and prototyping our robot in preparation for scrimmages and our initial meets. We began working on...

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9/23/23 Meeting Log

9/23/23 Meeting Log By Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, Krish, Tanvi, Vance, and Alex

Task: Prepare R2V2 for Filming and begin Designing Subsystems

Today, Iron Reign had an extended meeting to focus on preparing R2V2 for video production and to start designing and...

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CenterStage Introductory Meeting & 9/16 Meeting Log

CenterStage Introductory Meeting & 9/16 Meeting Log By Aarav, Anuhya, Krish, Tanvi, Sol, Alex, Vance, and Georgia

Task: Welcome Recruits to the Workshop and begin Robot Ideation

Today, Iron Reign hosted our introductory meeting for...

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DPRG Meeting Presentations

DPRG Meeting Presentations By Aarav and Anuhya

Task: Share R2V2 and Ri2D with mentors at DPRG

Throughout this month, Iron Reign has been presenting its recent work at DPRG(Dallas Personal Robotics Group) meetings on Tuesday evenings. On August 22nd, Iron Reign...

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Center Stage Robot in 2 Days(Ri2D) Overview

Center Stage Robot in 2 Days(Ri2D) Overview By Aarav, Anuhya, Krish, Sol, Tanvi, and Alex

Task: Build, Code, Test, and Film our Center Stage Ri2D

This blog post...

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Center Stage Game Reveal and Ri2D Day 1

Center Stage Game Reveal and Ri2D Day 1 By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Sol, Tanvi, and Alex

Task: Assess the Center Stage Game and begin Ri2D

Today, Iron Reign attended the season reveal for the new...

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FTC Dashboard Field Versatility Update

FTC Dashboard Field Versatility Update By Jai and Alex

Task: Update FTC Dashboard to better suit our needs

During our PowerPlay season, we used FTC Dashboard extensively. However, because of some suboptimal code and some...

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An Overview of the R2V2 Steering Wheel

An Overview of the R2V2 Steering Wheel By Anuhya, Vance, Trey, Leo, Alex, and Jai

Task: Design a subsystem to control the steering wheel of R2V2

One of the main components of our...

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An Overview of the R2V2 Braking System

An Overview of the R2V2 Braking System By Aarav, Tanvi, Krish, Sol, and Gabriel

Task: Design a subsystem to control the braking of R2V2

An essential part of effectively remote controlling R2V2 is the developing...

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Flyset - R2V2 and Dashboard

Flyset - R2V2 and Dashboard By Anuhya, Jai, Krish, Alex, and Sol

Task: Give presentations at Flyset about progress made this summer

This weekend, we participated in the FlySet workshop, graciously hosted by team 8565, TechnicBots. We gave two presentations: one...

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Iron Reign’s R2V2 - Safety Features and Protocols

Iron Reign’s R2V2 - Safety Features and Protocols By Coach

Let's robotify this!

What if you took an RV, converted it into a mobile learning lab, and then turned that into a droid? What would you call it?...

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Recruiting at Flight School

Recruiting at Flight School By Aarav, Anuhya, Tanvi, Jai, and Georgia

Task: Recruit new members at the TAG Flight School

Today, Iron Reign presented at TAG’s Flight School in order to recruit new members in preparation for the upcoming season to...

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Frontiers of Flight Moon Day Outreach

Frontiers of Flight Moon Day Outreach By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Jai, Tanvi, Leo, Arun, Sol, Alex, Paul, Ben B, and Bhanaviya

Today, Iron Reign presented at the 15th annual Frontiers of Flight Museum “Moon Day” celebration, meant to...

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How To Get Your Daughter (or Son) Started in Robotics

How To Get Your Daughter (or Son) Started in Robotics By Anuhya

FIRST Robotics is an incredible opportunity for kids of all ages to get involved in STEM! It starts with FIRST Lego League (FLL), which...

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FTC World Championship 2023

FTC World Championship 2023 By Anuhya, Jai, Alex, Trey, Gabriel, Vance, Leo, Tanvi, Georgia, Krish, Arun, Aarav, and Sol

Our Experience This Year at Worlds

Over this past week, we had our final preparations for the FTC...

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Scrimmage Before Worlds

Scrimmage Before Worlds By Anuhya, Jai, Alex, Trey, Gabriel, Vance, and Leo

Attending a Final Scrimmage Before Worlds

Today, we attended a scrimmage that team 8565, Technic Bots, graciously invited us to. The point of this scrimmage was to get some...

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Consequences of Removing the Shoulder Support Spring

Consequences of Removing the Shoulder Support Spring By Anuhya, Trey, Leo, Gabriel, and Vance

We learned the consequences of making small changes to build without fully knowing the outcome

A small change can make a huge difference: we have...

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Meeting Log 4/9

Meeting Log 4/9 By Georgia, Sol, Trey, and Leo

Task: Prepare for Worlds through Build and Drive

Today, we did drive practice, and worked out some of the smaller issues with transfer.

While doing robot testing, the servo on...

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Meeting Log 4/1

Meeting Log 4/1 By Sol, Georgia, Trey, Anuhya, Gabriel, Leo, Krish, Tanvi, Jai, Vance, Alex, and Aarav

Task: Gripper Redesign and Build Fixes

Trey redesigned the gripper stopper on the underarm to limit the degrees of movement so that the underarm...

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Texas State and UIL Championship Post-Mortem

Texas State and UIL Championship Post-Mortem By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Leo, Vance, Alex, Krish, Jai, and Tanvi

Discuss the events of Regionals, analyze our performance, and prepare future plans

This weekend, Iron Reign participated in the FTC...

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UIL and State Play-by-Play

UIL and State Play-by-Play By Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, Alex, Tanvi, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, Arun, and Krish

Review the events of the UIL and FTC State Championships

This past week we participated in the...

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Meeting Log 3/3

Meeting Log 3/3 By Jai, Anuhya, Aarav, Alex, Tanvi, Georgia, Gabriel, Sol, Trey, Krish, Arun, Vance, and Leo

Task: Plan and strategize for the Road to State

Finally back from a much-needed break after regionals, the team got back...

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Meeting with the Head of the Dallas College STEM Institute

Meeting with the Head of the Dallas College STEM Institute By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Arun, Jai, Krish, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Gabriel

Task: Meet with the Dallas College STEM Institute

Today, team 6832 met...

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NTX Regionals Post-Mortem

NTX Regionals Post-Mortem By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Alex, Krish, and Jai

Discuss the events of Regionals, analyze our performance, and prepare future plans

This past Saturday, team 6832 Iron Reign participated in the NTX Regionals Championship...

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NTX Regionals Play-by-Play

NTX Regionals Play-by-Play By Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, Alex, Sol, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, Arun, and Krish

Review the events of the NTX Regional

Today, Iron Reign participated at the NTX Regional Championship in Flower...

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Meeting Log 2/21

Meeting Log 2/21 By Jai, Anuhya, Vance, Leo, Gabriel, and Georgia

Regionals Prep: Work on Build, Code, and Presentation

With regionals just 4 days away, we had a lot to work on for TauBot2. Today,...

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Meeting Log 2/18

Meeting Log 2/18 By Alex, Anuhya, Sol, Gabriel, Aarav, Jai, Leo, David D, Georgia, and Krish

Task: Regional Prep, Portfolio Development, Underarm Wiring and new Shoulder and Turret Assembly

To start we began to...

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Meeting Log 2/17

Meeting Log 2/17 By Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, Alex, Tanvi, Georgia, Gabriel, and Krish

Work on build, code, and presentation in preparation for Regionals next week.

With the Regional competition coming up quite soon, we needed to get to work...

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UnderArm Inverse Kinematics

UnderArm Inverse Kinematics By Jai, Vance, Alex, Aarav, and Krish

Task: Implement Inverse Kinematics on the UnderArm

Inverse kinematics is the process of finding the joint variables needed for a kinematic chain to reach a specified endpoint. In the...

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A Deep Dive into the Shoulder and UnderArm

A Deep Dive into the Shoulder and UnderArm By Aarav, Anuhya, and Krish

Describe our Implementation of the Shoulder and Turret Subsystems

With our primary game strategy for this season being to limit our movement around the playing field,...

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Meeting Log 2/11

Meeting Log 2/11 By Jai, Anuhya, Arun, Sol, David D, Georgia, Vance, Gabriel, Aarav, Alex, Tanvi, Leo, and Krish

Task: Continue to assemble TauBot2, work on portfolio, and prepare for Regionals

First off, we...

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Meeting Log 2/10

Meeting Log 2/10 By Tanvi, Sol, Gabriel, Trey, and Alex

Task: Attend to TauBot2 and transfer knowledge to the new recruits

Today was another day of onboarding recruits. For the next few weeks, along...

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Sudie Academy FLL Team Mentorship

Sudie Academy FLL Team Mentorship By Aarav, Georgia, Jai, Arun, Gabriel, and Sol

Task: Help the Sudie Academy FLL teams prep for Regionals

Today, Iron Reign attended a meeting with multiple local FLL teams...

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Dallas ISD Stem Expo

Dallas ISD Stem Expo By Sol, Georgia, Tanvi, Jai, David D, Arun, Anuhya, Vance, Trey, Gabriel, Alex, Aarav, Leo, and Krish

Task: Motivate the community at the DISD Stem Expo

Today we hosted a...

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CONNECTing with Professionals at the DISD Stem Expo

CONNECTing with Professionals at the DISD Stem Expo By Aarav, Anuhya, Jai, and Georgia

Task: Explore Possible Connection Opportunities at the DISD STEM Expo

Today, Iron Reign presented at the DISD Stem Expo in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention...

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Meeting Log 2/3

Meeting Log 2/3 By Jai, Aarav, Anuhya, Leo, Trey, Georgia, Vance, Gabriel, Alex, Sol, Tanvi, and David D

Task: Onboarding New Recruits, Organization, CAM, and Connect

Today we onboarded most of the new recruits...

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D&U League Tournament Post Mortem

D&U League Tournament Post Mortem By Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Aarav

Task: Discuss the events of our first tournament of the season

Team 6832, Iron Reign, and our sister teams, Iron Core and Iron Giant had...

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D&U Tournament Play by Play

D&U Tournament Play by Play By Aarav, Anuhya, Gabriel, Leo, Vance, and Trey

Task: Narrate the events of the D&U Tournament

Today, Iron Reign and our two sister teams competed in the D&U League Tournament...

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Overview of the past 3 weeks

Overview of the past 3 weeks By Anuhya, Aarav, Leo, Vance, Trey, Gabriel, and Georgia

Task: Recount the developments made to the robot in the past 3 weeks

The past three weeks have been...

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League Meet #3 Review

League Meet #3 Review By Aarav, Anuhya, Gabriel, Leo, Vance, Trey, and Georgia

Task: Review our performance at the 3rd League Meet and discuss possible next steps

Today, Iron Reign and our two sister teams...

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Presenting to DPRG

Presenting to DPRG By Anuhya, Trey, Leo, Gabriel, and Vance

Task: Present a status update to Dallas Personal Robotics Group

You can watch our full presentation here. Today was our second meeting with Read More

Meeting Log 1/6

Meeting Log 1/6 By Aarav, Anuhya, and Georgia

Task: Documentation and CAD

Today,we focused mainly on documentation and the continued CAD for the next iteration of TauBot. We worked on the outreach and Motivate sections of the Engineering Portfolio...

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Meeting Log 01/04

Meeting Log 01/04 By Georgia, Anuhya, and Leo

Task: Build and CAD

Today we focused on building and modeling our second iteration of Toubot. After designing and cutting out the parts for the underarm on the CNC we began...

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Meeting Log 12/30

Meeting Log 12/30 By Georgia, Leo, and Gabriel

Task: Driver Practice!

Recently, Vance implemented a new control scheme : scoring patterns. This required some changes to the way the cone is “transported” throughout the field when the driver operated,...

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Virtual DPRG Meeting 12/17

Virtual DPRG Meeting 12/17 By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, and Leo

Task: Present TauBot to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group

Today, we virtually presented...

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Townview Tournament

Townview Tournament By Gabriel, Georgia, Anuhya, Trey, and Leo

Hosting the Townview Tournament

This Saturday marked the First Tournament of the season, and with it came the opportunity for us to host the event at...
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Meeting Log 12/06

Meeting Log 12/06 By Georgia, Anuhya, Leo, Vance, and Gabriel

Task: Improving code

Today we tuned auton, implemented inverse kinematics, and made driver controls more user friendly.

We implemented inverse kinematics with driver...

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League Meet #2 Post Mortem

League Meet #2 Post Mortem By Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Aarav

Task: review the progression of matches in our latest League Meet

Team 6832, Iron Reign, and our sister teams, Iron Core...

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Meeting Log 12/02

Meeting Log 12/02 By Georgia, Anuhya, Gabriel, Leo, and Vance

Task: Prepare for Our Second League Meet

Today we worked on finishing the nudge stick and auton code, along with doing driver practice and other preparations for the upcoming...

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Meeting Log 11/29

Meeting Log 11/29 By Georgia, Anuhya, Gabriel, and Vance

Task: Code and Build Before League Meet

We partially remade the joint that connects the extension part of the crane to the turret, as we found that under high stress...

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Meeting Log 11/26

Meeting Log 11/26 By Georgia, Gabriel, and Leo

Task: Build, Modeling, and Drive Practice for Upcoming League Meet

We spent today's meeting fixing minor build problems, then ran timed practice matches. Additionally, we started modeling the prototype for the...

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Code Progess for November

Code Progess for November By Vance and David

April Tags

This year, using FTC 6547's tutorial on april tags, we developed a system to detect which parking location we should park in. The april tag...
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Meeting Log 11/19

Meeting Log 11/19 By Georgia, Aarav, Gabriel, Trey, Leo, and Vance

Task: Drive Practice and Improving Code

Today, we spent time improving upon the code by fixing the odometry and fine tuning it, along with...
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Meeting Log 11/18

Meeting Log 11/18 By Gabriel, Trey, and Vance

Tasks:
1. Fix Issues from the Last Meet
2. Build Upon our Current Strategy
2. Continue to Develop TauBot 2.0

The League Meet was a rude awakening for...

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1st League Meet - Post Mortem

1st League Meet - Post Mortem By Georgia, Aarav, Gabriel, Leo, Trey, Vance, and David

Tasks:
1. Review 1st League Meet
2. Analyze 1st League Meet Performance
3. Discuss Possible Fixes + Next Steps

Play By Play

1st...

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Meeting Log 11/11

Meeting Log 11/11 By Gabriel, Vance, Aarav, David, and Georgia

Task: Finalizing the Robot the Day Before Competition

The day before a competition always sees arguably the most productivity from all the teams in a rush to finish up...

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Meeting Log 11/10

Meeting Log 11/10 By Georgia, Gabriel, Leo, Vance, Trey, and David

Task: Finishing Code for Upcoming Meet and Drive Practice

We fixed the turret heading PID so that it does not spin uncontrollably when the angle changes from 359...

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Meeting Log 11/8

Meeting Log 11/8 By Gabriel and Leo

Task: Preparing the Robot for the Upcoming League Meet

General Fixes:

The LED battery holder from the previous meeting snapped, requiring us to rebend and make a new gate for the LED...

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Meeting Log 11/5

Meeting Log 11/5 By Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Georgia

Task: Fixing Issues from the Screamage Pt.2

In tandem with yesterday, the main goal of this meeting was to improve upon the robot after the Screamage. This consisted of...

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Meeting Log 11/4

Meeting Log 11/4 By Gabriel, Trey, and David

Task: Fixing Issues from the Screamage

After the Screamage, many different problems became apparent, including the fact that the robot just barely fit sizing requirements. In order to combat this, we...

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October 29th Screamage Overview

October 29th Screamage Overview By Georgia, Aarav, Anuhya, Trey, Gabriel, and Leo

Screamage at Marcus High School Overview

Today, Iron Reign attended the Screamage at Marcus High School to play a couple of practice matches. This event...

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Meeting Log 10/22

Meeting Log 10/22 By Georgia, Aarav, Gabriel, Leo, Trey, Anuhya, Aarav, and David

Task: Drive Practice and Getting Code to Work

Today was mainly focused on getting proper drive practice and getting the path following for the April Tags...

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Overall Progress From the Past Two Weeks

Overall Progress From the Past Two Weeks By Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Vance, and David

Tasks:
1. Working on path following with Code
2. Creating prototypes to optimize the Build design
3. Gaining experience with 3D Modeling using Fusion 360

...
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Think Robot Ideation - TallBot

Think Robot Ideation - TallBot By Aarav, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, and Leo

Task: Design and Think about possible robot ideas after Ri2D

After Robot in 2...

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Meeting Log 9/24

Meeting Log 9/24 By Aarav, Anuhya, Georgia, Gabriel, Trey, and Leo

1. Game strategy 2. Tombot as sparring partner. 3. Gripper Designs. 4. New recruit build teams.

Game Strategy

Iron Reign engaged in an exercise...
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Robot in 2 Days

Robot in 2 Days By Anuhya, Aarav, Georgia, Gabriel, Vance, Trey, and Leo

Our First Ideas: Robot in 2 Days!

Our Ideas with Build

As a base robot, we started with an 18 inch cubic frame. This...

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Season Reveal

Season Reveal By Anuhya, Aarav, Georgia, Gabriel, Vance, and Trey

The Season Reveal of 2022-2023's Game: Power Play!

Today was the season's official kick off the 2022-2023 game, Power Play! However, Gabriel, one of our members, gave...

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Interest Meeting

Interest Meeting By Anuhya, Aarav, Georgia, Gabriel, Vance, Leo, and Trey

Our Interest Meeting at TMC

To gain more members for our sister teams, Team 15373, Iron Core, and Team 3734, Pandemonium, we held an interest meeting...

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FLYSET Workshop

FLYSET Workshop By Anuhya, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Aarav

Task: Give a presentation at the FLYSET Workshop

At the FLYSET Workshop, hosted by team 8565, Technicbots, and team 20313, Mustang Robotics, we were tasked with introducing...

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Recruiting at Flight School

Recruiting at Flight School By Aarav, Anuhya, Gabriel, Leo, and Georgia

Task: Recruit new members at the TAG Flight School

Earlier this afternoon, at TAG's flight school event for new freshmen, Iron Reign had a club booth for all the new...

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Dallas City of Learning at Frontiers of Flight

Dallas City of Learning at Frontiers of Flight By Aarav, Anuhya, Gabriel, Trey, Vance, Leo, and Georgia

Task: Connecting with the communoity through the Frontiers of Flight

This morning, Iron Reign demoed at the Dallas City Learning event at...

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Designing the New Workshop

Designing the New Workshop By Aarav and Anuhya

Task: Design a floorplan and model for the new workshop

With the limits of our current workspace reached and the need to expand with more recruits and machinery; Iron Reign set off on...

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Iron Reign’s Mechavator - Safety Features and Protocols

Iron Reign’s Mechavator - Safety Features and Protocols By Gabriel and Trey

Let's not do this!

Intrinsic Hazards and Safeties
Primary Safety
Backup Safety
Site Safety
Operational Safety

Intrinsic Hazards and Safeties

Intrinsic Hazards

It’s important...

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Last Practice Before UIL!

Last Practice Before UIL! By Anuhya, Georgia, Bhanaviya, Ben, Mahesh, Gabriel, Aarav, Trey, Shawn, and Leo

Our Last Meeting Before UIL!

This marks our final competition of the Freight Frenzy season.

Getting in our final drive...

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Meeting Log 4/2

Meeting Log 4/2 By Anuhya, Georgia, Aarav, Bhanaviya, Mahesh, Trey, Gabriel, Ben, Anisha, Vance, and Shawn

Task: Solve minor issues with the robot’s design and code. More drive practice in preparation for the UIL Championship next week.

With only one week...

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CONNECTions through the season

CONNECTions through the season By Anuhya, Bhanaviya, Shawn, and Ben

Task: Getting in some serious drive practice at Woodrow

This past year, we connected with a lot of professional engineers that helped us optimize our robot performance and capabilities. We...

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Think Gripper Progression

Think Gripper Progression By Vance

Gripper Progression

V1

Our first gripper design was for robot in 2 days and with the time crunch came some downsides: little power and poor reach. Our second design intended to fix...

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Meeting Log 4/01

Meeting Log 4/01 By Vance, Georgia, Trey, Gabriel, Bhanaviya, Leo, and Mahesh

Task: Replace Crane Servo with a Motor

After six broken servos amounting to around 240 dollars worth of funding, it became apparent that the current model of servo we...

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Meeting Log 3/29

Meeting Log 3/29 By Anuhya, Georgia, Trey, Gabriel, Ben, Cooper, and Paul

Task: Getting in some serious drive practice at Woodrow

We took some time out of our week to get in some drive practice at Woodrow so we...

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Meeting Log 3/26

Meeting Log 3/26 By Anuhya, Georgia, Bhanaviya, Leo, Gabriel, Aarav, Ben, Shawn, and Mahesh

Task: Work on teamwork with drive practice for the UIL Championship

This weekend, we worked on giving the new recruits a basic understanding of HTML...

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Solving Tipping Issues in The Reach

Solving Tipping Issues in The Reach By Aarav, Shawn, Mahesh, and Bhanaviya

Task-Identify and solve the problems that led to The Reach tipping over mid-match.

Our robot, The Reach, utilizes a hybrid-differential swerve drive along with an extending design...

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Repairing ‘Reach’

Repairing ‘Reach’ By Gabriel

Task: Fix issues found by Drive Practice in the robot

To better prepare for UIL, we have started using Driver Practice to find issues that would’ve impacted the robot performance at the competition. Within the first 15...

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Meeting Log 3/19

Meeting Log 3/19 By Anuhya, Georgia, Aarav, Bhanaviya, Mahesh, Trey, and Gabriel

Task: Get more drive practice before the UIL Championship

This weekend, we focused on on-boarding new recruits as well as getting more drive practice to get us...

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Hybrid Swerve Drive Progression

Hybrid Swerve Drive Progression By Georgia, Shawn, Trey, and Bhanaviya

Task: Fix issues found by Drive Practice in the robot

Iron Reign has seen several dIfferent iterations of our swerve module this past season. In this post we’ve identified the different...

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Iron Reign and the Three Magnets

Iron Reign and the Three Magnets By Bhanaviya and Georgia

Task: Evaluating what magnet type works best with the FFUTSE and bucket attraction

FFUTSES with magnets mounted

Iron Reign has its final event of the season, the UIL championship,...

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Meeting Log 3/12

Meeting Log 3/12 By Trey and Leo

Task: Decreasing the Movement of Linear Slides During Expansions

The continuous expansion and contraction of the robot placed a lot of stress on the mounting gear attaching the slides directly to the chassis. With...

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Deriving Maximum Chassis Length On Turns

Deriving Maximum Chassis Length On Turns By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Derive The Maximum Chassis Length On Turns

Having a chassis able to elongate and contract during play poses its advantages and drawbacks. If properly used, the chassis...

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Deriving Inverse Kinematics For The Drivetrain

Deriving Inverse Kinematics For The Drivetrain By Mahesh, Cooper, and Ben

Task: Derive Inverse Kinematics For The Drivetrain

Due to having an unconventential drivetrain consisting of two differental wheels and a third swerve wheel, it is crucial that...

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Flyset Workshop Vision Presentation

Flyset Workshop Vision Presentation By Mahesh

Task: Deliver a Presentation Over Developing Vision Pipelines At The Flyset Workshop

This Saturday, we had the oppurtunity to present at the Flyset workshop, an event in which multiple teams could present a topic of...

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Chassis Brainstorming

Chassis Brainstorming By Trey, Cooper, and Shawn

Task: Build a robot that can be adapted to any challenge

The new challenge is upon us and with a new challenge comes new robot designs. This year we have found that we are...

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Code Cleanup

Code Cleanup By Cooper and Mahesh

Task: prepare code-wise for robot in three days

To better prepare for “robot in three days” (ri3d for short), we decided to get ahead a bit and resuscitate the code base. After making sure everything...

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A Prerequisite Chassis to Robot In 3 Days

A Prerequisite Chassis to Robot In 3 Days By Trey, Cooper, and Aaron

Task: Build a robot that can be adapted to any challenge

The challenge reveal is going to be quite soon. In the weeks leading up...

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Future Plans For Programming

Future Plans For Programming By Mahesh

Task: Plan Out Changes To Codebase and Use New Libraries/Hardware

This season, we plan to utilize the PAA5100JE Near Optical Flow Sensor (left image) and Realsense...

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Club Fair 2021-2022

Club Fair 2021-2022 By Bhanaviya

Task: Welcome New Recruits!

Thank you for your interest in Iron Reign robotics! Please fill out the following interest form. Check out the rest of this article for more on our robot!

...

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Wattever Meeting

Wattever Meeting By Trey, Anisha, Bhanaviya, Shawn, Ben, Mahesh, and Cooper

Task: Meet with the team Wattever and give insight

This Saturday, all of Iron Reign met with team 16296, Wattever, to discuss how the Iron Reign robotics program...

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Recruitment in Senior Season 2021

Recruitment in Senior Season 2021 By Bhanaviya

Task: Decide plans for expansion and recruitment strategies

For the first time in 11 years, Iron Reign had a no-recruitment year, owing to the pandemic, and the difficulty...

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UTD Qualifier Build Post Mortem

UTD Qualifier Build Post Mortem By Trey

Task: Review our failure of rushed build leading up to the UTD qualifier

As discussed in the post "Making the Ringevator Legal" there was a lot of rushed build leading up...

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Making the Ringevator Legal

Making the Ringevator Legal By Trey and Paul

Task: Make the Ringevator legal so we can use it in competition

We’re at the point now where we have a lot of our systems ready to...

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Ringevator Overview

Ringevator Overview By Trey

Task: Describe the construction and development of the Ringevator intake

This year we have done a lot of work on intakes and launchers. The purpose of this post is to...

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Morph Chart

Morph Chart By Bhanaviya and Ben

Task: Create a flow chart to analyze all our intake designs so far in this season.

Iron Reign has seen several iterations of our intake over this...

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A Lot to Intake

A Lot to Intake By Paul

Task: Prepare the intake before the qualifier

At today's meeting, Paul worked on the ringevator, with the guidance from Mr. V. The intake mechanism required a motor to be installed,...

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Accounting For Offsets And Launching In Motion

Accounting For Offsets And Launching In Motion By Mahesh

Task: Build A Forward Kinematic Model Of The Robot To Account For Turret And Muzzle Offsets, And Counter-Lead The Target To Allow For Launching In Motion

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A Lot to Intake

A Lot to Intake By Paul

Task: Prepare the intake before the qualifier

Today’s meet consisted of Cooper working on code, Paul burning polycarb, and Trey working on the intake with Paul. We were able to...

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Control Mapping

Control Mapping By Bhanaviya, Mahesh, and Cooper

Task: Map and test controls

With our first qualifier being a week away, Proteus (our robot) needs to be in drive testing phase. So, we started out by mapping...

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Achieving Continuous Targeting and Launching

Achieving Continuous Targeting and Launching By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Achieve Continuous Targeting and Automatic Launching

With the goal of having the turret continuously aim towards the goal, the elbow tilt to the correct...

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Ringslinger 9000 Step-by-Step Guide

Ringslinger 9000 Step-by-Step Guide By Anisha, Paul, Trey, and Cooper

Task: assemble different intake prototypes

The Ringslinger 9000 is a crucial part of the robot and requires careful planning to build. Although we have a relatively...

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Adding Margins Of Error To Desmos

Adding Margins Of Error To Desmos By Mahesh

Task: Add Margins Of Error To The Desmos Calculator

In order to visually represent the significance of placing the constraints we did, we modified our desmos...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log By Ben, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Jose, and Trey

Task: Prepare the portfolio and intake before the qualifier

The three of us worked on the engineering portfolio, discussing what we needed to get done in these 3 weeks between now...

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Accounting For Initial Height

Accounting For Initial Height By Mahesh

Task: Account For Initial Height

In the previous trajectory calculations post, "Derive And Translate Trajectory Calculations Into Code", we did not take into account how the length of the launcher would effect...

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Ring Launcher 9000 On-Bot Testing

Ring Launcher 9000 On-Bot Testing By Cooper and Jose

Task: Test the intake now that it is on the robot

Today we performed proper field testing of the Launcher subsystem. While we have done many tests in the past...

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RingSlinger 9000 Summary

RingSlinger 9000 Summary By Jose

Task: Summarize the key components of Ring Launcher 9000

A ring launcher is more than just a flywheel; it needs a barrel to give the ring a path to move through. A 90 degree...

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Materials Test Planning

Materials Test Planning By Bhanaviya

Task: Create a system to test our materials to better understand their grip potential

Here at Iron Reign, we're used to using off-the-shelf materials for our robot. For this season,...

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Intake Iterations Summary

Intake Iterations Summary By Bhanaviya and Ben

Task: Go over our 5 intake iterations

This season, we experimented with 5 gripper models - both for our robot in three days project and for our competition bot. While...

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DPRG Virtual Meeting 2/9

DPRG Virtual Meeting 2/9 By Bhanaviya and Mahesh

Task: Present our flywheel launcher to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group

2 weeks ago, Iron...

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Pink v. Cyan Remote Scrimmage Post Mortem

Pink v. Cyan Remote Scrimmage Post Mortem By Cooper and Jose

Task: review the progression of matches in our latest scrimmage

We participated in the “Pink v....

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Programming Session 1/31

Programming Session 1/31 By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Set up FTC Dashboard

We wanted to setup FTC Dashboard for graphing, configuration, vision, and later on, odometry. FTC Dashboard enables graphing of numeric variables, which can simplify PID tuning...

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Build Progress 1/30

Build Progress 1/30 By Trey, Justin, and Jose

Task: assemble different intake prototypes

Today we worked on different intake systems to place the rings in the launcher. We finished our first prototype for a belt type intake and lift....

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Derive And Translate Trajectory Calculations Into Code

Derive And Translate Trajectory Calculations Into Code By Mahesh, Cooper, Shawn, Ben, Bhanaviya, and Jose

Task: Derive And Translate Trajectory Calculations Into Code

To ease the work put on the drivers, we wanted to...

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Correcting the Trajectory Calculations Equations

Correcting the Trajectory Calculations Equations By Bhanaviya, Ben, and Mahesh

Task: Correct the trajectory calculations after the DPRG meeting

In the past week, we've been experimenting with a series of equations to derive the angle...

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New Addtions to the Elbow

New Addtions to the Elbow By Jose

Task: Design new parts to better mount the ring launcher and encoder

First thing to do in this CAD session is to design a secondary mounting point for the ring launcher. To...

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RingSlinger 9000 Build Progress

RingSlinger 9000 Build Progress By Paul and Cooper

Task: Build and prototype the Flywheel Launcher

For this years new season we used an innovative flywheel-based...

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DPRG Virtual Meeting

DPRG Virtual Meeting By Bhanaviya, Jose, Trey, Paul, and Cooper

Task: Present our flywheel launcher to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group

Every year, Iron Reign presents our robot or standout subsystems to the Dallas Personal...

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Iterate Trajectory Calculations in Preparation for DPRG Meet

Iterate Trajectory Calculations in Preparation for DPRG Meet By Bhanaviya, Mahesh, and Ben

Task: Improve the Trajectory Calculations

As mentioned in our earlier posts, one of the biggest control challenges we face in this...

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Ring Launcher CAD Meet 4

Ring Launcher CAD Meet 4 By Jose

Task: Finalize the ring launcher design

The main thing here is a huge wall on the left to guide rings to their resting position at the back of the ring launcher. But...

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Ring Launcher CAD Meet 3

Ring Launcher CAD Meet 3 By Jose

Task: Expand the ring launcher to begin accomadating for a controlled system of firing the rings

The first step in accomplishing this task is to expand the center aluminum plate to almost...

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Code Changes Leading up to the PvC Scrimmage

Code Changes Leading up to the PvC Scrimmage By Cooper

Task: Finalize code changes prior to the PvC scrimmage

Leading up to the scrimmage, many code changes happened, mostly in the area of auton. To start, I tried to run 10...

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Updating Proteus' model

Updating Proteus' model By Bhanaviya and Jose

Task: Update the model to plan TomBot's build

With our first qualifier being around a month away, Iron Reign is currently in the midst of trying to...

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1/16 Build Progress - The first rings fly

1/16 Build Progress - The first rings fly By Trey, Cooper, Aaron, Paul, Bhanaviya, and Jose

Task: Continue developing the ring launcher and do preliminary testing

Today we continued to further...

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Presentation Prep-Run

Presentation Prep-Run By Anisha and Bhanaviya

Task: Practice the presentation prior to the PvC Scrimmage on Saturday

Iron Reign will be participating in our first competitive event of the year at the PvC scrimmage. One of the submissions we...

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Flywheel Assembly

Flywheel Assembly By Jose

Task: Assemble the flywheel with the readily manufacured parts

Following the milling of the aluminum plates and the 3-D printing of the core of...

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Ring Launcher CAD Meets 1+2

Ring Launcher CAD Meets 1+2 By Jose

Task: Begin designing a ring launcher

The initial vision for the ring laucher was to be a semi-circle in order to give the ring as much acceleration as possible. In this meeting,...

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Ladder Intake Build

Ladder Intake Build By Jose and Bhanaviya

Task: Physically build the ladder intake, based on the design in CAD

For the intake system of this year's challenge we first brainstormed several ways which a ring could be collected and...

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Proteus' model

Proteus' model By Bhanaviya and Jose

Task: Update the model to plan Proteus' build

With our first qualifier being less than 2 months away, Iron Reign embarked on an ambitious project to create a...

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NinjaFlex Belt intake system

NinjaFlex Belt intake system By Trey

Task: Design an intake with the NinjaFlex belt

So far we have made a few Intake assemblies including the belt intake and the Tetrix tread intake. However, as is Iron Reign tradition, we...

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Caterpillar Track Intake

Caterpillar Track Intake By Ben, Bhanaviya, Trey, and Jose

Task: Build and prototype an intake system

One of the first intake systems we made was...

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FTC Legal Belt Sander

FTC Legal Belt Sander By Paul

Task: Create a prototype for a belt sander intake system

The so-called “FTC Legal” belt sander was an early iteration of the intake mechanism for this year's robot....

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Modelling an Equation for Forward Speeds of a Ring

Modelling an Equation for Forward Speeds of a Ring By Bhanaviya and Ben

Task: Model a projectile motion equation to approximate forward speeds of rings launched from a ring launcher

A key challenge in this year's...

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Auto Path Plan

Auto Path Plan By Cooper

Task: Layout a plan for auto paths this season

To begin, as you can see up above (a diagram that was generated on https://ftcchad.com/ ) our first auto path takes very little...

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Ladder Intake CAD

Ladder Intake CAD By Jose

Task: Design a mechanism to trasfer rings from the ground to a future ring launcher

The initial vision for this intake design was inspired by FRC team 1983’s Ultimate Ascent robot. The “ladder” pivots...

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Recruitment Update

Recruitment Update By Bhanaviya

Task: Plan for sustainability goals

Owing to the ongoing pandemic, our recruitment goals are not similar to that of previous seasons. One of our bigger concerns is that it will be harder to teach...

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Dealey Presentation

Dealey Presentation By Ben, Mahesh, Jose, Anisha, Shawn, Bhanaviya, Paul, Cooper, and Trey

Task: Give a presentation to rookie teams at Dealey International School

Today we gave a presentation to rookie FTC teams about FIRST and our team over...

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Dealey Presentation Preparation

Dealey Presentation Preparation By Ben, Mahesh, Jose, Anisha, Shawn, Bhanaviya, Paul, Cooper, and Trey

Task: Prepare for our presentation to Dealey International School

On Saturday October 10 we received an email from the robotics coach at Dealey International School. Dealey...

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Custom Flywheel CAD

Custom Flywheel CAD By Jose

Task: CAD a custom flywheel

Instead of using a grip wheel to launch rings we went with the approach to make a custom flywheel. The key concept of a flywheel is to maximize rotational...

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Code Planning For The New Season

Code Planning For The New Season By Mahesh

Task: Plan changes to our codebase for the new season.

This year's game saw a significant boost to the importance of the control award, now being put above even the motivate and design awards in order of advancement. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze...

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The First Launcher

The First Launcher By Trey and Paul

Task: Create and Test a Arm Disk Launcher

One of the centerpieces of any robot this year is going to be the disk launcher. It’s likely that most robots in the competition...

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Archimedes Screw Intake

Archimedes Screw Intake By Bhanaviya, Jose, and Shawn

Task: Begin creating intake systems on CAD to test their potential

The Archimedes Screw Intake, as the name goes, was based on an Archimedes screw. A screw...

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Simple Roller Intake

Simple Roller Intake By Jose

Task: CAD a simple roller intake design

This intake design is the most plain of them all, just compliant wheels on a shaft. The idea with this is to have it low to the...

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Robot in 2 Days - But in CAD

Robot in 2 Days - But in CAD By Jose

Task: CAD a robot for the Ultimate Goal Challenge quickly in order to get ideas for a final robot design and prototypes

A new season, a new design challenge,...

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Printing Rings

Printing Rings By Trey

Task: Print some game elements to get a kick start on the season

Recently, this year’s competition details were released, and while we couldn’t quite get started on a robot immediately like we...

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FTC 2020-2021 Game Reveal

FTC 2020-2021 Game Reveal By Ben B, Jose, Anisha, Shawn, Bhanaviya, Justin, Mahesh, and Trey

Task: Watch the FTC Challenge Reveal event live

Game Reveal:

Today...

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Connecting with Motus Labs

Connecting with Motus Labs September 08, 2020 By Bhanaviya

Reaching out to Motus Labs September 08, 2020

Task: Reach out to potential sponsors in light of the 2020-2021 season

Earlier in the summer, we learnt of an...

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Co-Hosting the Caravan CAD Challenge

Co-Hosting the Caravan CAD Challenge By Jose

Task: Help design a CAD Challenge game, make a reveal video for the game, judge submissions, and give feedback

Over the summer, we collaborated with FTC teams 3658 and...

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Summer Summary

Summer Summary July 11, 2020 By Bhanaviya, Jose, Anisha, Paul, Shawn, Trey, Justin, Aaron, Ben, Mahesh, and Cooper

Talking Heads: Summary July 11, 2020

Task: Prepare for the 2020-2021 Game Reveal season

Today kicked off our first...

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Narrowing Down the Configuration of the New Vehicle

Narrowing Down the Configuration of the New Vehicle By Bhanaviya

Introducing MXP 2: Electric Boogaloo

As we have explained in earlier posts, Iron Reign is currently involved in the process of creating a new version of...

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Code Changes The Week Before Regionals

Code Changes The Week Before Regionals By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Assess Code Changes During The Week Before Regionals

Numerous code changes were made during the week before regionals, the most signicant of which were attempted two days before regionals, a costly mistake during competition. Firstly, three different paths were layed...

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TomBot v2- Gripper Triggers

TomBot v2- Gripper Triggers By Jose

Task: CAD, 3D print and test new, better, and more aesthetically pleasing gripper triggers

Since our gripper follows a design similar to a slap-band it needs a trigger to close it, for too...

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CNC a New Polycarb Robot Base

CNC a New Polycarb Robot Base By Justin

Task: CNC a new robot base

We finished manufacturing our new base today, with very little difficulty, but a few flaws. The CAM was already designed so all...

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Wylie East Regionals Post Mortem

Wylie East Regionals Post Mortem By Karina, Bhanaviya, Jose, Justin, Ben, Cooper, Mahesh, Shawn, and Trey

Task: Reflect on what went right and wrong at the regionals tournament

Iron Reign is so excited to be advancing to the...

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Meeting Log Post Regionals

Meeting Log Post Regionals By Anisha

Task: Get back to work after Regionals

Alright kids, back to the usual grind now. As Iron Reign came back from regionals taking a lot away from it, we immediately...

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The Revenge of TomBot

The Revenge of TomBot By Bhanaviya

Introducing...The Revenge of TomBot!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a robot named TomBot. TomBot was a circle, a spinning circle with a turret...

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Wylie East Regional Qualifier Code Post-Mortem

Wylie East Regional Qualifier Code Post-Mortem By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Reflect On Code Changes And Choices Made During The Wylie East Regional Qualifier

Despite putting in lots of effort in order to pull off a working autonomous before regionals, small and subtle issues that surfaced only during testing at the...

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Match Play at North Texas Regional Championship

Match Play at North Texas Regional Championship By Trey, Ben, Aaron, Bhanaviya, Jose, Cooper, Justin, Karina, Paul, Shwan, Mahesh, and Anisha

Task: Compete in Qualification and Finals matches

Today Iron Reign competed at the North Texas Regional Championship...

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Driving at Regionals

Driving at Regionals By Justin, Aaron, and Jose

Task: Drive at Regionals

Driving at regionals was unfortunately a learning opportunity for our drivers. In our first few matches, for some reason we couldn't get our robot...

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Wylie Regionals 2020

Wylie Regionals 2020 By Bhanaviya, Cooper, Trey, Justin, Karina, Aaron, Paul, Ben, Shawn, Jose, Mahesh, and Anisha

Task: Compete at the North Texas Regional Tournament

Preparation

Breaking our packing-the-night-before streak, we managed to start the night before....

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The Night Before Regionals - Code

The Night Before Regionals - Code By Cooper and Trey

Task: Fix our autonomous path the night before regionals.

Twas the night before regionals, and all through the house, every creature was stirring, especially the raccoons,...

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Milling The Side Shields

Milling The Side Shields By Jose, Justin, Trey, Paul, and Shawn

Task: Mill the spicy side shields for the competition tomorrow

In typical Iron Reign fashion we are making our side shields the night before regionals, as with many...

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Spicy Side Shields

Spicy Side Shields By Jose

Task: Design and CAD/CAM some spicy side shields

In order to increase the spice factor for TomBot, we need to custom machine our own side plates out of aluminum using our CNC. The design...

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Research Poster

Task: Create a poster encompassing all of our calculations from this season

From analyzing the friction coefficient of a variety of different materials, to calculating torque for our various robot sub-assemblies, and creating an equation for our tower-stacking abilities in our autonomous, Iron Reign has seen several different series' of calculations this season. Since these...

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Big Thoughts for xPansion

Big Thoughts for xPansion By Bhanaviya

Task: Put the budgetary and technical plans for the second MXP in motion

A long, long time ago, - well, 4 years ago really - alumni members of Iron Reign converted an old...

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Designing a New Build Plate

Designing a New Build Plate By Ben

Task: Model and CNC a new build plate for TomBot

The renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” This, however, is not the...

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Final Weekend Before Regionals - Meeting Log

Final Weekend Before Regionals - Meeting Log By Anisha, Cooper, Trey, Paul, Aaron, Bhanaviya, Karina, Justin, Shawn, Mahesh, Jose, and Ben

Task: Use feedback from our presentation at DPRG and get ready for regionals

A couple hours...

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Presenting to the DPRG

Presenting to the DPRG By Bhanaviya, Cooper, Jose, Justin, Karina, Ben, Mahesh, Paul, Anisha, Shawn, and Trey

Task: Present to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group about robot vision and Iron Reign

We reached out...

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Control And Vision DPRG Presentation

Control And Vision DPRG Presentation By Mahesh and Cooper

Task: Present Control And Vision To DPRG And Gather Feedback

This saturday, we had the privilege to present our team's Control and Vision algorithms this year to the Dallas...

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Presenting to Deloitte

Presenting to Deloitte By Bhanaviya, Karina, Jose, Aaron, Cooper, Trey, Ben, Paul, Justin, Mahesh, Shawn, and Anisha

Task: Meet with Deloitte's Bot-Development Team to discuss

Today, we presented to Deloitte LLC's Bot Development Team in their...

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OpenCV Grip Pipeline

OpenCV Grip Pipeline By Mahesh

Task: Develop An OpenCV GRIP Pipeline To Detect Skystones

With this year's game awarding 20 points to teams than can successfully locate Skystones during autonomous, a fast and reliable OpenCV Pipeline is necessary to succeed in robot game....

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Cumulative Drive Test Log 2/3 - 2/6

Cumulative Drive Test Log 2/3 - 2/6 By Jose, Justin, and Aaron

Task: Summarize the driver practice done throughout the week

Over the course of the following week we have done much driver practice so we can improve our...

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Post UME Drive Changes

Post UME Drive Changes By Justin, Aaron, Trey, and ben

Task: Improve Robot Driving

Since the qualifier at UME, we have been focusing on tuning controls to make driving smoother. Our first set of improvements was...

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Friction Coefficient and Energy

Friction Coefficient and Energy By Trey

Task: Calculate the friction coefficient of various off-the-shelf materials

Before our last qualifier, we ran a couple material tests to find the friction coefficient of different materials. Now, since we've...

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Preparation for the Dallas Personal Robotics Group Meeting

Preparation for the Dallas Personal Robotics Group Meeting By Shawn

Task: Create a presentation for the Dallas Personal Robotics Group Meeeting Next Week

In a week, we will be giving a presentation...

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Updated Bill of Materials

Updated Bill of Materials By Bhanaviya and Paul

Task: Update the list of parts for TomBot for regionals

Being around 2 weeks away from the North Texas Regional Championship, Iron Reign has made significant...

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Preparing for the Meeting with Deloitte

Preparing for the Meeting with Deloitte By Bhanaviya

Task: Reach out to companies and their branches in the local Dallas area

Previously this season, Iron Reign has reached out and presented to various companies and individuals...

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TomBot Calibration Sequence

TomBot Calibration Sequence By Cooper

Task: Create a calibration sequence to find a starting position for autonomous

Today we worked on the calibration sequence. This has been a problem for awhile now, as the robot has so many degrees...

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UME Prep Qualifier Cumulative Post-Mortem

UME Prep Qualifier Cumulative Post-Mortem By Jose, Bhanaviya, Anisha, Mahesh, Karina, Cooper, Justin, Paul, and Trey

Task: Analyze what went wrong at the UME Prep Qualifier

It has officially been one week since the UME Prep Qualifier and we...

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Coding the Snapdragon Gripper

Coding the Snapdragon Gripper By Cooper

Task: Code the new Snapdragon gripper

Last night we installed the new Snapdragon gripper, which means we needed to re-work the gripper code. We started out by getting the positions the servo would...

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Snapdragon - The Sequel

Snapdragon - The Sequel By Bhanaviya and Aaron

Task: Improve the precision of the Snapdragon.

Last week, we prototyped a new gripper called the Snapdragon. Now it's time to give it more complexity. The Snapdragon...

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Engineering Notebook Binder CAD

Engineering Notebook Binder CAD By Jose

Task: CAD an engineering notebook binder that is to be custom made

We want to utilize our new CNC as best as we possibly can. Since we plan to CNC the second version...

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Snapdragon - The Beginning

Snapdragon - The Beginning By Bhanaviya and Aaron

Task: Begin our 10th gripper design

As you could probably tell from our plethora of gripper articles, here at Iron Reign we have one too many grippers. And...

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Code Changes At STEM Expo

Code Changes At STEM Expo By Mahesh, Cooper, and Abhi

Task: Use Vuforia To Detect Skystones And Tune Ticks Per Meter

This Saturday, we had the privilege of being a vendor at the Annual DISD STEM Expo. While this...

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Auto Developments at the STEM Expo

Auto Developments at the STEM Expo By Cooper

Task: Improve autonomous and tune IMU

During the STEM Expo, while also helping volunteer, we worked on auto. There were a series of cascading events that were planned and completed. The first...

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DISD STEM Expo 2020

DISD STEM Expo 2020 By Ben, Justin, Jose, Cooper, Paul, Trey, Mahesh, and Shawn

Task: Operate an exhibit at the DISD STEM Expo

DISD STEM Expo has been our busiest event this year. Many kids, ranging from elementary...

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Growing Pains and Reigns

Growing Pains and Reigns By Bhanaviya, Shawn, Mahesh, and Anisha

Task: Expand the Iron Reign Robotics Team

One of our biggest challenges this year was learning to adapt our robotics program to the large influx of new recruits. Last year, most of us...

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UME Qualifier

UME Qualifier By Bhanaviya, Karina, Cooper, Jose, Trey, Aaron, Ben, Justin, and Paul

Task: Compete at the UME Preparatory Academy Qualifier

A solid month or so after our first qualifier, Iron Reign walked through the doors to...

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Match Play at UME prep. Qualifier

Match Play at UME prep. Qualifier By Trey, Ben, Aaron, Bhanaviya, Jose, Cooper, Justin, Karina, and Paul

Task: Compete in Qualification and Finals matches

Today Iron Reign competed at our second qualifier at UME Preparatory Academy with TomBot which...

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Finger Gripper Morph Chart

Finger Gripper Morph Chart By Jose

Task: Create a morph chart to analyze all our 3-finger gripper versions so far in this season.

Just like with our gripper designs, we've also gone through a number of...

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Dissecting the Turret

Dissecting the Turret By Karina and Cooper

Task: Figure out why the turntable isn't turning

Just as Iron Reign was at the point of getting driver practice started and hunkering down to do autonomous, the turntable stopped working. The...

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Drive Practice 1/6

Drive Practice 1/6 By Justin and Aaron

Task: Practice driving with new code

Today we worked on driving the robot with new presets. Over the weekend, our coders worked on new presets to speed up our cycling time....

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Driver Optimization Developments 5/1

Driver Optimization Developments 5/1 By Cooper

Task: Improve driver optimizations

Today we worked on driver optimizations, since Justin was here. We changed around the controls for the arm to be more like the drivetrain and the D-pad on controller 1, with...

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Testing Two Drivers

Testing Two Drivers By Justin and Aaron

Task: Practice driving with two drivers

Today we started testing out our new two controller setup. The goal is to have one driver control just the base, and have the other driver...

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STEM Expo Preparation

STEM Expo Preparation By Bhanaviya

Task: Plan for the DISD STEM Expo

An FLL Team Gathered Around Iron Reign's Robot at the 2019 STEM Expo

Next week, a week after...

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Calculating Torque at the Turn-table

Calculating Torque at the Turn-table By Bhanaviya

Task: Analyze torque at the turn-table and how it affects our choice of motor sets

We want to know if we are using the best possible motor set on our turntable....

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Calculating Torque at the Drive-Train

Calculating Torque at the Drive-Train By Bhanaviya

Task: Calculate torque at the drive-train and analyze our choice of motors

During drive-testing, one issue we noticed was that our robot was not as fast as could...

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Logarithmic Spiral Update

Logarithmic Spiral Update By Ben

Task: Update the Logarithmic Spiral

As the design and build of the robot progresses, many components must be updated to be compatible with the current design. The logarithmic spiral, which was...

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Calculating Torque at the Elbow

Calculating Torque at the Elbow By Bhanaviya

Task: Design an equation to model the torque at the elbow linearly

In order to maximize our robot performance, we need to be able to use motors and gears with the...

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Control Mapping v2

Control Mapping v2 By Jose

Task: Map out the new control scheme

As we progressively make our robot more autonomous when it comes to repeated tasks, it's time to map these driver enhancements. Since...

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FIRST in Texas Grants

FIRST in Texas Grants By Bhanaviya

Task: Detail the FIRST in Texas Grants and understand how it will improve our business plan

It's the last day of the decade! With a new decade, comes new money, and similar to...

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Assembling the Turntable Bevel Gears for a REV Motor

Assembling the Turntable Bevel Gears for a REV Motor By Trey and Justin

Task: Assemble the bevel gears to the turntable to fit a rev motor

Today we assembled a second version of our bevel gear assembly for...

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Last Coding Session of the Decade

Last Coding Session of the Decade By Cooper

Task: Gripper swivel, extendToTowerHeight, and retractFromTowerHeight. Oh My!

Today is the second to last day of 2019, and therefore the same of the decade. Thus, I want to spend it at robotics. Today...

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Sliding Foundation Grabber

Sliding Foundation Grabber By Trey, Jose, and Aaron

Task: Design and create a more efficient and compact foundation grabber

Moving the foundation throughout a match is an important part of the overall gameplay of a...

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Testing Friction Coefficient

Testing Friction Coefficient By Bhanaviya

Task: Measure the coefficient of friction of our potential gripper materials

We want to measure various constants of materials on our robot. These materials serve to improve the grip on our...

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Extend to Tower Height and Retract from Tower

Extend to Tower Height and Retract from Tower By Cooper

Task: Develop the controller so that it can extend to tower height

Since we have decided to move onto using 2 controllers, we can have more room for optimizations and shortcuts/...

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Code Developments 12/28

Code Developments 12/28 By Cooper

Task: Gripper swivel, extendToTowerHeight, and retractFromTowerHeight. Oh My!

Today was a long day, clocking in 10 hrs continuously. In those ten hours, I was able to make tremendous progress. Overall, we have 4 main areas of...

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Materials Test Planning

Materials Test Planning By Bhanaviya

Task: Create a system to test our materials to better understand their grip potential

Here at Iron Reign, we're used to using off-the-shelf materials for our robot. For this season,...

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Finger Gripper Version 4 CAD

Finger Gripper Version 4 CAD By Jose

Task: CAD a slightly different capstone version to improve upon v3's issues

On this minor update to our flat gripper design a dropper for the latest capstone was...

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Turret IMU Code

Turret IMU Code By Jose and Abhi

Task: Code some driver enhancements for the turret

With the return of the king(Abhi - an alumni of our team) we were able to make some code changes, mainly...

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Third Annual Townview Tournament a Success!

Third Annual Townview Tournament a Success! By Coach and Bhanaviya

Thank you to all our volunteers!

Thank you to all the volunteers that gave up their Saturday to contribute to the FTC community in North Texas. Because...

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Townview Qualifier 2019 - The Day Of

Townview Qualifier 2019 - The Day Of By Bhanaviya, Jose, Paul, Aaron, Justin, Trey, Ben, Karina, Cooper, Jayesh, Tycho, and Max

Task: Run the Townview Tournament

On Saturday, December 15, Iron Reign hosted 31...

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Townview Qualifier 2019 - Set Up

Townview Qualifier 2019 - Set Up By Ben, Jose, Karina, Justin, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Paul, and Trey

Task: Prepare Townview for the upcoming qualifier

Tomorrow, December 14th, Iron Reign will be hosting the 2019 Townview Qualifier. 31 teams will be...

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Future TomBot Articulations

Future TomBot Articulations By Cooper

Task: Plan out potential robot articulations to improve game strategy

Getting back from the tournament, we were able to immediately start to think about what was the big problems and possible improvements to the articulations of...

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Capstone Iterations

Capstone Iterations By Bhanaviya

Task: Go over all 3 of our capstone iterations

So far, we have experimented with 3 capstone models. While we do not intend to use all 3 of these models, they allowed us to...

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Allen Qualifier Post Mortem

Allen Qualifier Post Mortem By Karina, Bhanaviya, Jose, Ben, and Paul

Task: Plan for upcoming tournaments

So our Allen qualifier was a success! Iron Reign won the Inspire Award, which we are so honored to have been given. We did a...

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Short-term Post-Mortem Talks

Short-term Post-Mortem Talks By Bhanaviya, Cooper, Paul, Aaron, Ben, Jose, and Trey

Task: Begin analyzing our performance at the Allen qualifier

It’s officially been a week since our first qualifier at Allen. Although we succeeded in qualifying there’s still...

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Capstone Version 3

Capstone Version 3 By Jose

Task: Design a minimalistic capstone that can be deployed by the stone gripper

This version of our capstone is to be 3D modeled and printed as well as be as compact...

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Bill of Materials

Bill of Materials By Bhanaviya, Trey, and Jose

Task: Create a list of parts needed for the new robot

To determine all the materials we need for the new robot, we started a Bill of Materials. To...

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Creating a Robot Handle

Creating a Robot Handle By Paul

Task: Create a handle for the robot to make it more inspection-worthy

The robot handle is a revolutionary piece of precision engineering, designed to allow the robot to lifted by a carbon-based...

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Finger Gripper Version 3 CAD

Finger Gripper Version 3 CAD By Jose

Task: Design a more comapct and efficient gripper design

This version of the finger gripper is going to be mostly custom made to make it as simple and as...

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SEM Robotics Tournament

SEM Robotics Tournament By Coach and Bhanaviya

Qualifying Tournament needs Volunteers!

Iron Reign (team 6832), The School of Science and Engineering and the Dallas ISD STEM Department are happy to announce that we are hosting our...

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Allen Qualifier Post Mortem - Code

Allen Qualifier Post Mortem - Code By Jose and Cooper

Task: Analyze our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for our code at the Allen Qualifier

Fresh off our first qualifier at the Allen STEAM Center, we decided to begin...

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Adding to TomBot model

Adding to TomBot model By Ben

Task: Update the current robot model

Prior to updating the model, the model purely consisted of the chassis and the primitive turntable. Since then, both the turntable and chassis have been updated to...

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Finger Gripper Version 2

Finger Gripper Version 2 By Jose

Task: Design a swivel and add ninjaflex parts to improve the finger gripper

From what we learned at the Allen Qualifier the gripper needs some major improvements before it...

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Swivel Mount

Swivel Mount By Aaron

Task: Design a swivel mount to improve the degrees of freedom on the gripper

After the recent competition, we realized that a good way to increase precision would be to add, of...

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Mentoring FTC Team 6964 Igutech

Mentoring FTC Team 6964 Igutech By Bhanaviya

Task: Respond to a request for outreach help from Team 6964

Recently, Iron Reign received a request for advice on how we run our outreach events from FTC Team 6964...

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Post-Qualifier Code Debugging

Post-Qualifier Code Debugging By Cooper

Task: Debug code after the Allen Qualifier

After the qualifier, along with articulation plans, we had a long list of bugs in the code that needed to be sorted out. Most of them were a direct...

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Drive Issues at Allen Qualifier

Drive Issues at Allen Qualifier By Justin, Karina, Jose, and Aaron

Task: Identify points of improvement after driving at Allen

While using our untested code and inexperienced drivers at the Allen STEAM Center this weekend, we encountered many...

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Build Post-Mortem

Build Post-Mortem By Bhanaviya and Aaron

Task: Begin analyzing long-term build improvements

Moving on from the Allen qualifier, there are a couple issues we need to fix. Aside from the usual wear and tear a robot experiences in...

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Inspire at Allen

Inspire at Allen By Bhanaviya

This weekend, SEM sent four teams to the first qualifying tournament of the FIRST Tech Challenge 2019-2020 season. Iron Reign (6832) was a finalist in robot game and won the top award (Inspire) and has advanced...

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Allen Qualifier

Allen Qualifier By Bhanaviya, Karina, Cooper, Jose, Trey, Aaron, Ben, and Justin

Task: Compete at the N. TX Allen STEAM Center Qualifier

Right off of a subpar performance at the Woodrow Wilson Scrimmage, Iron Reign walked on...

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Match Play at Allen Qualifier

Match Play at Allen Qualifier By Jose, Ben, Aaron, Bhanaviya, Trey, Cooper, Justin, and Karina

Task: Compete in Qualification Matches and maybe some Playoffs

Today was our first qualifier at the Allen STEAM Center and we were able to...

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Night Before Competition Build

Night Before Competition Build By Aaron, Cooper, and Trey

Task: Transform a mass of metal into a functional something in the span of one night in time for the qualifier tomorrow.

Twas the night before competition and the...

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Last Minute Code Changes

Last Minute Code Changes By Cooper

Task: Debug some last-minute code to be ready for our first qualifier of the season

This article may seem a bit rushed, but that's because it is - for good reason. Tonight is the night...

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Morph Chart

Morph Chart By Bhanaviya

Task: Create a morph chart to analyze all our designs so far in this season.

Iron Reign has seen several iterations of several subsystems over this past build season....

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Coding TomBot

Coding TomBot By Cooper and Jose

Task: Use existing code from the code base to program TomBot

To code TomBot, we decided to use the codebase from Frankendroid, as its...

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Linear Slides on TomBot

Linear Slides on TomBot By Justin

Task: Mount linear slides to the robot.

Today we focused on getting the arm and linear slide ready to be powered up. Our first task was to move down one of...

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Woodrow Scrimmage

Woodrow Scrimmage By Trey, Bhanaviya, Ben, Jose, Justin, Aaron, Karina, Cooper, and Paul

Task: Compete and work on TomBot at the scrimmage at Woodrow HS.

This Saturday Iron Reign attended a scrimmage at Woodrow High School....

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Presenting Our Engineering Notebook

Presenting Our Engineering Notebook By Karina, Justin, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Jose, Ben, Aaron, and Trey

Task: Share with other teams how Iron Reign creates its engineering notebook

This weekend Iron Reign attended the Woodrow Wilson Scrimmage....

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Logarithmic Spiral Design

Logarithmic Spiral Design By Ben

Task: Design a system that could linearly reduce torque.

Since last season, we have conducted a significant amount of experimentation on our elbow and slide mechanism. We are using a similar design because we...

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Responding to Girl Scouts of Desert Southwest

Responding to Girl Scouts of Desert Southwest By Bhanaviya

Task: Respond to an email about the MXP to the local Idaho STEM director of Girl Scouts.

The Mobile Tech xPerience

Today, Iron...

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Mounting the Slip Ring

Mounting the Slip Ring By Aaron

Task: Mount a slip ring onto TomBot's chassis

On our robot we have a turntable in order to increase the degree of precision at which we can maneuver skystones. We have one...

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CNC Turntable Mounts

CNC Turntable Mounts By Justin

Task: Model and CNC way to mount the turntable to the chassis

Today we worked on creating a 3d model for a CNC cut part to mount the turntable to the chassis. Since...

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3-Fingered Gripper

3-Fingered Gripper By Jose and Aaron

Task: 3D Model and build an 8th gripper design

As our 8th gripper design we are trying out a compact design known as the 3-fingered gripper. This was 3-D modeled before being...

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Turn-table Assembly

Turn-table Assembly By Aaron and Trey

Task: Finish assembling the turn-table

During today’s meeting, we were able to complete the mounting of the pinion motor assembly to the turntable. This included drilling out holes and routing out a...

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Stub Gripper

Stub Gripper By Jose

Task: Building gripper iteration #7

As our 8th gripper design we modeled a stub gripper, inspired by 7129’s Ri30H. Several of our previous grippers were designed with the intention of...

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Transition from Expansion Hub to Control Hub

Transition from Expansion Hub to Control Hub By Jose and Cooper

Task: Discuss the transition from using the Expansion Hub to using the Control Hub

Over the past month we have used the control hub our...

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Round Chassis Assembly

Round Chassis Assembly By Justin, Trey, and Jose

Task: Attatch Omni wheels to Round Chassis

Today we finished assembling the round chassis for our circle robot, TomBot. The most important system we added was the omni wheels to...

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Updating TomBot's model

Updating TomBot's model By Bhanaviya and Ben

Task: Update the model to plan TomBot's build

With our first qualifier being less than a month away, Iron Reign embarked on an ambitious project to create...

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Ordering a Slip Ring

Ordering a Slip Ring By Jose

Task: Order a slip ring for the turn table

In order to spin the turntable on TomBot we need to use a motor with a specific gear to make it spin and...

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Hedrick Scrimmage - Code

Hedrick Scrimmage - Code By Jose and Cooper

Task: Discuss what went and what needs improvement in our code

Taking part in the annual Hedrick Scrimmage, we got to test our Robot In 24 Hours, FrankenDroid. Specifically, since...

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TomBot Suspension

TomBot Suspension By Ben

Task: Design a suspension for TomBot

3 Different iterations of the passive suspension.

We've decided to design a suspension for our circular chassis for one reason. Under the neutral bridge, there is a 15mm lip...

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Coding Before Scrimmage

Coding Before Scrimmage By Cooper, Karina, Bhanaviya, and Trey

Task: Finish the temporary auto and work with drivers for teleop

Tonight, the night before the scrimmage, We worked on making the depositing of the stone and parking of the robot more reliable. Or as reliable as possible, as we are planning to use...

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First Season Scrimmage at Hedrick MS

First Season Scrimmage at Hedrick MS By Trey, Bhanaviya, Ben, Jose, Justin, Aaron, Karina, and Cooper

Task: Compete and observe important things needed to continue the build of circle robot and for future competitions.

This...

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Driving at the Hedrick Scrimmage

Driving at the Hedrick Scrimmage By Karina and Jose

Task: Figure out what went wrong at the scrimmage

We didn't do too well in teleop driving at the Hedrick Scrimmage, with our max stone deposit being...

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Control Mapping

Control Mapping By Bhanaviya and Cooper

Task: Map and test controls

With the Hedrick Middle School scrimmage being a day away, the robot needs to be in drive testing phase. So, we started...

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Investing in a CNC Router

Investing in a CNC Router By Bhanaviya

Task: Invest in a CNC router using our grants from the previous season.

Last year was a very successful season for Iron Reign, financially speaking. We earned around $11,000 in...

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Coding 10/19/19 (Putting meat on the skeleton)

Coding 10/19/19 (Putting meat on the skeleton) By Cooper

Task: work on actually filling out the auto

As seen in the last post, the skeleton of the auto was done. Tonight...

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Dr. Woodie Flowers, in Memoriam

Dr. Woodie Flowers, in Memoriam By Jose, Bhanaviya, Justin, Paul, Trey, Cooper, Ben, Aaron, and Karina

Task:

As most people in the FIRST community know by now, Dr. Woodie Flowers passed away on October 11th. As a team...

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TomBot Progress

TomBot Progress By Karina, Justin, and Trey

Task: Start assembling the TomBot chassis

Today we made some progress on our round robot. We moved the rev rails and big wheels on the Bigwheel chassis to...

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Auto Path 1

Auto Path 1 By Karina and Jose

Task: Lay out our robot's path for autonomous

To kick off our autonomous programming, Iron Reign created our first version autonomous path plan. We begin, like all...

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Discuss the Impact of Our Robot in 2 Days Reveal Video

Discuss the Impact of Our Robot in 2 Days Reveal Video By Bhanaviya

Task: Analyze the viewer statistics of our Robot in 2 Days Reveal Video

...

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Beginning Auto Stone

Beginning Auto Stone By Cooper and Karina

Task: Design an intake for the stones based on wheels

Initial Design: Rolling Intake

We've been trying to get our start on autonomous...

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FrankenDroid - TPM Calibration

FrankenDroid - TPM Calibration By Jose, Cooper, and Bhanaviya

Task: Calibrate FrankenDriod's Ticks Per Meter in preparation of programming autonomous

Today we worked on the calibration of FrankenDriod's TPM. This is used to accurately and precisely move during...

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Autonomous and TomBot Robot

Autonomous and TomBot Robot By Karina, Jose, and Bhanaviya

Task: Autonomous coding and TomBot progress

DISD students have been blessed with a long weekend, which we plan to take full advantage of as our first...

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Gripper Testing

Gripper Testing By Paul and Justin

Task: Test block gripper

Here is us testing the gripper we designed to pick up the blocks in this years SkyStone challenge. This gripper combines the Pivoting Accelerated User-Friendly...

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Presenting to Representative Colin Allred's Office

Presenting to Representative Colin Allred's Office By Bhanaviya, Karina, Jose, Aaron, Cooper, Trey, Ben, Paul, and Justin

Task: Meet with Representative Colin Allred's office to discuss FIRST robotics and STEM-based legislation

Today, we presented to Mr...

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Preparing for the Meeting with Representative Colin Allred's Office

Preparing for the Meeting with Representative Colin Allred's Office By Bhanaviya

Task: Reach out to congressional representatives in our area to improve the implementation of STEM-based legislation

This summer, our team reached out to three congressional...

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Fixing the Mechanum Chassis

Fixing the Mechanum Chassis By Cooper

Task: Fix the old mecanum chassis from last year

Tonight, I worked on fixing the Iron Star robot from last year, since its a viable option for replacement of...

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Recruitment Update

Recruitment Update By Bhanaviya

Task: Plan for 30+ influx of team members

Just like last year, this year has been pretty successful recruitment-wise. We have had 24 total signups, up from -5 last year. In addition to our...

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TomBot CAD

TomBot CAD By Ben

Task: Design a concept for a circular chassis

Concept of circular chassis

A challenge we face this year is running into other robots. Last year, it was possible to easily get around other robots; however,...

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Skystone Gripper Version 2

Skystone Gripper Version 2 By Justin

Task: Design an Intake Wheel

The older iteration of the gripper wheel

Last season, we designed a ninjaflex gripper for Icarus, our World championship robot. This season, we are...

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P.A.U.L

P.A.U.L By Aaron

Task: Design a new intake system

The Pivoting Accelerated User-friendly Locker

After the end of the two day robot build, we had come up with two main gripper designs. One...

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New Recruits for the 2019-2020 Season

New Recruits for the 2019-2020 Season By Bhanaviya, Karina, Aaron, Jose, Ben, Trey, Cooper, Paul, and Justin

Task: Train the influx of new recruits

The recruits learn how to code

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Test Driving New Robot

Test Driving New Robot By Ben, Jose, and Trey

Task: Test the "Robot in 2 Days" robot

Today we were able to drive test our "robot in 2 days" robot. We used our robot from the previous...

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Field Set-Up

Field Set-Up By Trey, Bhanaviya, Ben, Jose, and Cooper

Task: Clean our work space and set up the field

Today we started preparing for the first meeting with the new recruits. Some of the...

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Robot in 2 Days Grippers Comparison

Robot in 2 Days Grippers Comparison By Jose and Bhanaviya

Task: Analyze all our grippers from the Robot in 2 Days challenge

During the making of our Ri2D we prototyped and...

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Robot in 2 Days - Day Two

Robot in 2 Days - Day Two By Bhanaviya, Aaron, Cooper, Jose, Ben, and Paul

Task: Finish Robot in 2 Days

Since the reveal was released yesterday, Iron Reign embarked on a project to build a...

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Ri2D Code

Ri2D Code By Jose

Task: Code a Basic TeleOp Code for the Ri2D bot using pre-existing classes and methods

As the Ri2D bot nears completion, the need for TeleOp code becomes apparent to actually make it move....

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Parallel Gripper

Parallel Gripper By Ben

Task: Prototype a parallel gripper

While there are many different solutions and gripper designs, one of the most common is the parallel gripper. The purpose of a parallel gripper is to grip objects,...

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Mentoring Rookie Team Wattever

Mentoring Rookie Team Wattever By Aaron, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Jose, and Ben

Task: Show team 16296 Wattever how we run our meets

During our time participating in the robot in 2 days challenge, rookie...

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Rack and Pinion Gripper

Rack and Pinion Gripper By Cooper and Aaron

Task: Build a gripper system for the 2019-2020 Skystone Challenge

The rack-and-pinion gripper system is one of the 4 gripper systems we built this weekend...

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Robot in Two Days - Day One

Robot in Two Days - Day One By Karina, Bhanaviya, Aaron, Jose, Ben, Trey, Cooper, Sam, Sterling, Beau, Mahesh, and Shawn

Task: Build prototype subsystems that pick up the stone elements

This season Iron Reign decided...

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Wheel Gripper

Wheel Gripper By Jose and Trey

Task: Design an intake for the stones based on wheels

Initial Design: Rolling Intake

The first idea we came up with for gripper designs during our Robot in 2 Days...

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Aaron’s Super Cool Gripper That Works 100% Of The Time

Aaron’s Super Cool Gripper That Works 100% Of The Time By Aaron

Task: Prototyping a rolling gripper

During the 2 day robot challenge, one of the gripper designs that we built on the first day...

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Modelling a Points System

Modelling a Points System By Bhanaviya and Karina

Task: Model a points system for the Skystone Challenge

A couple hours ago, Iron Reign attended the reveal for the 2019-2020 FTC game - SKYSTONE. Since we intend to...

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FTC Skystone Kickoff

FTC Skystone Kickoff By Karina, Bhanaviya, Aaron, Jose, Ben B, Trey, and Cooper

Task: Attend the kickoff event

Today Iron Reign attended the FTC 2019-2020 season kickoff event at Williams High School. Team members and prospective...

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2019-20 Recruitment

2019-20 Recruitment By BenB, Jose, Bhanaviya, Paul, Cooper, Karina, and Trey

Task: Recruit new members for the 2019-20 season

Today we held an interest meeting at our campus - Townview Magnet Center. Over 30 people of varying grade...

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RIP Big Wheel

RIP Big Wheel By Paul, Aaron, and Trey

Task: Tear down BigWheel and harvest parts

Big Wheel, Iron Reign’s first iteration of our Worlds competition robot Icarus, had been sitting outside in the tent for months and we needed parts...

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Online Planning Session

Online Planning Session By Cooper, Trey, Bhanaviya, Ben, and Jose

Task: Brainstorm current and future plans on a google docs and try to switch to Trello

Tonight we set out to organize our thoughts and projects...

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Fixing Mini-Mech

Fixing Mini-Mech By Cooper

Task: Fix Mini-Mech in time for the Skystone reveal

In two weeks, Iron Reign is planning on building a robot in 2 days, based on the 2019-2020 Skystone Reveal Video. We've never really...

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Sustainability Goals

Sustainability Goals By Bhanaviya

Task: Plan to support at least 3 teams for the incoming Skystone season

One of the biggest challenges we will face this upcoming season is the fact that 6 of our members graduated just a month ago....

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Letters to Congressional Representatives

Letters to Congressional Representatives By Bhanaviya, Jose, and Ethan

Task: Reach out to congressional representatives in our area to improve the implementation of STEM-based legislation

This past year at the world championship, the founder of...

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Mayor’s Back to School Fair

Mayor’s Back to School Fair By Bhanaviya, Jose, and Ethan

Task: Educate students at the Mayor’s Back to School Fair on robotics

Students learning to model keychains

Iron Reign was given...

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SEM Nest Camp

SEM Nest Camp By Bhanaviya, Jose, and Paul

Task: Introduce incoming freshmen to our robotics program

SEM Freshmen interacting with our team

Iron Reign was given the opportunity by our school, The School...

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Moonday

Moonday By Paul, Abhi, Charlotte, Justin, Janavi, Jayesh, Aaron, Evan, Ethan, and Karina

Task: Reach out to the community and present at Moonday

Iron Reign went to the Frontiers of Flight Museum again with the DPRG...

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Discovery Faire at Central Library

Discovery Faire at Central Library By Trey, Jose, Bhanaviya, Ethan, Janavi, Charlotte, Evan, and Aaron

Task: Teach students how to block program and 3D model at the Discovery Faire @ Central Library

On July 13th Iron Reign attended...

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Discovery Faire at the Frontiers of Flight Museum Prep

Discovery Faire at the Frontiers of Flight Museum Prep By Jose

Task: Prepare everything for the Discovery Faire next week

I(Jose) fixed the battery box and charged the robot phones and batteries so that we could charge Icarus before next Saturday....

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Frontiers Of Flight Museum Outreach

Frontiers Of Flight Museum Outreach By Paul, Bhanaviya, Ethan, Justin, Jose, Benb, Janavi, Evan, Aaron, Abhi, and Evan

Task: Motivate children in STEM fields at the Frontiers of Flight museum

Janavi teaching kids how to build EV3 Robots

...
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Leg Drive Prototype

Leg Drive Prototype By Jose

Task: Prototype a Leg Drive for next year's (possible) stacking game

Although most teams go for a traditional chassis, a different type may be needed for next season as speculations suggest...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log June 08, 2019 By Bhanaviya, Jose, Anisha, Paul, Shawn, Trey, Justin, Aaron, Ben, Mahesh, and Cooper

Talking Heads: Summary June 08, 2019

Task: Prepare for the 2020-2021 Game Reveal season

Today kicked off our first...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log June 08, 2019 By Bhanaviya, Jose, Paul, Aaron, Ben, Evan, Trey, and Justin

Meeting Log June 08, 2019

Task: Prepare for the 2019-2020 Skystone season

Today kicked off our first meeting for the new Skystone...

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DPRG RoboRama Competition

DPRG RoboRama Competition By Jose and Paul

Task: Compete at the DPRG RoboRama and present Icarus

Ready and prepared, our two man team came to compete at the Annual Dallas Personal Robotics Group's RoboRama.

The...

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DPRG RoboRama Prep

DPRG RoboRama Prep By Jose and Paul

Task: Prepare for the DPRG RoboRama Competition

Tomorrow Iron Reign is to send out a team of two people to compete at the annual Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG) RoboRama as well...

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Discover Summer Fair

Discover Summer Fair By Bhanaviya, Ethan, Karina, and Jose

Task: Teach kids how to program and 3D-model at the Discover Summer Fair

Students drive-test their newly-programmed LEGO robots

This Saturday was the Discover Summer Fair organized...

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Worlds Day 4

Worlds Day 4 By Jose, Bhanaviya, BenB, Aaron, Cooper, Paul, Arjun, Justin, Karina, Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, and Abhi

Task: Participate in Alliance Selection and attend the Award Ceremony

Today was the last of the 2019 FTC World Championship and...

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Worlds Day 3

Worlds Day 3 By Jose, Ethan, Charlotte, Abhi, Evan, Karina, Justin, BenB, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Aaron, Arjun, and Paul

Task: Compete in even more qualification matches

Match 7(Q121)

We won 292-280. With the elbow motors fixed we were ready for...

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Worlds Day 2

Worlds Day 2 By Jose, Ethan, Charlotte, Janavi, Abhi, Evan, Karina, Justin, BenB, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Aaron, Arjun, and Paul

Task: Compete in more qualification matches

Match 2(Q28)

We lost 340-280. We had a flawless auto this time and followed...

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Worlds Day 1

Worlds Day 1 By Jose, Ethan, Charlotte, Janavi, Abhi, Evan, Karina, Justin, BenB, Bhanaviya, Cooper, Aaron, Arjun, and Paul

Task: Set up our Worlds pit, complete inspection and judging, and compete in robot game matches

Presentation

Our presentation went...

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Project Management Post-Mortem

Project Management Post-Mortem By Charlotte

Task: Evaluate the Project Manager position

This year, I started the role of project manager, and there have certainly been plenty of growing pains. Iron Reign had previously learned to embrace chaos, frequently pulling all nighters...

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REV Beta Test

REV Beta Test By Bhanaviya, Ethan, Karina, Justin, Arjun, Jose, Benb, Janavi, Evan, Aaron, Abhi, and Beno

Task: Test the new REV Control Hub at the REV Scrimmage

Founders of REV working with our team

REV...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log April 13, 2019 By Bhanaviya, Ethan, Janavi, Evan, Karina, Justin, Abhi, Jose, BenO, BenB, and Arjun

Meeting Log April 13, 2019

Compete at the REV Scrimmage and do...

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Auto Paths, Updated

Auto Paths, Updated By Abhi

Task: Reflect and develop auto paths

It has been a very long time since we have reconsidered our auto paths. Between my last post and now, we have made numerous changes to both the hardware and...

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Control Hub First Impressions

Control Hub First Impressions By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Test the REV Control Hub ahead of the REV trial

Iron Reign was recently selected to attend a REV Control Hub trial along with select other teams in...

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Final Gantt Chart

Final Gantt Chart By think

Task: Update the Gantt Chart

Earlier in the year, we posted an early version of the Gantt chart as seen in (T-17, Project Management). Since then, the chart has seen many changes, which can be seen...

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Ninja Flex Intake V2

Ninja Flex Intake V2 By Jose, BenB, Karina, Evan, Abhi, Ethan, Charlotte, and Aaron

Task: Design, implement, and test a newer version of the ninja flex intake

The new ninja flex intake is good, but it...

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Machining Gears for Superman

Machining Gears for Superman By Ethan and Justin

Task: Machine replacement gears for Superman

Shortly after creating the new Tetrix gear system, we got a response from one of the CNC shops we'd reached out to, offering...

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Intake Update

Intake Update By Ethan

Task: Custom design an intake to improve intake times

In testing, we found that the intake didn't perform adequately - the balls would slide back out in the inverse articulations. So, we designed...

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New Superman Arm

New Superman Arm By Ethan and Evan

Task: Redesign the Superman arm to be more robust for Worlds

In posts E-116, we found that we were putting pressure on the individual teeth of the Superman gears on...

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UIL 2019 Postmortem

UIL 2019 Postmortem By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Janavi, Beno, Benb, Bhanaviya, Abhi, Arjun, Jose, Aaron, Paul, Cooper, and Justin

Task: Reflect on what we did correctly and incorrectly at UIL

Pit & Packing & Roles

  • Pack more robot parts -...
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Code updates at UIL

Code updates at UIL By Arjun, Abhi, and Ben O

Task: Update code to get ready for UIL

It's competition time again, and with that means updating our code. We have made quite a few changes...

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Assisting Mechanicats with Code

Assisting Mechanicats with Code By Arjun

Task: Help Mechanicats, the other DISD team, debug their code

Competition is always stressful for everyone. There's so much that can go wrong, and when something does, it feels like all your hard work has...

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UIL 2019

UIL 2019 By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Janavi, Beno, Benb, Bhanaviya, Abhi, Arjun, Jose, Aaron, Paul, Cooper, and Justin

Task: Compete at the Texas State Championship

Today, we competed at the Texas State Championship, UIL Robotics, Division 5A-6A. We finished our robot earlier this week, so this served as a testing ground for our new robot and code.

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Intake Flappers

Intake Flappers By Jose, Evan, and Abhi

Task: Design and test intake flappers to speed up mineral intake

Due to our new intake articulation involving the superman wheel the ice cube tray intake is slightly too...

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MXP Expansion

MXP Expansion By Ethan

Task: Plan the next stage of the MXP

In post B-7, we announced that BigThought received $150k on our behalf for the creation of a new MXP. Now, we've created a tentative...

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Wiring Icarus

Wiring Icarus By Jose, Abhi, Evan, and Aaron

Task: Wire Icarus to be functional and move utilizing code

With the construction of Icarus nearing completion we need to start connecting wires from the motors and servos to the REV Expansion Hubs...

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Project Management Mentorship

Project Management Mentorship By Charlotte

Task: Ensure skills are passed to underclassmen

Since our project manager is leaving for college next year, there has been an effort to teach the younger students on our team to take on this role and...

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Connecting the Hook to a Servo

Connecting the Hook to a Servo By Karina

Task: Connect the hook to a servo

When attaching the hook to the servo, it was very important that the configuration gave the hook its widest possible range of motion. The open position...

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Icarus' Arms

Icarus' Arms By Evan, Aaron, and Ethan

Task: Install intake arms

Since the last post, in which we installed the Superman Arm, we've installed the second stage of the linear lift and the belt drive that accompanies...

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Center of Gravity calculations

Center of Gravity calculations By Arjun

Task: Determine equations to find robot Center of Gravity

Because our robot tends to tip over often, we decided to start working on a dynamic anti-tip algorithm. In order...

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Reverse Articulations

Reverse Articulations By Abhi

Task: Summary of Icarus Movements

In post E-116, I showed all the big wheel articulations. As we shifted our robot to Icarus, we decided to change to a new set of articulations as they would work...

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Icarus Code Support

Icarus Code Support By Abhi

Task: Implement dual robot code

With the birth of Icarus came a new job for the programmers: supporting both Bigwheel and Icarus. We needed the code to work both ways because new logic could be developed...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 28, 2019 By Cooper and Evan

Meeting Log March 28, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Objective Summary

Fix camera mount, attach lift motors, make custom cables for the drive motors, and forge the hook

Today's Work...

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Icarus' Superman Arm

Icarus' Superman Arm By Evan, Aaron, and Ethan

Task: Design and install a lifting arm for Icarus

At the same time as the elbow joint was being done (which can be found in the article "Constructing Icarus'...

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Constructing Icarus' Elbow

Constructing Icarus' Elbow By Evan, Aaron, and Ethan

Task: Build the elbow for intake

In the last Icarus' blog post, it was just getting the basic flat, support frame of the robot. The next step in the...

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Updated Meetinglog Template

Updated Meetinglog Template By Charlotte

Task: Update the meetinglog template to more accurately reflect efforts

An essential part of the project management role is the meeting log, where the project manager records all progress made in each subteam during each session....

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New Elbow

New Elbow By Justin

Task: Design an elbow for bigwheel that we can 3d print

To speed up the build process of the new robot, we made a 3D printable part of the elbow joint. The...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 23, 2019 By Charlotte, Ethan, Bhanaviya, Karina, Jose, Justin, BenB, BenO, Arjun, Cooper, Paul, Abhi, Janavi, and Aaron

Meeting Log March 23, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Agenda

Objective Summary

Today, our main goal...

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Intake Speed

Intake Speed By Karina

Task: Analyze efficiency of our intake system

A big part of our redesign is improving our intake system. To see where some of the errors may lie, we took detailed videos of our robot intaking silver and...

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Bill of Materials

Bill of Materials By Bhanaviya and Karina

Task: Create a list of parts needed for the new robot

To determine all the materials we need for the new robot, Karina and I started a Bill of Materials....

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 22, 2019 By Bhanaviya, Janavi, Abhi, Arjun, Ben O, Paul, Ben B, and Cooper

Meeting Log March 22, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Agenda

Objective Summary

Over the course of today’s meet, we plan to create new axle...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 20, 2019 By Bhanaviya, Karina, Evan, and Justin

Meeting Log March 20, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Objective Summary

We plan to build the base of the chassis for the new robot, mainly by aligning the...

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Finishing Icarus' Base

Finishing Icarus' Base By Evan, Aaron, and Ethan

Task: Perform the final steps to complete Icarus' base

Since we finished the polycarb base, our robot went through some major changes. We last left our robot in the...

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New Robot Base - Icarus

New Robot Base - Icarus By Evan, Justin, Aaron, and Ethan

Task: Build the base for the new robot

Since BigWheel was never intended to be a competition robot, we decided to build an entire new...

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Balancing Robot Updates

Balancing Robot Updates By Abhi and Ben

Updates on Balancing Robot

Today we managed to get our robot to balance for 30 seconds after spending about an hour tuning the PID gains. We made significant progress, but there is a flaw in our algorithm that needs to...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 16, 2019 By Charlotte, Janavi, Aaron, Ethan, Justin, Bhanaviya, Beno, Abhi, and Karina

Meeting Log March 16, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Agenda

Objective Summary

Our main objectives for today are to gather...

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FIRST in Texas Grant

FIRST in Texas Grant By Ethan

Task: Recieve a grant for the Iron Reign program

Iron Reign has received $1,000 from FIRST in Texas for tournament fees and robot parts. This will go a long way for...

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Balancing Robot

Balancing Robot By Abhi and Ben

Initial Work on Balancing Robot

Since our robot has two wheels and a long arm, we decided to take on an interesting problem: balancing our robot on two wheels as do modern hoverboards and Segways. Though the problem had already been solved by others, we...

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VEX 393 Motor Testing

VEX 393 Motor Testing By Jose, Cooper, Aaron, and Janavi

Task: Test VEX Motor 393 as a faster servo for intake

We need to speed up our intake to spend less time in the crater collecting minerals....

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Planning Sessions

Planning Sessions By Charlotte

Task: Outline new planning sessions

Beyond the Gantt chart and meeting logs mentioned in (T-17, Project Management), another one of the biggest additions to the team with the project management role are planning sessions. Planning sessions are...

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DPRG Visit 2.0

DPRG Visit 2.0 By Abhi, Karina, Arjun, and BenO

Task: Present to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group about FTC app and our modifications

Today we had 2 goals: present the FTC control system and allow everyone...

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Localization

Localization By Ben

Localization

A feature that is essential to many advanced autonomous sequences is the ability to know the robots absolute location (x position, y position, heading). For our localization, we determine the robots position relative to the fields coordinate frame. To track our position, we use encoders (to...

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Off-Schedule Meeting Log - Spring Break

Off-Schedule Meeting Log - Spring Break March 08, 2019 By Charlotte, Cooper, Karina, Bhanaviya, BenO, Abhi, Janavi, Jose, Aaron, and Arjun

Meeting Log March 08, 2019

Friday
  • Widen Superman
  • Cooper and Ben O widened our Superman wheel from one omni...
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Issues with Driving

Issues with Driving By Cooper, Jose, BenB, Bhanaviya, Karina, and Justin

Task: Widen Superman's wheels and plan the new robot

Since we just qualified, we have a lot to do. On the list for tonight, between the 6 of us, we...

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Code Refactor

Code Refactor By Abhi and Arjun

Task: Code cleanup and season analysis

At this point in the season, we have time to clean up our code before development for code. This is important to do now so that the code remains...

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Road to Worlds Document

Road to Worlds Document By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Karina, Janavi, Jose, Ben, Justin, Arjun, Abhi, and Bhanaviya

Task: Consider what we need to do in the coming months

ROAD TO WORLDS - What we need to do

 

OVERALL:

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North Texas Regional Postmortem

North Texas Regional Postmortem By Ethan, Charlotte, Abhi, Janavi, Evan, Ben, Jose, Justin, Karina, Bhanaviya, and Arjun

Task: Analyze what went wrong at North Texas Regionals

We performed really well at Regionals; we actually won our first game of the season...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log March 02, 2019 By Charlotte, Ethan, Evan, Justin, Karina, Janavi, Jose, Ben, Abhi, and Bhanaviya

Meeting Log March 02, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Since we qualified for worlds, we are using today as an opportunity...

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SEM FTC Robotics advances to State and Worlds Championships

SEM FTC Robotics advances to State and Worlds Championships By Ethan

On Febuary 23, 2019, SEM Robotics sent three teams to the fifty two team North Texas Regional Championship, the largest showing of any school.


Left...

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Wylie Regionals 2019

Wylie Regionals 2019 By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Kenna, Karina, Abhi, Arjun, Bhanaviya, Ben, Justin, Jose, and Janavi

Task: Compete at the North Texas Regional Tournament

Preparation

Unlike other tournaments, we started packing before morning. We packed as...

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How to connect gamepads directly to RC phone without a DS phone

How to connect gamepads directly to RC phone without a DS phone By Arjun

How to tweak ftc_app to allow you to drive robots without a Driver Station phone:

A lot of teams have been asking about how we were able...

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Up-to-Date Bigwheel Model

Up-to-Date Bigwheel Model By Justin

Task: Finish the Bigwheel model

Updating the Bigwheel model to the robot’s current configuration was a challenge. The new linear slides are not standard parts, so we had to model them from...

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Cart Hack

Cart Hack By Arjun

Task: Tweaking ftc_app to allow us to drive robots without a Driver Station phone

As you already know, Iron Reign has a mechanized cart called Cartbot that we bring to competitions. We used the FTC control system...

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Big Wheel Articulations

Big Wheel Articulations By Abhi

Task: Summary of all Big Wheel movements

In our motion, our robot shifts multiple major subsystems (the elbow and Superman) that make it difficult to keep the robot from tipping....

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Off-Schedule Meeting Log - Week before Regionals

Off-Schedule Meeting Log - Week before Regionals February 19, 2019 By Ethan, Evan, Jose, Charlotte, Karina, and Justin

Meeting Log February 19, 2019

It's the week before Regionals, so...

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Latch Designs - A Retrospective

Latch Designs - A Retrospective By Ethan

Task: Analyze past successes and failures in our latching system

Version 1

The first version of the latch worked decently. We started out with the idea of a one-way, passive...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log February 16, 2019 By Ethan, Janavi, Kenna, Justin, Bhanaviya, Ben, Abhi, and Arjun

Meeting Log February 16, 2019

So, its the last week before Regionals, so we...

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Elbow Rebuild

Elbow Rebuild By Ethan, Jose, Karina, and Ben

Task: Rebuild the elbow after total gear annihilation

In a previous post, we detailed the extent to which we had stripped our gears - they were missing teeth in...

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Research Poster

Research Poster By Janavi and Ethan

Task:Create a Poster amalgamating all of our math

Throughout this season our team has completed various calculations from the torque of our robotics arm, to the speed of the wheels. Since these calculations are...

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Robot Issues - Gear Grinding

Robot Issues - Gear Grinding By Ethan

Task: Analyze the issues with the elbow arm of our robot

The elbow arm of the robot is what allows us to rotate the arm of our robot - the...

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Control Mapping

Control Mapping By Bhanaviya, Abhi, Ben, and Karina

Task: Map and test controls

With regionals being a week away, the robot needs to be in drive testing phase. So, we started out by mapping out controls...

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Pulley Spacers

Pulley Spacers By Ethan

Task: Design and implement pulley spacers to prevent belt interference

We had an issue where the belts that allowed our arm to slide upward were misaligned, resulting in the belts frequently slipping. We...

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BigWheel Upgrades

BigWheel Upgrades By Evan

Task: Fix some issues on BigWheel before the build freeze

We made more secure way of activating our hook, so we switched our piece of wire attaching the servo to the hook with a much stronger and...

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Bigwheel Model

Bigwheel Model By Justin

Task: Design and update the Bigwheel Model

We are updating our bigwheel model to represent our current robot. We had a model of just the chassis from the chassis study, so we are...

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Autonomous Non-Blocking State Machines

Autonomous Non-Blocking State Machines By Arjun

Task: Design a state machine class to make autonomous easier

In the past our autonomous routines were tedious and difficult to change. Adding one step to the beginning of an autonomous would require changing the...

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Woodrow Wilson Scrimmage

Woodrow Wilson Scrimmage By Bhanaviya, Charlotte, Janavi, Kenna, Karina, Evan, Abhi, Jose, Ben B, and Arjun

Task: Compete at the Woodrow Wilson Scrimmage with Woodrow teams

This past Saturday, Iron Reign competed in the Woodrow...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log By Charlotte, Evan, Ethan, Kenna, Karina, Abhi, Arjun, Ben, Jose, Janavi, and Bhanaviya
Meeting Log February 09, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Today we participated at a scrimmage held at Woodrow Wilson High School. This was...

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Latch 2.0 - Forged in Flame

Latch 2.0 - Forged in Flame By Evan

Task: Design a new latch for hanging

Our latching system is too complicated to use quickly; it requires too much reliance on driver control and becomes jammed. So,...

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Drive Testing at STEM Expo

Drive Testing at STEM Expo By Ben and Abhi

Task: Test robot performance at the STEM Expo to inspire younger kids and practice

An FLL team gathered around Iron Reign’s robot

We had the privilege...

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Code Updates

Code Updates By Abhi

Task: DISD STEM EXPO

The picture above is a representation of our work today. After making sure all the manual drive controls were working, Karina found the positions she preferred for intake, deposit, and latch....

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DISD STEM Expo

DISD STEM Expo By Bhanaviya, Ethan, Charlotte, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Arjun, Kenna, Justin, Karina, Ben B, and Jose

Task: Present at the DISD STEM Expo

DISD STEM...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log February 02, 2019 By Charlotte, Kenna, Ethan, Bhanaviya, Jose, Ben, Evan, and Janavi

Meeting Log February 02, 2019

Bhanaviya working on the blog

Today's Meet Objectives

The DISD STEM Expo took place today. While incredibly...

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Fixing Mineral Dropper Components

Fixing Mineral Dropper Components By Jose and Evan

Task: Fix any issues with the mineral dropper

At the STEM expo we saw a clear issue with the mineral dropper: it is very poorly geared and doesn't deposit minerals well. A quick...

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Latch V.3.5 Assembly

Latch V.3.5 Assembly By Ben

Task: Assemble the V.3.5 latch and attach to the robot

We assembled the fourth version of the latch today. Some of the improvements on this latch include using bigger bearings and thrust bearings inside. This latch...

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STEM Expo Preparation

STEM Expo Preparation By Bhanaviya and Benb

Task: Plan for the DISD STEM Expo

Tomorrow, Iron Reign along with members from the other 3 teams, is participating in the DISD STEM Expo for our third year. As...

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Mechanical Depositing

Mechanical Depositing By Evan

Task: Create a mechanical deposit for our selective deposit

To relieve driver stress, we decided to put a mechanical release mechanism that would drop the minerals into the passive sorter to then further...

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Intake Omnis

Intake Omnis By Ben

Task: Add omnidirectional wheels to intake arm

We need to add omniwheels to the intake arm to allow the arm to rest on the ground, while still maintaining the necessary height for collecting the minerals. If the...

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Gearkeepers

Gearkeepers By Jose and Evan

Task: Create and install gearkeepers to reduce slippage

We need to install gearkeepers on the Superman arm to prevent gear skippage which damages gears over time. We designed a simple rectangle in...

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Superman Calculations

Superman Calculations By Ethan

Task: Calculate torque and other values of the Superman arm on our robot

We want to have our robot completely replicable through the journal. So, we found it necessary to include the power calculations of various subsystems...

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Road to Regionals

Road to Regionals By Ethan

Task: Consider what needs to be done before regionals

Engineering Notebook:

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Latch Updates

Latch Updates By Justin, Abhi, and Ben

Task: Update the latch

Our first attempt at a latch was made out of flat metal L brackets that would slide into the hook, but they slid off under...

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Wylie East Postmortem

Wylie East Postmortem By Ethan, Janavi, Charlotte, Karina, Abhi, Justin, Kenna, Arjun, and Bhanaviya

Task: Analyze what went wrong at Wylie

We performed well at Wylie, comparatively speaking. But, there's always room for improvement.

Problems:

The Robot &...
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Meeting Log

Meeting Log January 26, 2019 By Charlotte, Kenna, Ethan, Justin, Arjun, Abhi, and Bhanaviya

Meeting Log January 26, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

We are going to use our experience from last week to guide our improvement...

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Three SEM Robotics Teams have now advanced to the FTC North Texas Regional Championship!

Three SEM Robotics Teams have now advanced to the FTC North Texas Regional Championship! By Ethan

This Saturday our two all-freshmen rookie FTC Robotics teams took it up a notch at their last qualifier tournament of the season. Iron Core was...

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Tokens!

Tokens! By Ethan

Task: Design tokens to hand out at the North Texas Regional

We recently taught ourselves how to use the laser-cutter. Now that we've gone mad with power, we've decided to make little handouts for...

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Competition Day Code

Competition Day Code By Abhi and Arjun

Task: Update our code

While at the Wylie quaiifier, we had to make many changes because our robot broke the night before.

First thing that happened was that the belt code was...

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Wylie East Qualifier 2019

Wylie East Qualifier 2019 By Ethan, Charlotte, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Arjun, Karina, and Justin

Task: Compete at Wylie East

Wylie East was Iron Reign's second qualifier of the year. Having qualified at the first one, we planned...

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Pool Noodle Intake

Pool Noodle Intake By Evan

Task: Design a quick intake for the robot before competition

The night before our final qualifier, we decided that the intake system on the robot was not up to our standards. To...

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Selective Intake

Selective Intake By Evan

Task: Design a new sorting mechanism for gold and silver particles

The differentiation between the different shapes of minerals has been something we’ve been thinking about since day one. At the time we...

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Designing Side Shields

Designing Side Shields By Ethan

Task: Create side shields for BigWheel

Iron Reign has access to an Epilog Mini laser-cutter through our school, so we decided to use it to create side shields to protect our robot...

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Belt Drive

Belt Drive By Evan and Karina

Task: Install a belt lift on our robot for depositing

The most recent addition to BigWheel has been the addition of a belt drive lift on either side of the linear...

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Code Updates

Code Updates By Abhi and Arjun

Task: Detail last-minute code changes to autonomous

It is almost time for competition and with that comes a super duper autonomous. For the past couple of weeks and today, we focused on making our depot...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log January 12, 2019 By Charlotte, Kenna, Karina, Evan, Justin, Abhi, Ethan, Arjun, and Janavi

Meeting Log January 12, 2019

Today's Meet Objectives

Today our goals include presentation practice, autonomous testing and fine tuning, and build changes from the newest update...
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Minor Code Change

Minor Code Change By Karina

Task: Save Bigwheel from self destruction

The other day, when running through Bigwheel's controls, we came across an error in the code. The motors on the elbow did not have min and max values for its...

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Vision Summary

Vision Summary By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Reflect on our vision development

One of our priorities this season was our autonomous, as a perfect autonomous could score us a considerable amount of points. A large portion of these points come from...

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Latch Model

Latch Model By Abhi and Justin

Task: Model and print the Latch

Early in the season, we made a hook, Although it was durable, it required a higher amount of precision than we would have liked to have, especially in the...

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Issues with Driving

Issues with Driving By Karina

Task: Get ready for Regionals

Regionals is coming up, and there are some driving issues that need to be addressed. Going back to November, one notable issue we had at the Conrad qualifier was the lack...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log By Bhanaviya, Charlotte, Kenna, Evan, Arjun, Ethan, Janavi, Karina, Austin, Lin, Jayesh, and Omar
Meeting Log January 05, 2019 Today's Meet Objectives

Today's goals include lowering the latch on Superman so that it becomes...
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Modeling Slide Barriers

Modeling Slide Barriers By Kenna

Task: Create barriers to prevent the linear slide from falling

Recently, we added polycarb barriers to our linear slide system. They were created as a temporary measure by bending the polycarb with...

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Auto Paths

Auto Paths By Abhi

Task: Map and code auto for depot side start

Today, we implemented our first autonomous path. Since we we still didn't have a complete vision software, we made these manually so we can integrate vision without issues....

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Debug OpenCV Errors

Debug OpenCV Errors By Arjun

Task: Use black magic to fix errors in our code

We implemented OpenCV support in our code, but we hadn’t tested it until now. Upon testing, we realized it didn't work.

The first problem...

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Off-Schedule Meeting Log, Winter Edition

Off-Schedule Meeting Log, Winter Edition January 03, 2019 By Ethan, Evan, Karina, Abhi, and Arjun

Meeting Log (Week of)January 03, 2019

We have quite a few tasks this week, including:

  • Latch design

  • We've had an idea for a latch...
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Teammember Statistics Update

Teammember Statistics Update By Ethan

Task: Look at the commitment changes over time of our team

It's a new year! And, with this new year comes new tournaments, new experiences, new projects, and more. But, to grow, one must reflect. Iron...

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OpenCV Support

OpenCV Support By Arjun

Task: Add OpenCV support to vision pipeline

We recently refactored our vision code to allow us to easily swap out vision implementations. We had already implemented TensorFlow, but we hadn't implemented code for using OpenCV instead of...

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Refactoring Vision Code

Refactoring Vision Code By Arjun

Task: Refactor Vision Code

Iron Reign has been working on multiple vision pipelines, including TensorFlow, OpenCV, and a home-grown Convolutional Neural Network. Until now, all our code assumed that we only used TensorFlow, and we wanted...

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Meeting Log - Dec. 19, 2018

Meeting Log - Dec. 19, 2018 December 29, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Karina, Abhi, and Arjun

Meeting Log December 29, 2018

Hello and welcome to the Iron Reign...

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Creating Side-Latches

Creating Side-Latches By Evan

Task: Allow the robot's arms to stand on their own

The issue with the lift is that many of the pieces that need to be made require specificity that’s hard to obtain using...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log December 22, 2018 By Charlotte, Ethan, Janavi, Bhanaviya, Evan, Arjun, and Abhi

Meeting Log December 22, 2018

Today's Meet Objectives

Our goals for today include a battery box, repair and improvement of our intake system, and...
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Scoring Mechanism

Scoring Mechanism By Janavi and Abhi

Task: Create a way to hold minerals

We now have a lift and an intake system, but we're missing a way to hold onto and deposit the minerals after intake. To achieve this, we...

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BigWheel Arm Locks

BigWheel Arm Locks By Evan

Task: Create locks to keep BigWheel's intake arms in an extended position

An important part of this year's challenge is scoring minerals in the lander. Additionally, our upright elbow cannot raise the...

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The Return of BatteryBox

The Return of BatteryBox By Ethan

Task: Create a charging station for our phones and batteries

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, Iron Reign once had a battery box. This was a fabled...

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End of TIG Welding

End of TIG Welding By Evan

Task: Detail TIG welding plans and why they failed

At the beginning of the season, we saw that our robot base was not as well crafted as we originally thought it...

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REV Headquarters Visit

REV Headquarters Visit By Ethan, Charlotte, Abhi, Bhanaviya, Evan, Karina, and Arjun

Task: Visit REV headquarters and learn more about the engineering process

Today, a group of Iron Reign, Core, and Star members ventured down to the...

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Selecting Intake System

Selecting Intake System By Janavi

Objective: Determine the type of intake system that will allow us to efficiently obtain and deposit minerals within the lander

In our post "Selecting Lift System" we decided that the linear slide system that we will...

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Townview Qualifier 2018 - The Day Of

Townview Qualifier 2018 - The Day Of By Ethan, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Charlotte, Karina, Kenna, Arjun, Jayesh, and Bhanaviya

Task: Run the Townview Tournament

On Saturday, December 15, Iron Reign hosted 30 teams at the Townview Magnet...

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Helping PiGuardians with Code

Helping PiGuardians with Code By Arjun

Task: Help teams at the Townview Tournament

On Saturday, December 15, Iron Reign hosted 30 teams at the Townview Qualifier tournament. As a part of hosting the tournament, we wanted to ensure that all teams...

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Townview Qualifier 2018 - Setting Up

Townview Qualifier 2018 - Setting Up By Bhanaviya, Ben, Karina, Kenna, Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Justin, Janavi, Austin, and Jayesh
Task: Prepare Townview for SEM's qualifier on December 15th

On December 15th, Iron Reign is hosting an FTC qualifier at Townview...
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DPRG Vision Presentation

DPRG Vision Presentation By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Present to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group about computer vision

We presented to the DPRG about our computer vision, touching on subjects including OpenCV, Vuforia, TensorFlow, and training our own Convolutional Neural Network....

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Presenting to the DPRG

Presenting to the DPRG By Ethan, Janavi, Charlotte, Arjun, Karina, Abhi, Evan, Bhanaviya, and Kenna

Task: Present to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group about robot vision and Iron Reign

We reached out to the Dallas Personal...

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Rotational Nylon Wear Test

Rotational Nylon Wear Test By Ethan

Task: Test the amount of wear on a moving nylon part over time

After our last tournament, we noticed several 3D-printed sprockets that had worn down significantly. So, we wanted to measure how much wear...

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Arm Repairs

Arm Repairs By Evan and Abhi

Task: Fix elbow and Superman

This is a follow up to Post E-64, Code Issues Break the Superman Arm. We made some hustles and got them fixed. We reinforced Superman by ganging up...

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Code Issues Break the Superman Arm

Code Issues Break the Superman Arm By Abhi

Task: Analyze the code issues that led to our robot breaking

After constant use, our robot's Superman arm broke. At this point, it is important to analyze our failures. This error was not...

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Linear Nylon Strength Test

Linear Nylon Strength Test By Ethan

Task: Measure linear nylon wear

We've had some issues with our nylon sprockets, mainly through excessive wear and tear. So, we want to test what circumstances cause what deformation.

Linear...
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Selecting Lift System

Selecting Lift System By Janavi

Objective: Determine the type of lift system will allow us to delatch and reach the lander

In our past post Choosing Drive Train we decided that we will use the chassis BigWheel. After deciding the base...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log December 01, 2018 By Charlotte, Ethan, Kenna, Evan, Abhi, Justin, and Bhanaviya

Meeting Log December 01, 2018

Today's Meet Objectives

We plan to prepare for a few events coming up, the tournament we are going to host at Townview and...
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Friction Coefficient and Energy

Friction Coefficient and Energy By Ethan

Task: Measure the coefficient of friction of our oven mitt intake

We want to measure various constants of materials on our robot. Earlier this season, we found that a nylon-mitt collision on our intake sapped...

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Agenda for Dallas Personal Robotics Group

Agenda for Dallas Personal Robotics Group By Bhanaviya, Karina, Kenna, Ethan, Abhi, Evan, and Charlotte

Task: Set up an outline as to how the DPRG Presentation will operate

Next Saturday, December 8th, Iron Reign will be giving its judging presentation to...

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C.A.R.T. Bot Side Shields

C.A.R.T. Bot Side Shields By Ethan

Task: Design sideshields for the Townview Tournament

Iron Reign takes pride in the Townview Tournament; we really enjoy making it a great experience for everyone. One small way we plan to...

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Conrad Qualifier Post Mortem - Long Term

Conrad Qualifier Post Mortem - Long Term By Ethan

What could have gone better?

This is a document for analyzing what we can do better, not just what went wrong at the Conrad qualifier. The format of this will be in...

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Chassis Mark Two Planning

Chassis Mark Two Planning By Ethan

Task: Plan a new BigWheel chassis

Our next tournament is a while away, in about two months. So, we have a little bit of time to redesign. And, our current chassis has plenty of faults....

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Mentoring SchimRobots at Rice MS Tournament

Mentoring SchimRobots at Rice MS Tournament By Bhanaviya

Task: Mentor a middle school team at the RMS Qualifier

Earlier today, I attended the Rice Middle School Qualifier in order to mentor my middle school team, SchimRobots, as an alumnus. Last year, when I was a member...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log November 17, 2018 By Charlotte, Karina, Kenna, Janavi, Evan, Justin, Ethan, Arjun, Bhanaviya, and Abhi

Meeting Log November 17, 2018

Evan working on the robot!

Today's Meet Objectives

We are going to discuss multiple facets...

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Conrad Qualifier Post Mortem - Short Term

Conrad Qualifier Post Mortem - Short Term By Ethan, Bhanaviya, Janavi, Charlotte, Kenna, Arjun, Justin, Janavi, Karina, and Abhi

Task: Analyze what went wrong at Conrad

Iron Reign didn't necessarily have the best time at Conrad. As...

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Materials Testing Planning

Materials Testing Planning By Ethan

Task: Design a lab to test nylon properties

So, Iron Reign is used to using off-the-shelf materials on our robot: silicone oven gloves, ice cube trays, nylon 3D-printed parts, and more. But, we've never actually done...

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Code Post-Mortem after Conrad Qualifier

Code Post-Mortem after Conrad Qualifier By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Analyze code failure at Conrad Qualifier

Iron Reign has been working hard on our robot, but despite that, we did not perform well owing to our autonomous performance.

Our autonomous plan was fairly simple: perform sampling, deploy the...

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Inspire at Conrad Qualifier

Inspire at Conrad Qualifier By Ethan

This weekend, SEM sent four teams to the first qualifying tournament of the FTC Robotics Rover Ruckus 2018-2019 season. Iron Reign won the top award (Inspire) and advanced. For reference, Iron Reign is last year's...

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Conrad Qualifier

Conrad Qualifier By Ethan, Charlotte, Karina, Janavi, Bhanaviya, Abhi, Arjun, Evan, and Justin

Task: Compete at the N. TX Conrad Qualifier

Right off of a mortifying experience at the Hendricks MS Scrimmage, in which we got the...

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SEM Robotics Tournament

SEM Robotics Tournament By Coach and Ethan

Our deepest thanks to all volunteers!

Iron Reign (team 6832), The School of Science and Engineering and the Dallas ISD STEM Department are happy to announce that we...

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BigWheel Upgrades

BigWheel Upgrades By Evan

Task: Get BigWheel ready for the tournament

Today, we built mounts to attach both types of intake to the rack; the rack-and-pinion corncob intake and the red-flapped intake. We also created a new way of mounting the...

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RIP CNN

RIP CNN By Abhi

Task: Farewell Iron Reign's CNN

FTC released new code to support Tensorflow and automatically detect minerals with the model they trained. Unfortunately, all of our CNN work was undercut by this update. The silver lining is that...

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Linear Slide Lift

Linear Slide Lift By Janavi

Task: Design a lift for MiniChassis

For extension both into the crater and lifting our robot up to the crater we have decided test a linear slide system. We plan to utilize linear slide...

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Torque Calculations

Torque Calculations By Karina

Task: Calculate the torque needed to lift chassis

After seeing how well the robots that could latch onto the lander performed at the scrimmage, Iron Reign knew that we had to be able to score these points....

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Pose BigWheel

Pose BigWheel By Abhi

Task: New Pose for Big Wheel robot

Historically, Iron Reign has used a class called "Pose" to control all the hardware mapping of our robot instead of putting it directly into our opmodes....

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log November 03, 2018 By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Janavi, Kenna, Karina, Justin, Arjun, Abhi, and Bhanaviya

Meeting Log November 03, 2018

Today's Meet Objectives

So, we have one week before our first tournament. This isn't great. As you...

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Full Circle

Full Circle By Evan

A reflection on my time at Iron Reign

In 2012 I began competing in FTC. That year our team built a robot with a giant central arm on top of a six wheeled...

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BigWheel Arm

BigWheel Arm By Evan

Task: Design an arm for BigWheel

Bigwheel’s intake arm is one of the most important parts of the robot. Since our scrimmage, we have learned how to make this arm much more efficient,...

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Dallas Chamber Leadership Council

Dallas Chamber Leadership Council By Kenna, Janavi, Abhi, and Ethan

Presenting to Leadership Dallas Class of 2019

Today, we presented to the Leadership Dallas program, run by the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, to fundraise for Iron Reign...

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DISD Scrimmage at Hedrick MS

DISD Scrimmage at Hedrick MS By Charlotte, Janavi, Ethan, Evan, Justin, Karina, and Abhi

Task: Compete at the Hedrick MS DISD Scrimmage

Today, Iron Reign competed in the DISD scrimmage at Hedrick Middle School. This was the...

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Off-Schedule Meeting Log

Off-Schedule Meeting Log October-2 23-2, 2018-2 to October 23, 2018 By Ethan, Karina, Charlotte, Kenna, Arjun, and Evan

Meeting Log October 21 to October 23, 2018

Iron Reign will be attending a scrimmage on Saturday, but to attend a scrimmage, you usually...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log October 20, 2018 By Charlotte, Kenna, Janavi, Ethan, Arjun, Justin, and Abhi

Meeting Log October 20, 2018

Juggling the minerals

Today's Meet Objectives

Our first scrimmage is next weekend, so we need to complete our chassis...

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Intake Update

Intake Update By Ethan, Abhi, Justin, and Kenna

Task: Update the intake for the new robot size

We created the corn-cob intake a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, it was a little too big for the Minichassis, so...

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Rewriting CNN

Rewriting CNN By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Begin rewriting the Convolutional Neural Network using Java and DL4J

While we were using Python and TensorFlow to train our convolutional neural network, we decided to attempt writing this in Java, as the code...

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Mini Mecanum Chassis

Mini Mecanum Chassis By Janavi and Justin

Task:

Over the summer, we designed many robots for the North Texas Chassis Project, including one based off of last year's Worlds robot, Kraken. The robot chassis had 6" mechanums. But, based on...

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Travis High School Night

Travis High School Night By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Charlotte, and Karina

Task: Present about Iron Reign to 120 prospective members

Today, we went to the Travis H.S. Night to talk to prospective freshmen about our robotics...

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SEM STEM Spark

SEM STEM Spark By Ethan, Charlotte, Janavi, Abhi, Karina, Justin, Bhanaviya, and Alisa

Task: Volunteer at SEM STEM Spark, a girls-in-STEM event

For the past year, members of Iron Reign have been planning this event and getting...

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SEM STEM Spark Preparation

SEM STEM Spark Preparation By Charlotte, Ethan, Janavi, Abhi, Karina, and Justin

Task: Prepare for and set up SEM STEM Spark

The National Honor Society at our home school, the Science and Engineering Magnet, has been...

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Recruitment Update

Recruitment Update By Ethan

Task: Plan for 30+ influx of team members

So, as we've stated in prior posts, this year has been a successful year for recruitment. We have had 30 total signups, up from...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log October 13, 2018 By Charlotte, Janavi, Ethan, Arjun, Abhi, Justin, and Karina

Meeting Log October 13, 2018

Sumo bots at SEM STEM Spark

Today's Meet Objectives

Today we are taking part in a massive outreach event to...

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Developing a CNN

Developing a CNN By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Begin developing a Convolutional Neural Network using TensorFlow and Python

Now that we have gathered and labeled our training data, we began writing our Convolutional Neural Network. Since Abhi had used Python and...

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BigWheel+

BigWheel+ By Evan

Task: Continue work on BigWheel

BigWheel has gone through a few major changes. First and foremost, it now has a flipper arm, AKA Superman. Since the robot itself is the lift mechanism, we...

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Project Management

Project Management By Charlotte

Task: Improve Iron Reign's team organization and time management

Iron Reign sometimes struggles with our team organization and time management. There have been many instances where we have fallen behind in different subteams...

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Mining Base 2.0

Mining Base 2.0 By Ethan

Task: Rethink our static robot idea

So, our dream this year is to create a static robot. Last week, we found out about a rule change that would prevent our mining robot from staying within the...

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Upgrading to FTC SDK version 4.0

Upgrading to FTC SDK version 4.0 By Arjun

Task: Upgrade our code to the latest version of the FTC SDK

FTC recently released version 4.0 of their SDK, with initial support for external cameras, better PIDF motor control, improved wireless connectivity,...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log October 06, 2018 By Charlotte, Kenna, Janavi, Ethan, and Arjun

Meeting Log October 06, 2018

Code Testing with Arjun

Today's Meet Objectives

We set up some tables with FTC Starter Kits for our new recruits...

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Labelling Minerals - CNN

Labelling Minerals - CNN By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Label training images to train a Neural Network

Now that we have software to make labeling the training data easier, we have to actually use it to label...

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Another Design Bites the Dust

Another Design Bites the Dust By Ethan

Task: Discuss a new rule change

At one point, we were thinking about creating a "mining facility" robot that stays static within the crater and delivers the blocks into the mining depot. In our...

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Team Marker Fun

Team Marker Fun By Karina

Task: Create the Team Marker

Last week, we decided to take up the task of creating the team marker, a simple project that would surely be overlooked, but can score a significant amount of points. We...

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Corn-Cob Intake

Corn-Cob Intake By Ethan and Abhi

Task: Design an intake system unique for balls

Right now, we're working on a static-deposit system. The first part of this system is having an intake mechanism that passively differentiates the...

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Designing the Corn Cob Aligner

Designing the Corn Cob Aligner By Ethan and Abhi

Task: Design an aligner for the beater bar intake

The ice cube tray is 9 holes wide and each hole is 16.50mm wide and long. Using these measurements,...

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Iron Reign Grants!

Iron Reign Grants! By Ethan

Task: Detail the grant awards that Iron Reign and its associated teams received ($11k)

So, Iron Reign is currently training an influx of new members - so much that we've started two...

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Designing Wheel Mounts

Designing Wheel Mounts By Justin

Task: Create wheel mounts for our Mini-Mecanum chassis

Today, we modeled two possible designs for mini-mecanum wheel mounts. The purpose of the mounts is to hold a churro or hex shaft in...

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Intake Sorter

Intake Sorter By Abhi

Task: Design a sorter for the balls and blocks

To increase the efficiency of our robot, we looked into ways to passively sort minerals during intake and deposit. It is important to sort because it requires...

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CNN Training Program

CNN Training Program By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Designing a program to label training data for our Convolutional Neural Network

In order to use the captured training data, we need to label it by identifying the location...

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BigWheel Chassis

BigWheel Chassis By Evan

Task: Work on a possible chassis

We've been toying around with the idea of using BigWheel, our Summer Chassis Research Project bot, in this year's competition with a few modifications. The idea for this robot is that...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log September 28, 2018 By Charlotte, Karina, Kenna, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Justin, Ethan, and Arjun

Meeting Log September 28, 2018

Coding lessons with new recruits

Today's Meet Objectives

Since our overflow of new recruits, we have opened up...

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Hanging Hook Prototype

Hanging Hook Prototype By Abhi, Ethan, Justin, and Janavi

Task: Design a hook for pulling the robot on the lander

To get a head-start on latching and delatching from the lander during autonomous, we got a head...

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Autonomous Path Planning

Autonomous Path Planning By Abhi

Task: Map Autonomous paths

With the high point potential available in this year's autonomous it is essential to create autonomous paths right now. This year's auto is more complicated due to potential...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log September 22, 2018 By Charlotte, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Justin, Ethan, Arjun, Karina, and Kenna

Meeting Log September 22, 2018

Home Depot Trip!

Today's Meet Objectives

As we are starting to make more serious strides in...

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Chassis Brainstorming

Chassis Brainstorming By Ethan and Evan

Task: Brainstorm chassis designs

At the moment, we've used the same chassis base for three years, a basic mechanum base with large wheels. However, we don't really want to do the same this year. At...

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CNN Training

CNN Training By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Capture training data for a Convolutional Neural Network

In order to train a Convolutional Neural Network, we need a whole bunch of training images. So we got out into the...

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Vision Discussion

Vision Discussion By Arjun and Abhi

Task: Consider potential vision approaches for sampling

Part of this year’s game requires us to be able to detect the location of minerals on the field. The main use for this is in sampling. During...

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Meeting Log

Meeting Log September 15, 2018 By Charlotte, Karina, Kenna, Janavi, Evan, Abhi, Justin, and Ethan

Meeting Log September 15, 2018

Today Austin, an Iron Reign alumni, visited us from A&M! :)

Today's Meet Objectives

As...

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Brainstorming Two

Brainstorming Two By Evan, Abhi, and Janavi

Task: Have a 2nd brainstorming session

We had another brainstorming session today, which allowed us to break down into some new building tasks.

Intake System 3 - TSA Bag Scanner

This part...

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Selecting Wheels

Selecting Wheels By Janavi

Objective: Determine the type of wheel that best suits the chassis

In the Choosing Drive Train E-16 we decided that we will use the chassis BigWheel. We know that our wheels need to be light weight but...

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Choosing Drive Train

Choosing Drive Train By Janavi

Task: Analyze the game

In our last post, we created a chart where we listed each task asked based on point value and the level of difficulty, separated by autonomous and teleop. Our goal is to...

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Rover Ruckus Strategy

Rover Ruckus Strategy By Ethan, Kenna, Charlotte, Evan, Abhi, Justin, Karina, and Aaron

Task: Determine the best Rover Ruckus strategies

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Testing Intakes

Testing Intakes By Ethan and Evan

Task: Design a prototype intake system

In our first practice, we brainstormed some intake and other robot ideas. To begin testing, we created a simple prototype of a one-way intake system. First, we attached two...

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2018 Kickoff

2018 Kickoff By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Charlotte, Abhi, Justin, Karina, and Arjun

Task: Attend the North Texas FTC Kickoff

Today, we went to the Rover Ruckus kickoff! This year's main challenge is getting blocks (gold) and balls...

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Rover Ruckus Brainstorming & Initial Thoughts

Rover Ruckus Brainstorming & Initial Thoughts By Ethan, Charlotte, Kenna, Evan, Abhi, Arjun, Karina, and Justin

Task: Come up with ideas for the 2018-19 season

So, today was the first meeting in the Rover Ruckus season! On top of that, we...

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Post Kickoff Meeting

Post Kickoff Meeting September 08, 2018 By Karina, Charlotte, Ethan, Evan, Kenna, and Abhi

Meeting Log September 08, 2018

Today Iron Reign attended the FTC 2018-2019 season kickoff at Williams High School. After the event, we gathered...

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North Texas Invitational Presentation Series - Worlds

North Texas Invitational Presentation Series - Worlds By Ethan, Abhi, Janavi, Kenna, Charlotte, Evan, Karina, and Justin

Task: Present about Worlds to new teams

This was our last presentation in a series of presentations in conjunction with teams from around Texas...

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Garchomp Presentation

Garchomp Presentation By Janavi and Kenna

Task: Present in the Inviational Presentation Series

Today, we participated in the Chassis Presentation workshop for teams all around the North Texas region; the project was to design robots and perform various tests with them,...

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Bigwheel Presentation

Bigwheel Presentation By Arjun and Karina

Task: Present about Garchomp

As a new freshman on Iron Reign, I took on the responsibility of a robot we called Bigwheel. Karina and I worked on getting the robot into something that could be...

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2018-19 Recruitment

2018-19 Recruitment By Ethan, Kenna, Charlotte, Janavi, Abhi, and Arjun

Task: Recruit new members for the 2018-19 season

Last year, Iron Reign lost two members, so we're only looking for 2-3 members to replace them and their particular skillsets. However, our...

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Organization!

Organization! August 25, 2018 By Charlotte

Iron Reign Clutter

One of Iron Reign's greatest weaknesses is the organization of our physical space. It is rare that our workspace is...

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Mentor Involvement from MIT

Mentor Involvement from MIT By Abhi

Task: Discuss potential support from MIT

In a previous post, I mentioned how the knowledge I gained in machine learning at MIT could help the team. But another way our team could...

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BigWheel CAD

BigWheel CAD By Ethan

Task: Create a mockup for BigWheel

We've been working on a design for the chassis workshop for quite a while now. We already presented it at the first meeting, and now we need...

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Hey New Members!

Hey New Members! By Kenna

Hopefully, you're here because you heard our announcement or saw our flyers. Even if not, welcome! We are team 6832 Iron Reign Robotics. We've been a FIRST team since 2010 and currently compete in Read More

My Summer at MIT

My Summer at MIT By Abhi

Task: Spend a Summer at MIT

Hello all! You might have been wondering where I went the entire summer while Iron Reign was busily working on tasks. Well for those of you interested,...

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Adjusting Garchomp's Chains

Adjusting Garchomp's Chains By Janavi and Kenna

Task: Build the Chassis

In our last post, we thought that we had finished Garchomp. However, as we came back to the next practice, we realized that Garchomp's chains were incorrectly linked.

...
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Dallas Back to School Fair

Dallas Back to School Fair By Ethan and Kenna

Task: Present at the Dallas Back to School Fair at O.W. Holmes

Today we brought the MXP over to O.W. Holmes Academy in South Oak Cliff for our...

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Best Buy Grant

Best Buy Grant By Ethan

Task: Receive a grant from Best Buy for continued MXP operation

Last year, we received a $10,000 award to continue our RV operations, cover staffing costs, and pay for additional technology\repairs....

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C.A.R.T. Bot Summer Project

C.A.R.T. Bot Summer Project By Evan, Abhi, and Janavi

Task: Enhance our robot-building skills

At Iron Reign, we hate to waste the summer since it’s a great time to get all the ridiculous builds out of the...

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SEM Nest Outreach

SEM Nest Outreach By Arjun

Task: Present about STEM to new freshmen at SEM

Today Iron Reign presented at the New Student Orientation (NEST) camp at our school, SEM. All incoming freshman were there. We had...

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Replay Autonomous

Replay Autonomous By Arjun

Task: Design a program to record and replay a driver run

One of the difficulties in writing an autonomous program is the long development cycle....

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Summer Chassis Project - July Meeting

Summer Chassis Project - July Meeting By Kenna, Ethan, Charlotte, Karina, Shaggy, and Abhi

Task: Compare & Collaborate on Chassis

At Big Thought's offices in downtown Dallas, three teams met. Technicbots (Team 8565), EFFoRT (Team 8114), Schim Robotics (12900), and Iron...

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Chassis Flyer

Chassis Flyer By Ethan

Kraken

This is Iron Reign’s world-championship robot from last season. The basic rundown is this:

  • Weight - 42 lbs
  • Size - 18x17.8x17.5 inches
  • Drive - Mecanum
  • Main parts kit - REV
...
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Moon Day 2018

Moon Day 2018 By Karina, Ethan, Janavi, and Charlotte

Task: Reach out to the community and spread the magic of robotics

Iron Reign had a great time today at the Frontiers of Flight Museum for the 2018 Moon Day. We...

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Position Tracking

Position Tracking By Abhi

Task: Design a way to track the robot's location

During Relic Recovery season, we had many problems with our autonomous due to slippage in the mecanum wheels and our need to align to the balancing...

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Central Public Library Outreach Event

Central Public Library Outreach Event By Ethan, Kenna, Charlotte, and Evan

Task: Present at the J. Erik Jonsson Public Library

This Saturday, we drove down to the J. Erik Jonsson library to present at the Dallas City...

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2018-2019 Recruitment

2018-2019 Recruitment By Ethan

Task: Recruit members for the upcoming robotics season

At the end of last season, we had two members graduate, Austin and Tycho. Their upcoming "goodbye" posts will be posted here, the same as last year. So, we...

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CNC Machine Rehab 1

CNC Machine Rehab 1 By Ethan and Charlotte

Task: Refurbish an Apple II CNC Mill and Lathe Set

We were helping our school's FRC team clean out their parts closet, which hadn't been cleaned in 10-ish years. Under the layers and...

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Turn Up! at Dallas Love Field

Turn Up! at Dallas Love Field By Justin, Ethan, Charlotte, Kenna, Abhi, and Evan

Task: Present at the Dallas Love Field for the DCOL Turn Up! Event

Every year, the Frontiers of Flight Museum hosts Turn Up!,...

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Big Wheel Ideas

Big Wheel Ideas By Janavi

Task: Create a Unique Chassis

This summer, we're working on creating unique chassis that are outside of our comfort zone. Often we choose safe bases - opting for ones that we have tried in...

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Swerve Drive Prototype

Swerve Drive Prototype By Abhi and Christian

Task: Build a Swerve Drive base

Over the past week, I worked with Christian and another member of Imperial to prototype a drive train. Due to the limited resources. we decided to use Tetrix...

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Swerve Drive Experiment

Swerve Drive Experiment By Abhi

Task: Consider a Swerve Drive base

Last season, we saw many robots that utilized a swerve drive rather than the mecanum drive for omnidirectional movement. To further expand Iron Reign's repertoire of drive bases, I wanted...

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UIL 2018

UIL 2018 By Abhi, Karina, Evan, Janavi, Austin, Justin, and Shaggy

Task: Attend the 2018 UIL Robotics Competition

Background

For those who don't know, UIL Robotics is the premier state robotics competition for Texas. Iron Reign has...

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Finishing the Chassis

Finishing the Chassis By Kenna and Janavi

Task: Build a Chassis

We have been working on this chassis for over 3+. In out last post, we had thought the wheels were ready to go....

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School of Science and Engineering Freshman Orientation

School of Science and Engineering Freshman Orientation By Austin and Shaggy

Task: Speak to 200 prospective recruits about Iron Reign

Today, we attended the Science and Engineering Magnet's annual freshman orientation. All prospective students are required to...

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Iron Reign earns FTC World Championship Motivate Award

Iron Reign earns FTC World Championship Motivate Award

Last week at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics World Championship in Houston, Team 6832, Iron Reign, from the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas ISD earned the Motivate award which ranks them at the top in the outreach category.

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Contact Us

E-Mail: ironreignrobotics@gmail.com