Articles by tag: connect

Articles by tag: connect

    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 had a meeting with Luis Sanoja, a Program Management Director of Precision Fires Development and Transformation at Lockheed Martin, with a mechanical focus. Our plan for this meeting was to introduce him to the CenterStage game and talk about particular...

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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. This past weekend, Mr. Patnaik was able to attend the North Texas Regional Championship, where he watched our robot and many others in action. Our meeting today mainly consisted of a Q&A session where Mr. Patnaik asked us questions about...

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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 feedback. We went through our typical presentation for competition, albeit at a slightly slower pace (we took about 7 minutes as opposed to the traditional 5). After the presentation, we had a long review session where we went through the...

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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 University. During this meeting, we discussed project ideation and making the design process more efficient. One piece of advice we received was to split the design process into three parts: synthesis, analysis, and judgment. The synthesis portion is creating the...

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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, Director of the Dallas College STEM Institute and a former structural engineer. We virtually presented our progress throughout the season, demoed our robot, and shared our work on Mechavator and R2V2. From him, we received valuable feedback about our robot...

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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 HOYA ITC, Abhi Patnaik. This meeting was focused on discussing the team’s portfolio and materials usage. We presented our work and participated in a Q&A style period to receive feedback, including on our own presentation styles.

    Takeaways

    Portfolio

    ...

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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 Services (AWS) Solutions Architect, in order to present our team and gain some valuable advice. As a Solution Architect, Bilial focuses on designing, setting up, and troubleshooting client-server solutions through the AWS infrastructure, which involves technical skills, teamwork, and a...

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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 all new recruits at our workshop. We also began planning and brainstorming for our competition robot and potential subsystem ideas.

    We had approximately 20 recruits in attendance, and we initially showed them the Center Stage reveal video and...

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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 presented our summer project, R2V2, to DPRG. We received lots of great feedback about improving and expanding our project, including vision-based object tracking to allow the RV to follow specific objects. You can watch a recording of that linked below:...

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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 limitations of the platform, we were unable to use it to its full potential, especially in regard to the Field View component. We contributed to the repository with some quality-of-life changes that impact the hundreds of FTC teams that use...

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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 with Jason Treadway, Head of the Dallas College STEM Institute and a former structural engineer. We virtually presented our robot and outreach efforts and were able to both intrigue him and received important input from him.

    Overall, Mr....

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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 booth at the Dallas ISD STEM Expo at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. There, we taught kids coding, introduced them to robotics and the FIRST community, and demonstrated TauBot to the public. Not to mention, we also got some...

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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 Center. Here, we both demoed TauBot and hosted a STEM activity for young children which involved building LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots and then battling them SUMO style in a battle hexagon.

    While this event was a great opportunity...

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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 and continued to work on fixing our broken shoulder from the last tournament. We also organized a lot of the RoboDojo and brainstormed more ideas for how we can reach out to professionals to better prepare for the upcoming Regionals...

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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 Dallas Personal Robotics Group , or DPRG, this season. We updated the engineers at DPRG with our build and code progress. First, we ran through our newly assembled parts and subsystems. Then we showed our work in progress CAD in...

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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 our robot to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group(DPRG) to showcase our progress for this season and hopefully get advice on our robot's design, code, and presentation. DPRG is a group of engineers and robot enthusiasts who meet multiple times a...

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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 the Frontiers of Flight Museum, which had over 550 attendees. This fair featured STEAM activities from local organizations and the museum, along with local industry professionals.

    At this event, we demonstrated our previous year’s...

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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 got a lot of helpful advice from professionals in our field as well as opportunities to learn more about the field itself. This way we have some insight as to what we will be able to do in the future,...

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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 with it, this was the first time we ran arrays of consecutive shooting with the launcher on the robot. Doing this meant some small modifications that led to an evolution of the “trigger” of the subsystem. Performing the tests was...

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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 Reign presented our Ringslinger 9000 - our launcher, for brevity - to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group. For reference, Dallas Personal Robotics Group, or DPRG, are a group of robot enthusiasts and engineers who host weekly meetings to discuss personal...

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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 Robotics Group (or DPRG) - a group of professional robotics enthusiasts based here in Dallas. The DPRG are an organization in Dallas who have monthly meetings for robotics projects In past seasons, we've given them presentations about our seasonal progress...

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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 year's season is identifying a equation to model how the path of a ring launched from our launcher is affected by its angle of launch. 2 weeks ago, we were able to create a starter equation to model this trajectory....

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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 was a significant day; the FTC 2020-2021 challenge was unveiled. However, this year was very different from previous years, where we would attend a local kickoff event. Due to global circumstances, only a couple of members met in person while...

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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 engineering group whose focus lies in innovative robotic gear drive designing and manufacturing. Prior to the start of this year's game season, we had sent Motus Labs an email in an effort to present our robotics program, team and robot...

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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 the Mobile Tech xPerience vehicle, a mobile STEM classroom which we, along with our programmatic sponsor Big Thought, take to various outreach events around the greater Dallas area. Given the success of the MXP through its lifespan, we are currently...

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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 90’s RV into a fully equipped Mobile Learning Lab with 3D-printers and FLL robots. Today, this vehicle is operated by Big Thought, funded by Best Buy and other donors, and taken to outreach events, by our team, Team 6832, where...

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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 to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group to present. The DPRG are an organization in Dallas who have monthly meetings for robotics projects In past seasons, we've given them presentations about our seasonal progress in build and code. This year,...

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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 Personal Robotics Group. During this event, we described the layout of our robot's control scheme, as well as our OpenCV vision pipeline, in order to gather suggestions for improvement. This opportunity allowed us to improve our pipeline based on the...

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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 Dallas branch office to introduce them to our team, our robot, and FIRST. Deloitte is a multinational consulting company and we had reached out to them around 3 weeks ago, with a request for a meeting with their Bot Development...

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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 to the Dallas Personal Group, or DPRG. The DPRG is an engineering-based organization in the Dallas area that has monthly meetings to discuss robotics. DPRG has been involved with Iron Reign for years now, and they have volunteered at our...

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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 in the Dallas area. So far, we have been able to communicate and present our team to the political, non-profit and engineering sectors, including Representative Colin Allred, Big Thought, Best Buy and the Dallas Personal Robotics Group respectively. The one...

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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 school to high school visit the expo to learn more about STEM and the great things it has to offer. This is our 4th year bringing the Mobile Tech Xpansion Program to this event, but this will be the last...

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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 our second qualifier, Iron Reign along with members from our 3 sister teams, is participating in the DISD STEM Expo for our fourth year. As we have done for the past 3 years, we are bringing the Mobile Learning Experience...

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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 last year, Iron Reign is supporting 3 sister teams, Imperial Robotics, Iron Core and Iron Golem, the latter two being veteran teams with rookie members. This programmatic growth also comes with a financial curve to overcome. As such, we've applied...

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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 teams and 300 students at the Townview Magnet Center, our home school's campus. With 31 teams, this was one of the biggest qualifiers in the North Texas region. A video play-by-play of the matches can be found in a separate...

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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 Reign received an email from the STEM director of the Girl Scouts of Desert Southwest saying that they are seeking to create their own mobile learning lab, similar to our Mobile Tech xPerience (MXP). As such, in the email we...

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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 grants and funding from FIRST in Texas, Texas Workforce Commission and Mark Cuban, to name a few sponsors. In addition, this year we received a $200 Gobilda product grant. Most of this money was invested in last season's expenses. But...

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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 Andrew Krause of the 32nd District Representative Colin Allred's office to increase awareness of FIRST and the STEM Outreach that Iron Reign has done in the community. Last year at World Championship in FIRST, the founder of FIRST Dean Kamen...

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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 representatives in our district - Colin Allred, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Kenny Marchant. We emailed to them letters detailing our Mobile Tech Experience Program (MXP), our accomplishments over the Rover Ruckus season, and how our team has dedicated itself towards...

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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 members alike turned up to witness the unveiling of this season's challenge. As per usual, we were disappointed by the lack of water in the game, especially considering the amount of water seen leading up to the actual game reveal....

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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 FIRST, Dean Kamen, emphasized how much of an influence reaching out to congressional representatives could have on furthering STEM in a community. Drawing inspiration from Kamen’s speech at Minute Maid Park, where the closing ceremonies were held, we reached out...

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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 the opportunity to present the MXP and its activities at the Mayor’s Back to School Fair. During this event we met with around 260 participants from ages 4 to 12 and were able to teach them about block-programming LEGO EV3...

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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 for the Science and Engineering Magnet, to introduce and present our robotics program to the school's incoming batch of freshmen. This event allowed us to share our achievements this past season, talk about what it means to be a FIRST...

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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 to represent FIRST and SEM during their 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo moon landings. This was our 4th year presenting at Moonday, and we interacted with over 300 students from as ages as young as 3 to 14. At...

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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 the 5th annual Dallas City of Learning Discovery Faire at the Central Library. This was our third MXP event where the 250+ kids had access to our 3D printers, Lego EV3 sumo robots, and our four demo robots.

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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 first event was the sumo wrestling event, it featured a double elimination bracket and five teams total came to compete. In our first match we won, our robot seeking program served us well and eliminated the opposing robot on 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 as demo Icarus, our competition robot. Our robot, fittingly name Iron Core(as homage to one of the freshmen teams in our robotics program), is to compete at the sumo wrestling portion of the competition.

    For...

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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 recently updated the control hubs they've been providing to FIRST Global for the last two years. They are hoping to get them listed as an option for FTC teams next year and so they wanted to test them with a...

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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 the region. We wanted to do this so that we could get a good look at the control system that FTC would likely be switching to in the near future, as well as get another chance to test our robot...

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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 to machine the 15 and 125-tooth REV gears from the STEP files. So, we took the Superman system off of our old robot, BigWheel, and sent some of the broken 15-tooth gears from UIL.

    In response, the...

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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.

    Judging and Awards

    There is no presentation at UIL - the judges appear at the pit ad-hoc to ask questions. And,...

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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 floorplan for the new RV. The new RV will have these programs\features:

    • Voice recording booth
    • Green-screen - recording video
    • 3D printers - keychains
    • Laptops - 3D printing, EV3 coding
    • EV3s - sumo bots

    As...

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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 our team, as DISD STEM has already stepped in to cover the Worlds' fees, which in turn allows us to use these funds for future seasons if needed.

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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 in the room to create their own FTC app to deploy to our robot. In the beginning of our presentation, we had a slideshow to show the overview of FTC as well as our progress this season since they last...

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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 Expo has been our busiest event this year. Overall, we met with over 1000 participants for both the 3D Printing event and the Sumo-Robots station. Despite the fact that this was a first-time event for many of the members helping...

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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 we have done for the past 2 years, we are bringing the Mobile Learning Experience Lab to the event area in Kay Bailey Hutchinson Center. The purpose of this event is to connect with children in the DISD Area by...

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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 REV headquarters in Dallas. REV is a Dallas-based FTC+FRC parts company that produces their items at an accessible cost for all teams. All the SEM Robotics teams use REV, their parts are easy to use while still giving the ability...

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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 Center, our home school's campus. This entry serves more as a description as to how we got to the point of hosting the qualifier and what to consider when hosting one.

    First, for a tournament, you need a...

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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 Magnet Center with around 30 teams competing. For the past 2 weeks, robotics alums, current members of Iron Reign, Iron Star, Iron Core and Imperial Robotics have been signing up to be volunteers for the very event. By Friday, the...
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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. Everyone we presented to was very interested in our work, and they asked us many questions. We also received quite a few suggestions on ways we could improve the performance of our vision solutions. The presentation can be seen below....

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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 Robotics Group to present - we've presented to them in the past about gyros - this was actually our biggest numerical outreach of the season back in the day. This year, we wanted to present again on computer vision,...

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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 members from the Dallas Personal Robotics Group. Our primary purpose from this visit is to gain feedback from engineers in the community on our presentation. The presentation is anticipated to go beyond 15 minutes, so that we can introduce our...

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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 and BigThought's Mobile Learning Lab program to cover the remaining $100k gap as well as our school programs.

    There were 2 groups of about 10 people who learned about Iron Reign & FTC and toured SEM (Science...

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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 first scrimmage of the year, so experienced teams and rookie teams alike struggled to get a working robot on the field. We go to this scrimmage every year, and it helps us gage just how much needs to be done...

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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 approval. For those not-in-the-know, this event is a women-only STEM event with a guest panel and four different stations: environmental science, chemistry, engineering, and robotics. Iron Reign members had a hand in planning and assisting with 3/4 of these, as...

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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 working hard to prepare for the upcoming SEM STEM Spark event for middle school girls in North Dallas that they have been planning for since last May. A few of our very own members are members and leadership in NHS...

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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 due to this lack of organization. This year, in order to tackle this downfall, we are going to put an emphasis on project management.

    We started a project in a program called Team Gantt. We learned how to...

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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 new teams: Iron Star Robotics and Iron Core. Of course, with this programmatic growth comes plenty of growing pains. A major part of that is finding funding for new teams. In that regard, Iron Reign applied for grants for itself...

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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 (silver) into the main lander. The other side challenges, in order of hardness, are hanging, parking, and placing the team marker. The main upside of all of this means that it is theoretically possible to perform every single function on...

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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 for new and returning teams in the North Texas region. This particular presentation was about strategies in awards and the game, as well as general thoughts about FTC and Worlds.

    Presentation

    ...
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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, then present findings. We presented our chassis, Garchomp, a mechanum wheel chassis as can be seen in the slide photos below.

    Presentation

    ...
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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 put through load tests, meaning tightening the chain, fixing misaligned sprockets, and getting the wiring together. We participated in the Chassis Presentation workshop hosted by technicbots for teams all around the North Texas region to work on one or more...

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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 sister team, Imperial Robotics (3734) lost nine members. So, we decided to host a recruitment session at our school to find interested freshmen.

    We put up posters around the school, and got a healthy crowd - 30 people....

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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 be helped is with mentor involvement from MIT. I couldn't have done the research I did at MIT without the help of my amazing instructors. I wanted to bring them on board the Iron Reign way so they could also...

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    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, I was invited to spend a month at MIT as part of the Beaverworks program. I worked in the Medlytics course and analyzed medical data using machine learning methods. This seems distant from the work we do in FTC but...

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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. This year, we received another grant of $10,000 for the same reason. This is another stepping stone in keeping Iron Reign and BigThought's MXP program sustainable for another year. In addition, any donation amount encourages more donations in a kind-of...

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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 Reign are all part of the North Texas Chassis Project. The goal is for each team to create any number of chassis and improve their building skills by learning from the other teams.

    ...
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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 been a beta-testing partner since its inception, and this year was the event's first year as a full-fledged program.

    To participate in UIL, a team must win at a Regional level, and have a good overall showing. This...

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    2018 Worlds Day Three

    2018 Worlds Day Three By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Austin, Charlotte, Abhi, Tycho, Karina, Justin, Janavi, and Shaggy

    Task: Compete in robot game

    It was the beginning of Day 3. We awoke, covered in metal parts and broken servos, took our sleeping-caps off, and went off to the Houston Convention Center.

    Game 82
    We won this game, 467-442. This was personally, our best game. We went against the BLUE CREW and won, which was no small...
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    2018 Worlds Day Two

    2018 Worlds Day Two By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Austin, Charlotte, Abhi, Tycho, Karina, Justin, Janavi, and Shaggy

    Task: Compete in robot game

    It was the beginning of Day 2. Our members rolled out of bed, covered in old Fiesta receipts and Chipotle wrappers. One by one, they stumbled onto their charter bus, unprepared for the new day.

    Game 26
    We lost this match, 213-401. Our robot wasn't working reliably on the field and we were...
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    2018 Worlds Day One

    2018 Worlds Day One By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Austin, Charlotte, Abhi, Tycho, Karina, Justin, Janavi, and Shaggy

    Task: Present and play first match

    It was a dark, surprisingly non-humid, Houston morning. Tarballs blew through the parking lot from dusty, abandoned oil refineries down by the bay. One by one, phones went off in the hotel looming above the lot, waking up their inhabitants. In these rooms, their occupants dusted off their Bucees wrappers and Iron Reign shirts and stumbled to the...

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    Championship Scouting Sheet

    Championship Scouting Sheet By Abhi

    Task: Publish Scouting Sheet for Houston

    It is almost time for Championships and that means scouting time! Thank you everyone for contributing to the scouting sheet. The combined effort of all teams made this job easier for all of us. If you would like to view the sheet, visit tinyurl.com/HWC18

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    REVolution on Thingiverse

    REVolution on Thingiverse By Abhi

    Task: Publish REVolution Parts

    Tired of slipping set screws? Want a rigid drive shaft as long or tall as your robot? Have a bunch of REV Rail lying around? Have we got a solution for you...

    Turn your REV Rail into a beater-bar, a drive shaft or a heavy duty hinge with our Spintastic Axializer System … The REVolution System

    Iron reign has developed these parts over the course of this...

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    iMake 2018

    iMake 2018 By Ethan, Charlotte, Karina, Austin, Justin, and Tycho

    Task: Present at the Fort Worth Science Museum iMake Festival

    The iMake Maker Fest is an annual event held by the Forth Worth Museum of Science and History to celebrate innovation and Maker culture. We've presented here before, most recently in the Rescue Recovery season. We really wanted to get in one more outreach event before worlds, and we already had a good connection with the museum...

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    South Super Regionals Day Three, 2018

    South Super Regionals Day Three, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Charlotte, Austin, Karina, Janavi, Abhi, Tycho, Justin, and Christian

    Task: Finish SSR and attend awards ceremony

    It was the final day. Tumbleweeds drifted over the land, rolling and turning through the abandoned Athens streets. Over the horizon, a dust cloud rose, brown and shifting and twisting, speckled with the detritus of an abandoned city, flashing and siezing, lighting up the city through its inky blackness, devoid of...

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    South Super Regionals Day Two, 2018

    South Super Regionals Day Two, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Charlotte, Austin, Karina, Janavi, Abhi, Tycho, Justin, and Christian

    Task: Complete the first day of competition at SSR

    After finishing judging and setup, all we had left to do was the entire robot game. Knowing this, we stayed until 12, tattooing pictures of Minions™ on each other. Thus, we were perfectly prepared for the tournament the next day.

    Match 5
    We...
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    South Super Regionals Day One, 2018

    South Super Regionals Day One, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Kenna, Charlotte, Austin, Karina, Janavi, Abhi, Tycho, Justin, and Christian

    Task: Set up and present at SSR 2018

    A placid stillness hung over the dark, cold room. The early sun flashed through the pale window curtains, ineffective against the onslaught of light. Outside, birds started to chirp and sing, starting off the new day. All over the city, teams were waking up, walking to the Classic Center (the...

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    Poster Designs

    Poster Designs By Ethan

    Task: Make team informational posters for South Super Regionals

    Last year, we didn't spend that much time on the poster/aesthetic side of things for Supers, and we ended up getting the Judges' Award. While we can't really prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the two, we want to improve in all aspects so we don't repeat last years performance. So, this year, we're going to try to convey more information to the judges so that we can bolster...

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    Promote Award 2018

    Promote Award 2018 By Kenna, Austin, and Ethan

    image coming ASAP

    With SuperRegionals just around the corner, everyone is going into overdrive and we almost forgot about our video for the Promote Award. We got lucky with the due date being extended for the South, so we had two extra days to make ours.

    We wanted to this year's Promote Award video to be a little different from last year's....

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    Meeting with Advanced Waterjet Cutting

    Meeting with Advanced Waterjet Cutting By Tycho and Austin

    Advanced Waterjet Cutting

    Today we visited the Advanced Waterjet Cutting office and spoke to Sal Copado and Chris regarding our side shield designs. We had called a couple days in advance to set up this meeting, and we brought both our robot and our Mobile Learning Lab to demo. They were impressed by our work and were happy to support a local team competing at the Supers level. Sal agreed to...
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    Oklahoma Regionals, 2018

    Oklahoma Regionals, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Charlotte, Abhi, Tycho, Austin, Karina, Kenna, Shaggy, and Justin

    Task: Compete at the Oklahoma Regional

    In November, we went to a Oklahoman qualifier in Mustang. The reason for this was purely strategic - by competing in multiple regions, we have more chances of advancing, as well as having more in-tournament experience overall. There, we got 2nd-place Inspire and advanced to the Oklahoma Regionals. Then, when we came back to Dallas,...

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    Meeting With Mr.Palacios

    Meeting With Mr.Palacios By Janavi, Charlotte, Ethan, Evan, Abhi, Austin, Tycho, Karina, and Kenna

    Task:

    At the end of last semester our principal, Ms.Hewitt was promoted to the ED of our feeder pattern. This semester we got the opportunity to meet our new principle, Mr.Palacios. He previously served as the Academy, Science & Foreign Language Department Administrator at Hillcrest High School, and was interested in learning more about SEM and what our students did to contribute to the school....

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    North Texas Regionals, 2018

    North Texas Regionals, 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Abhi, Tycho, Janavi, Charlotte, Austin, Karina, and Kenna

    Task: Win at the North Texas Regionals

    Introduction
    All over the city, lights turned on. In each house, a member departed, on their way to a secretive location, Iron Reign headquarters. Each member entered the HQ, took a parcel, and boarded the equally secretive Iron Reign Mystery Bus, on our way to an even more undisclosed location, the North Texas...
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    Designing a Poster

    Designing a Poster By Ethan

    Task: Design a poster to tell Iron Reign's story

    Our presentations to the judges usually turn out well. However, looking back at the last tournament's awards, we could've performed way better. To get a better chance at Inspire, we really need to get 2nd place in every other award, and in the last tournament, we got 3rd, and really only got the Inspire Award just because the other major...

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    DISD STEM Fair

    DISD STEM Fair By Kenna, Tycho, Evan, Ethan, Charlotte, Karina, Abhi, Janavi, and Austin


    DISD STEM Fair was one of our busiest events, but it was also one of our least chaotic. Our team has trouble turning anyone away because we want to introduce as many people as possible to STEM, but letting everyone onto the MXP usually results in more stress and less efficiency because it becomes so crowded. This time...

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    Wylie East Qualifier 2018

    Wylie East Qualifier 2018 By Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Janavi, Karina, Tycho, Austin, Abhi, and Kenna

    Task: Compete at the Wylie East Qualifier

    Introduction

    It was a cold and dark morning. The howling winds of a cold front rushed through the grass. Under this cover of darkness, one car after another pulled up to a house, dimly lit. A car door would open for a second, letting a child out into the cold night. Under these auspicous conditions,...

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    Helping Other Teams

    Helping Other Teams By Austin and Tycho

    Task: Help a rookie FTC team

    In the week before the Wylie east north Texas qualifier, Iron Reign was going about our normal development schedule when we received a request for assistance from a smaller startup team, team 13376 Cyber Wolves, that had jettisoned from an FRC team to compete in FTC. On one of our regularly scheduled nights, which actually ended up being the night before competition day, they arrived at Iron Reign’s...

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    Iron Reign and Sponsorships

    Iron Reign and Sponsorships By Ethan

    A Summary of the 2017-2018 Iron Reign Sponorships

    Iron Reign, generally, has not been great at finding sponsorships in prior years. However, this year has been much more successful. We can attribute some of our success to the fact that we won the North Texas Inspire award last year, in that we got our name out there more. As well, the fact that we built our MXP helped get our name out, and we...

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    DISD STEM Expo Preparation

    DISD STEM Expo Preparation By Charlotte

    Task: Prepare for DISD STEM Expo

    Next Saturday, Iron Reign will be participating in the DISD STEM Expo for our second year. As we did last year, we are bringing our Mobile Learning Experience to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and will serve children in our community to spark an interest in STEM fields and learning. Dallas City of Learning, the non-profit that schedules the Mobile Learning Experience, runs a...

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    Talking to REV

    Talking to REV By Austin and Tycho

    Task: Talk to REV about our REVolution System

    On an excursion to the Rev Headquarters located conveniently in North Dallas, to pick up a few extra servos and other miscellaneous parts we decided to bring a couple of our 3D printed REVolution parts to show to the founder of Rev. if you aren’t familiar with our REVolution system, essentially what it is, is a way to turn Rev extrusion rails into axels to be...

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    Alumni Meeting

    Alumni Meeting By Ethan, Abhi, Karina, Austin, Tycho, Kenna, Charlotte, Janavi, Darshan, Jayesh, and Omar

    Task: Talk with our former members

    Since we're in the last weeks of December, our schools are legally obligated to let us out. And, while colleges aren't legally mandated to let their students out, they tend to do so, as not doing that would rather enrage their students and families. So, due to this fortuitous coincidence, us simple FTC students were able...

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    Townview Qualifier 2017

    Townview Qualifier 2017 By Kenna, Abhi, Ethan, Austin, Evan, Charlotte, Karina, Tycho, Janavi, and Jayesh

    This past weekend, Iron Reign hosted a 28-team qualifier at Townview Magnet Center. Many of us attend the School of Science and Engineering inside Townview, so it was familiar territory and made the whole experience a little easier. We were lucky enough to host a Scrimmage as practice for our actual qualifier. Weeks of preparation and anticipation paid...

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    Qualifier Preparation

    Qualifier Preparation By Kenna, Abhi, Karina, Charlotte, Tycho, Janavi, Ethan, Austin, and Jayesh

    Townview Prep Pic

    We have been preparing to host our own qualifier since November when we hosted a DISD Scrimmage. Now we have to prepare our school for 26 teams to compete tomorrow. Most of our team was there to help construct the fields. The highlight of my Friday night was dragging assorted metal chairs across the cafeteria,...

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    Best Buy Event

    Best Buy Event By Ethan

    Task: Attend a Best Buy event and accept an award

    We have been using our Mobile Learning Lab for about a year now. Initally, we were given a grant by Best Buy to get electronics and printers for the RV. Today, we attended a Best Buy event to recognize our outstanding service, and recieved a further $10,000 grant. On top of that, we signed a contract to expand our efforts to a year round program, signing...

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    Greenhill FTC Qualifier

    Greenhill FTC Qualifier By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Charlotte, Austin, Abhi, Tycho, Karina, and Kenna

    Task: Compete at our first FTC qualifier

    So, we were absolute failures. There's no way to get around that. We got 14th place out of 14, and our presentation flopped. But, its not the end of the world, even if it may feel like it. We have another qualifier in Oklahome in one week, and we need to analyze what we did wrong...

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    Business and Strategic Plan Pt. 1

    Business and Strategic Plan Pt. 1 By Ethan

    Download PDF here

    Intro

    Iron Reign has existed, in one form or another, for the past eight years. We have competed in FLL, Google Lunar X Prize Challenge, and now, FTC.

    While our team originated at WB Travis Vanguard and Academy, we are now hosted by the School of Science and Engineering at Townview, in DISD. Despite our school being 66% economically disadvantaged and being...

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    BigThought and Dallas City of Learning Sponsorship

    BigThought and Dallas City of Learning Sponsorship By Ethan

    Task: Recount our sponsorship with BigThought

    We have two kinds of sponsorships, money-based and programmatic. Our partnership with BigThought is the latter. For those who don't live in the greater Dallas area, BigThought is a local nonprofit that strives to provide STEM and Arts education to children so that the oppurtunity gap can be closed. As you probably know by now, *last* season we converted an RV into a Mobile Learning Lab....

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    DISD Scrimmage

    DISD Scrimmage By Charlotte, Janavi, Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Austin, Karina, Kenna, and Abhi

    Task: Run and compete at the DISD Scrimmage

    Today we helped run and participated in a scrimmage at the Davis Ellis Field House. Iron Reign will be hosting a qualifier in December at Townview, our home school. This scrimmage served as a practice for the preparation and execution of an FTC event. We were able to learn the best way to assemble the field,...

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    DISD Sponsorship

    DISD Sponsorship By Ethan

    DISD's sponsorship of Iron Reign

    As referenced in another blog post, we recently went to a DISD Coaches' meeting. Shortly after the meeting, we were confirmed to be the host of the DISD Townview Qualifier. So, DISD was able to send us a free full-size field to build and use until the qualifier. As well, since we are one of the first teams within DISD to use the REV system, we were also sent $2600+...

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    So, You Want to Build Your Own RV

    So, You Want to Build Your Own RV By Ethan

    How to build your own RV in 6 easy steps.

    1. Obtain the RV: To be affordable on price, opt for a 90s-2000s RV, preferably with as little miles as possible. If you can afford it, the newer the better, as we've run into mechanical problems over time with ours. Look for one with a slide-out on some site such as RVTrader or Craigslist.
    2. ...
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    Travis High School Night

    Travis High School Night By Tycho, Charlotte, Ethan, and Karina

    Encourage students at Travis to enroll at our School of Science and Engineering (SEM)

    Today we went to Travis Middle School for their high school night where they have many high schools competing to enroll their graduating 8th graders. Travis is a Talented and Gifted school and about half of our team came from there. Mr. Newton was our lead presenter. He is a DISD teacher of the year and the...

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    MXP at UTA

    MXP at UTA By Kenna, Abhi, Austin, Charlotte, Ethan, and Janavi

    MXP at UTA

    Today, we brought the Dallas City of Learning MXP (Mobile Learning Lab) to 4H’s Youth Technology Explosion in coordination with the Black Society of Engineers. Our role in this event was to offer a hands on experience for those interested in a career in engineering. We usually have three different activities: MinecraftEDU, Sumo Robotics, and CAD Keychains. MinecraftEDU runs on three computers...

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    Texas Workforce Commission Grant

    Texas Workforce Commission Grant By Ethan

    FIRST in Texas and the TWC grant

    In Texas, a government labor agency called the Texas Workforce Commission gives a yearly grant to people who apply through FIRST in Texas. We got it last year and stopped by their headquarters to say thanks while in Austin. This year, we got it again. The grant can go towards any robot/tournament related expense. This $550 will cover our first tournament and a few REV parts.

    ...

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    DISD Coaches' Training

    DISD Coaches' Training By Ethan, Abhi, Kenna, and Tycho

    Task: Present at the DISD Coaches' Training

    On Monday, we went to the DISD Coaches' Meeting in order to present our robot to the FIRST DISD coordinator and other coaches in the district. This presentation was one of the reasons we got our robot working so quickly. During the presentation our coach talked with other coaches and the coordinator about funding and tounaments, while we presented in the...

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    MXP Event at LV Stockard Middle School

    MXP Event at LV Stockard Middle School By Charlotte, Kenna, Tycho, and Austin

    STEM education for children and their parents at a DISD event

    Earlier this morning, we drove the Mobile Tech Experience RV to LV Stockard Middle School and participated in a DISD event. We served around 250 kids, ages ranging from preschool to middle school. The morning started off slow, but as the day went on, the MXP became more and more crowded. Our spot was near...

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    MXP at Conrad HS

    MXP at Conrad HS By Ethan, Evan, Karina, Tycho, Austin, Charlotte, and Kenna

    Sharing STEM opportinities with kids and their families at Conrad HS

    Today, we brought the Dallas City of Learning MXP to Conrad High School to support Dallas ISD's parent outreach fair call PrepU Super Saturday. The focus for this Super Saturday was making parents aware of extracurricular activities available to their students in DISD. So this was a perfect event to let parents know...

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    FTC Kickoff and First Meet

    FTC Kickoff and First Meet By Ethan, Abhi, Kenna, Austin, Karina, Tycho, and Evan

    Task: View FTC Kickoff and plan for the year

    Welcome to FTC Relic Recovery! For those who don't know, this year's challenge is archeology themed, and it certainly will be a challenge. The goal of this challenge is to stack 6X6 in blocks (glyphs) in certain patterns to gain as many points as possible. The are also side challenges such as balancing the...

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    AmeriCorps Partnership

    AmeriCorps Partnership By Ethan

    Task: Detail our AmeriCorps partnership

    Together with BigThought, we were able to find another programmatic sponsor: the US Government. For those of y'all who don't know, AmeriCorps is a federally run program that encourages civil service. Most 501(c)(3)s are able to apply to be AmeriCorps partners, and BigThought was one of them. Because of this, over the summer, we were able to gain volunteers directly sponsored by the American government, two alumni (Jayesh and Lin) included. This...

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    REV Robot Reveal

    REV Robot Reveal By Tycho, Austin, Charlotte, Omar, Evan, and Janavi

    Argos V2 - a REV Robot Reveal

    This video was pulled from Argos visits to: The NSTA STEM Expo in Kissimmee FL, in the path of eclipse totality in Tennessee, and in North Texas at The Dallas Makerspace, The Southwest Center Mall, Southside on Lamar and the Frontiers of Flight Museum. We hope you find it interesting:

    ...
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    Moon Day at Frontier of Flight Museum

    Moon Day at Frontier of Flight Museum By Abhi, Charlotte, Austin, Janavi, and Tycho

    Task: Present at the MoonDay Event

    Today, Iron Reign was invited to the Frontier of Flight Museum by Dallas Love Field Airport for a day of STEM knowledge for its annual "Moon Day". It was time for us to bring in the LEGO robotics kit, 4 laptops for kids, ARGOS, and Juggernaut, our competition bot from this past season. Upon arrival at the museum, we noticed many other fascinating stations such as one explaining NASA's new rover...

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    NSTA 2017

    NSTA 2017 By Ethan, Evan, Lin, Jayesh, Omar, Tycho, and Charlotte

    Task: Expose our MXP to teachers nationwide

    Background

    For readers who don't know what the MXP is, here's a quick description. Our coach had been floating the idea of a mobile STEM lab for a while, and he was finally given the go-ahead and some money by his company, BigThought. Originally, he planned for buying a van and loading it with tech, but like all true...

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    Turn Up! 2017 at Frontiers of Flight

    Turn Up! 2017 at Frontiers of Flight By Janavi, Jayesh, Lin, Tycho, Omar, Evan, Charlotte, Ethan, and Darshan

    Task:

    Each year the Frontiers of Flight Museum hosts the Turn Up!, an event that contains STEM exhibits and demonstration to teach kids about the wonders of Science and Math. We brought the Mobile XPerience (MXP) complete with laptops, 3D printers, and LEGO SumoBot to help teach. Outside the RV we had laptops set up where we...

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    UIL Robotics 2017

    UIL Robotics 2017 By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Charlotte, Austin, Omar, and Janavi

    Task: Compete in the UIL Robotics 2017 State Tournament

    The UIL Robotics State Tournament is a Texas-only invitational based upon a team's performance in Texas qualifiers and regionals. Since we preformed so well in the North Texas Regionals, winning the first place Inspire Award, we qualified for UIL as well as Super Regionals.

    While the tournament is planned with FIRST's help, it differs...

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    Discover Summer Resource Fair

    Discover Summer Resource Fair By Ethan, Evan, Max, Tycho, and Charlotte

    Task: Present to kids at the Discover Summer Resource Fair

    Today, we brought the MXP to the DISD Discover Summer Resource Fair. We talked to about 250 people, including the Mayor of Dallas. We helped about 50 people create and print keychains using Google Sketchup. In the front of the RV, we introduced about 200 people to Lego Robotics, and assisted them in creating sumo bots.

    The goal of this event was to inspire...

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    YouthSpark with Microsoft

    YouthSpark with Microsoft By Lin, Jayesh, Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Omar, Max, Tycho, Austin, Darshan, and Janavi

    Task: Mobile Tech XPerience's appearance at the Meyerson

    The Meyerson Symphony Center hosted a Microsoft YouthSpark event this Saturday with activities from robotics to VR to 3D printing. We set up the sumo laptops up in the atrium and the 3D in the MXP outside, right next to the Perot tech van. The tech van had most of their setup outside with...

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    South Superregional - Day Three

    South Superregional - Day Three By Jayesh, Tycho, Omar, Max, Darshan, Austin, Charlotte, Lin, Evan, Ethan, and Janavi

    Task: Reminisce on our last three Superregionals matches

    Our final competition day began with the driver team rushing to the pits because of a warning given by the game officials for the first match's teams to reach the pits earlier than expected. We reached in time, in fact about an hour before the match actually began. This mild inconvenience did give us time to formulate a strategy against our opponents, the...

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    South Superregionals Day Two

    South Superregionals Day Two By Max, Tycho, Omar, Jayesh, Darshan, Austin, Charlotte, Lin, Evan, Ethan, and Janavi

    Task: Reminisce on our first six Superregionals matches

    After a decent night's rest, we began Day Two at around 7 AM. A lot of our tools and materials were still on our RV, so we first moved them over to our pit. Our match schedule said that we'd have nine matches beginning with Match #1 (just our luck). After the...interesting Pokemon-themed opening ceremonies, we began the day with our first match.

    ...
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    Super Regionals - The First Day

    Super Regionals - The First Day By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Max, Jayesh, Janavi, Lin, Darshan, Omar, Charlotte, and Austin

    Task: Go to super regionals, set up, and present

    Way too early in the morning, on March 22nd, the Iron Reign team gathered in darkness. It was approximately 65 Farenheit and gusts around 12 mph were blowing in from the South. Under this cover of darkness, a bus pulled into our school. As the trees shivered in the wind and the stray...

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    Promote Video 2017

    Promote Video 2017 By Max

    Task: Create a video outlining Iron Reign's outreach

    We have had a lot of interest garnered towards the STEM outreach the team has committed to. When we found that FTC encouraged the creation of a video outlining the STEM outreach we had done, we saw it as an opportunity to show others a general overview of our activities. With Max's excellent voiceover, we made a video talking about how long the team's been at it, the various...

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    Inspire Award

    Inspire Award By Tycho, Jayesh, Lin, Omar, Max, Darshan, Evan, Ethan, Janavi, and Charlotte

    1st Place at North Texas Regional Championship

    Iron Reign members left to right are Ethan Helfman (Build, Communications), Janavi Chada (Programming, Communications), Tycho Virani (Programming Lead, Main Driver), Jayesh Sharma (Business Lead, Build, Communications), Darshan Patel (Build), Lin Rogers (Communications Lead, Logistics, Business) and Charlotte Leakey (Programming, Logistics), with Evan Daane (from BTW, Build, Photography) in repose. Not shown: Max Virani (Design Lead, Programming), Omar...

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    DISD STEM Expo

    DISD STEM Expo By Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Jayesh, Lin, and Max

    Task: Present to kids at the DISD STEM Expo

    Every year, DISD hosts a STEM expo for local companies and groups to present to kids, in hope of inspiring them to go into a STEM career. So, for our booth, we drove our RV into the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center to present. We had three...

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    QD Academy Scrimmage

    QD Academy Scrimmage By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Max, Darshan, Lin, and Omar

    Task: To test our robot in a tournament setting

    On Dec. 18, we came to QD Academy to test our robot under tournament conditions. At Arkansas, we had frequent static issues on the mats provided, and we had trouble recreating the static in practice to prevent it, so we wanted to try to find a cure for it. As well, we've been improving our autonomous...

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    Autonomous Setup Options

    Autonomous Setup Options By Tycho

    Task: Create a basic autonomous

    Autonomous is one of the things that we tend to be weak on every year, and this year, we really want to get to super-regionals. So, to start off this year's autonomous, we first mapped out a potential path for the robot on the field. We then followed up with programming, using our previous methods like driveForward and driveCrab. So now, we have a basic autonomous program in which we can...

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    Nov. 21 Scrimmage

    Nov. 21 Scrimmage Written, but not attended by Ethan By Omar, Darshan, Jayesh, Max, Tycho, Lin, Janavi, Austin, and Ethan

    Task: To test our robot and gauge other team's progress

    First, the team arrived at the Virani's house and boarded the MXP for a Arkansas dry run. We learned that it's pretty bumpy for passengers when you're driving on the highway, making the experience a bit uncomfortable. We'll need to fix that for the 8-hour drive to Arkansas.

    When...

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    MXP Transportation

    MXP Transportation By Darshan, Lin, Jayesh, Omar, Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Tycho, and Max

    Oh the places you'll go!

    We attend many events throughout the DFW area, taking our robot and whatever else we need along with us. This has often puts a strain in how much we can actually bring with us to FIRST events and STEM events in general. Over this past summer the team helped refurbish an old 90s RV to use as a Mobile Tech XPerience to drive...

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    Outreach and Sponsors

    Outreach and Sponsors By Lin, Darshan, Jayesh, Omar, Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Tycho, and Max

    Task: Analyze how finances effect recognition

    It's always a challenge to convince sponsors that we are a worthy team for their grants, visibility in FIRST and the public makes it easier. Teams whose schools have the finances and space to host a tournament are recognized by their peers and even get a boost to Regionals. However, our space is limited, and we wouldn't be able to pull...

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    Meeting with The Texas Workforce Commission

    Meeting with The Texas Workforce Commission By Jayesh, Omar, Max, Tycho, Darshan, Evan, Ethan, Janavi, Lin, Trace, and Dylan

    Task: Connect with our sponsors in the Texas Workforce Commission

    Following the conclusion of the state UIL competition, Iron Reign noticed the Texas Workforce Commission building. Given that the organization was one of the team's generous...
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    Mobile Learning Lab in Action

    Mobile Learning Lab in Action By Lin, Max, and Tycho

    Task: Deploy the Mobile Learning Lab to camps and teach kids

    The RV has been fully remodeled and set up with netbooks and 3D printers, so we have been making the rounds and teaching at camps and events. We try to limit the number of kids on board to under 15 or 12 for safety reasons. It'd be nearly impossible to fit...

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    Turn Up! at Frontiers of Flight with DCOL

    Turn Up! at Frontiers of Flight with DCOL By Janavi, Darshan, Jayesh, Lin, Max, Tycho, Omar, and Austin

    Inspiring 1,000 People to Turn Up with STEM

    Written by Janavi Chadha

    The Dallas City of Learning Organization held a Turn Up event at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, where we staffed the Mobile XPerience (MXP) complete with laptops, 3D printers, and LEGO SumoBots. Outside the vehicle, Lin and I taught kids how to create 3D models...

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    MXP - Mobile Learning Lab Recap

    MXP - Mobile Learning Lab Recap By Jayesh and Lin

    DCOL Mobile Tech XPerience (MXP) Begins Service

    Written by Jayesh Sharma
    Edited by Lin Rogers

    Iron Reign has been actively supporting Dallas City of Learning (DCoL) for a few years now. Big Thought (managing partner for DCoL) received a grant from Best Buy to support STEM learning over the summer by taking STEM opportunities into communities so that kids with reduced access...

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    Mobile Learning Lab Part 4 - Update

    Mobile Learning Lab Part 4 - Update By Ethan, Max, Tycho, Lin, Jayesh, Darshan, Austin, Matthew, Evan, Dylan, Omar, and Trace

    Task: Covert a 1998 RV into the Dallas City of Learning Lab

    The RV exterior


    We have finished the majority of the renovation of the Dallas City of Learning Lab. We've finished rebuilding the roof, going throught the plumbing (including the suspiciously secretive water tank), and also replacing the entirety of the flooring.

    to...

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    Mobile Learning Lab Part 3 - Flooring

    Mobile Learning Lab Part 3 - Flooring By Evan, Max, Tycho, Dylan, Ethan, Lin, Darshan, and Austin

    Carpet ripping is not fun. The carpet is tacked down with so many staples that is is not easy to remove. It tends to rip around the stables leaving nubs of fibers and then we have to attack the stables with pliers and staple pullers. Getting it out from under the edges of walls and the slide out is really hard. And we've...

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    Mobile Learning Lab Part 2 - Roof

    Mobile Learning Lab Part 2 - Roof By Tycho, Max, Matthew, and Austin

    Task: Clean the roof of the RV

    We'd noticed that the roof was very grimey looking from the small strip you could see at the top of the side walls, but we hadn't been up there to look at it. Finally climbing the ladder we confirmed it. The roof is a very dark brown. We believe it is simply dirt that has caked into...

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    Dallas City of Learning

    Dallas City of Learning By Ethan, Evan, Jayesh, Omar, Lin, Max, and Tycho

    Task: Teaching children how to use robots

    On 18 June, we went to the J. Erik Jonsson Library to inspire children to hopefully go into STEM-related careers. We were invited for their annual City of Learning event. We talked to about 200 people about robotics and most loved it - especially children. We showed...

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    Mobile Learning Lab Part 1 - Demolition

    Mobile Learning Lab Part 1 - Demolition By Evan, Max, Tycho, and Austin

    Task: Redo the inside of the recreational vehicle

    Mr.Virani recently aquired an RV so it could be used as a mobile learning center for the Dallas City of Learning this summer. To convert it from someplace you might live on a long road trip to somewhere you could teach science and technology to children means stripping out carpeting, removing walls, and laying down...

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    Sumobot Tips and Tricks

    Sumobot Tips and Tricks By Tycho

    Let's assume you are building a LEGO Mindstorms or Vex IQ based Sumobot, but you want to skip some of the basic mistakes beginners will make. Here are some tips and tricks.

    • Know the rules. It's silly to get disqualified because you didn't pay attention to the rules. Know the size and weight limits. Know the allowed construction materials and techniques. Know the startup behaviors. For example, your robot must not move...
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    Day 2 of iMake

    Day 2 of iMake By Lin, Max, Tycho, and Omar

    Task: Continue presenting at iMake

    Day 1 was a huge success, and we carried that over into the Sunday presentations too. There were a lot of common questions we noticed from Saturday, including levels of robotics competitions and the LEGO EV3 system, and we were able to answer these with more clarity after hearing them so often. A few papers were set up on our table outlining the various FIRST competition...

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    Robot On a Hoverboard - Try 1

    Robot On a Hoverboard - Try 1 By Lin, Max, Tycho, Darshan, Omar, Evan, Ethan, and Jayesh

    Task: Try to drive the hoverboard with the competition bot

    In the middle of Saturday's event we decided it would be a GREAT idea to put the competiton robot on the hoverboard and try to drive it around. Theoretically if we got it centered correctly it could only drive forward and backwards. We could extend...

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    Gyro-IMU Case V2

    IMU Case V2 By Tycho

    Task: Improve our 3D Printable case for the Adafruit BNO055 IMU

    Last week I designed a case for our IMU sensor in Creo and wrote up how it could be improved. I've fixed most of those issues and we are ready to share the results. There is one version with Tetrix hole spacing and another that works for Actobotics channels. Either can be used with aluminum extrusions though you might have to drill out the mounting holes depending on your bolt size.

    You can...

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    Discovery Faire at the Dallas Downtown Library

    Discovery Faire at the Dallas Downtown Library By Lin, Jayesh, Omar, Darshan, Max, and Tycho

    Task: Present at the Dallas City of Learning Discovery Faire

    "Kids are invited to “Turn Up!” to make, create, craft, play and learn at the Dallas Public Library on Saturday June 20. The Dallas City of Learning free family event will be from 1 to 4 p.m. on various floors at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young St."
    Quote from Dallas City News Article

    Iron Reign was...

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    Earth Day Texas 2015 at Fair Park

    Earth Day Texas 2015 at Fair Park By Max, Tycho, Lin, Omar, Jayesh, and Darshan

    Task: Represent SEM and STEM at Earth Day 2015

    Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles came by our booth where we were representing our Science and Engineering Magnet High School and sharing our STEM message with the community. Ms. Huitt, our principal was also there. Unfortunately we forgot to take any video while inside. Above Tycho is visiting with the solar car team from Ben Barber Tech in Mansfield.

    Reflections

    ...
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