Articles by tag: outreach

Articles by tag: outreach

    10/10 Eli Lilly & Co. Meeting

    10/10 Eli Lilly & Co. Meeting By Anuhya, Nalin, Krish, Fernando, Jai, and Tanvi

    Task: Present to engineers from Eli Lilly & Co.

    Today, we met with Robotics Application Engineers from Eli Lilly & Co, a pharmaceutical company that manufactures medicine using biotechnology and machinery.

    We first started off by going over our Summer projects (Simply Swerve and RoboSpyne). We talked about how we came up with the swerve’s design and refined...

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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 content we publish useful because that’s what our blog is all about: making robotics more accessible. They also shared a great robotics resource with us, a glossary of commonly-used robotics terms, which we want to share with everyone. Here’s 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 the Dojo for the very first time, and we had returning members from other sister teams. We started the meeting by going over the season reveal, talking about the basic rules, and as a whole team around 35 of us...

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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 who had no experience as well as recruits who have done VEX, FTC and FLL before. We're very excited about our new season and sharing robotics with kids who will be able to keep the legacy of Iron Reign ongoing!...

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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 to watch many interesting presentations from other teams around Texas and the country, including a presentation on Kalman Filters from team Area 52 and the KISS design process from Terrabats. We also presented about the thought process behind our engineering...

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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 art, such as Processing. Specifically, we presented to their “Virtual Creative Coding Camp” which had 2 teachers and 12 students. Initially, we presented our team and explained the various roles on the team. We discussed roles in code, design, build,...

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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 in Irving.

    We introduced them to basic block coding with Lego Sumo robots. They started step-by-step by figuring out how the motors made the wheels move and messing around to make the robot move in circles and squares....

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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 anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969, hosted by the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas. There were approximately 1,150 attendees, primarily kids, who we introduced to robotics concepts like programming and designing. We were joined by team 7172,...

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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 backgrounds to STEM. They specialize in teaching programming using art, such as Processing. We started the meeting by discussing robotics as a whole, along with our roles on our team. We emphasized the skills we have gained, such as programming,...

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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 to provide feedback on the presentation. Each member was assigned a team to guide throughout the meeting. The teams were Code-iators (11978), Robotic Robloxians (51977), and Mechanical Mammoths (43326).

    We focused our feedback on 4 major categories: research,...

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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), Mechanical Mammoths (43326), Robotic Robloxians (51977), and the Artsy Armadillos (46872).

    We split up and had each team give a mock portfolio presentation to us as if we were judges. This not only let us help these FLL...

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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. During this meeting, we presented our old Power Play portfolio page-by-page and relayed advice we have from our past experiences and meetings with professionals. We emphasized the importance of the balance between readability and detail along with formatting. We have...

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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 in mock inspections and matches, Iron Reign hosted two workshops for Scrimmage participants, one on constructing effective portfolios and another detailing our summer activities. These workshops were significant successes, with 25+ attendees in two sessions, each lasting 30-50 minutes.

    ...
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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 honor the anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969. There were around 1,150 attendees, many of whom were kids. There, we hosted demos of both TauBot and our sister team, Iron Giant’s competition robot, and engaged with child attendees...

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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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    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 from Sudie L Williams TAG Academy to help them practice their presentation for upcoming Regionals competition.

    The three teams, 43326 The Tin Men, 46425 Electric Spuds, and 51997 Lithium Ions all advanced to the FLL Regional Competition that...

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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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    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 works and give them a detailed insight into how they can improve their own operations. The members of Iron Reign gave them a quick tour of our space from the first floor to the second and then had a long...

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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 rookie members about our program and FTC in a virtual setting - especially if we support 3 teams like last season. So, in order to ensure that our program remains sustainable, we opted for a new recruitment strategy where we...

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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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    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 current members on Iron Reign were the new recruits, so to see the sustainability progress from a whole other outlook this season was at first jarring. However, just like last year, we expanded our robotics program to support 3 teams...

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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 returning members to our sister team, Imperial Robotics, and the existing members on Iron Reign, this wave of new recruits means that the Iron Reign family must continue growing. So, just as we have done last year, we introducing TWO...

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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 levels attended this session, including returning members from Imperial Robotics, Iron Star and Iron Core. Last year Iron Reign lost 6 members to graduation, and since we plan to support two other sister teams in addition to our own, this...

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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. This leaves a team of 7 underclassmen and two upperclassmen - a pretty significant difference to last season when these numbers were reversed. Luckily, all of us have had at least one year of experience on being in the SEM...

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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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    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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    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 of being a vendor and representing SEM at DISD's STEM Expo this weekend. Thousands of people cycled throughout our area during the day, so we had the opportunity to show off our robot to many people. Some of these people...

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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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    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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    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 team. The format of the night was this: four twenty-five minute periods, with twenty minutes about SEM and five minutes about robotics. To fit this time schedule, we condensed our usual recruitment presentation down to five minutes while also demoing...

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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 -5 last year. This wave of new recruits means that the Iron Reign family must grow. So, in addition to Iron Reign and Imperial Robotics, we are introducing TWO new teams to North Texas and the Iron Reign family.

    ...
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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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    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 usual presentation. We spoke to about 130 children, doing our usual sumobots and 3D printing sessions.

    Next Steps

    We have a few more outreach events before our season goes into full swing, so we need to get in...

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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 two sessions, one with 3D modeling, and another with sumo-bots. We also drove around two of our robots from last year, Kraken and Argos. We gave the freshmen chances to drive around these robots. Most of the students were very...

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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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    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 demoed three of our robots today: Argos, Kraken, and Big Boi. Kids were very interested in watching our robots drive. Big Boi was a fan-favorite because of its speed and the attached can launcher. Kids were also given the opportunity...

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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 of Learning Discovery Fair. We brought our sumo-bot equipment to the library, as well as a few of our new and old bots, such as cartbot (a mobile air cannon), bigwheel (a new testing robot), and Kraken (our Worlds robot)....

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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 wanted to recruit at least one member to replace them. Recruitment methods that we had used in the past, such as posters and Townview recruitment seminars, had failed to gain any meaningful recruitment. So, we fell back on our secondary,...

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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!, an event where kids can learn about science and math. Once again, we brought the MXP equipped with 3D printers, Lego sumobots, and our world class FTC robot, Kraken. We ran the sumobots on a table outside of the MXP...

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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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    Discover Summer PREP U

    Discover Summer PREP U By Ethan, Charlotte, Austin, Evan, Kenna, Tycho, and Karina

    Task: Volunteer at the DISD Discover Summer PREP event

    Today, our sponsor volunteered our RV for DISD's Discover Summer PREP U. This is the week before Worlds, but luckily this event was from 9am-1pm, so it didn't interfere with our normal practice. The event was originally planned to be outside, but it was 39°F, well below the Dallas average April temperature of 57°F. 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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    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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    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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    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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    How to Make a Robotics Team in 7 Easy Steps!

    How to Make a Robotics Team in 7 Easy Steps! By Janavi

    Task:

    So you want to make a robotics team? No fear! We'll show you how to in 7 easy steps!

    Step 1: Find Support Resources
    First(get it), familiarize yourself with the FIRST Robotics Competition. Then locate your region’s Regional Director or FIRST Senior Mentor. These people know the FIRST teams, participating schools, and FIRST-friendly businesses in your area. He or she can help you form...

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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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    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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    Relic Recovery Strategy Part 1

    Relic Recovery Strategy Part 1 By Austin

    Task: Determine building strategy for Relic Recovery

    Any well-versed team understands that, depending on the competition for the year, a robot will either be modified to compete or be built from the ground up. In any case, however, a robot often starts at its chassis, and teams have multiple companies that provide solutions to the common robot chassis’ needs and specifications. To name a few: AndyMark® has its standard kits that include all the...

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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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    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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    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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    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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    Dallas Women in STEM

    Dallas Women in STEM By Lin, Tycho, Max, Jayesh, Janavi, Omar, and Austin

    Task: Teach LEGO EV3 and 3D modelling to girls

    The Yale club of Dallas organized a STEM event for groups of girls in the city. We took the Mobile Tech XPerience out front for 3D modelling and set up 8 EV3s with laptops and a sumo field inside.

    Programming

    We led 6-8 girls at a time through...

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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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    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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    A Thank-You to Tetrix

    A Thank-You to Tetrix By Ethan and Evan

    Task: To create a thank-you video to Pitsco

    We entered a contest to win a pack of Tetrix parts on Twitter, and we won! You can also enter the contest by following these instructions

    So, as a thank-you to them, we made this:

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    New Worlds Cities In Space

    New Worlds Cities In Space By Lin, Jayesh, Omar, and Darshan

    Task: Obtain knowledge and share work done on Moon base project

    A contigent from Iron Reign participated in a space competition at the NewWorlds Conference. The idea was to form a interstellar base to self-maintain and extend humankind's reach into the universe. After winning the previous year's competition with a Mars base, the team did a sort of prequel,...

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    Travis Open House

    Travis Open House By Ethan, Max, Tycho, Lin, Darshan, Jayesh, and Evan

    Task: To talk to prospective SEM students about robotics

    Every year W.B. Travis, a 4-8 has an open house for magnet schools to attend and convince students that $school1 is better than $school2. And, since it is Iron Reign's former school, we attend and try to pull students SEM. We present to about 5 groups and field questions from parents.

    Unsurprisingly, we ran...

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    Budgeting With Team 3734

    Budgeting With Team 3734 By Ethan, Evan, and Austin

    Task: Create a Budget Sheet for the 2016-2017 Season

    As always, Iron Reign needs more money. We are a title 1 school in a cash-strapped district with over 60% of students qualfying for free lunch. So, this year, we decided to *actually* make a spreadsheet to track what we need and how much it'll cost. Coincidentally, our sister team, Imperial Robotics made one too. Also, this year, we're going to share a practice field at our school, SEM. So, we've...

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    FTC Kickoff 2016

    FTC Kickoff 2016 By Ethan, Evan, Max, Tycho, and Omar

    Task: Go to the FTC 2016 Kickoff to preview the new Velocity Vortex challenge

    This Saturday, we ventured down to UTD to watch the unveiling of the new FTC challenge, and collaborate with other teams. The main change we noticed is that this year, it seems like there is a greater emphasis on league play instead of just doing a qualifier. To go to regionals, there seem to be three...

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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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    Robotics UIL 2016

    Robotics UIL 2016 By Ethan, Evan, Lin, Darshan, Jayesh, Janavi, Trace, Max, Tycho, and Omar

    Task: Compete in UIL Robotics in Austin

    A bit of background:
    UIL is a Texas-specific organization that hosts competitions in both academic and athletic pursuits. This year, they ran a pilot program for Robotics, using the FTC rules and field from Res-Q. About 72 teams competed in the FTC-based competition, which then was split into two catagories. Unlike regular FIRST tournaments, the awards not earned by competition are given through nomination by other teams.

      ...
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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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    LEGO (Plastic Fastener) SUMO Workshop and Competition, Coming April 24th and May 14th

    LEGO (Plastic Fastener) SUMO Workshop and Competition, Coming April 24th and May 14th By Tycho

    LEGO Sumo returns with a free Sumo Workshop on Sunday April 24th followed by the Dallas Personal Robotics Group's Roborama Sumobot competition at the Dallas Makerspace on May 14th.

    Here's what the competition looks like:

    A basic sumobot is a simple build. Here is an example to get you started: http://nxtprograms.com/mini_sumo/steps.html

    ...
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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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    Fort Worth Maker Fest

    Fort Worth Maker Fest By Jayesh, Omar, Max, Tycho, Lin, Darshan, Evan, Ethan, and Austin

    Task: Show both adults and children benefits of robotics and past work of the team

    Iron Reign was invited to present at the annual Fort Worth Maker Fest at the city's Museum of Science. We spent the day showing off our competition bots and other robots that we have created over the years. People were especially interested in our innovation with climbing the mountain and using simple every day objects like tape measures...

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    Scrimmage at Greenhill

    Scrimmage at Greenhill By Darshan, Alisa, Omar, Lin, Max, Tycho, Evan

    Task: Practice with other teams and see

    This past Friday, the team tried to get the robot working in a small scrimmage with seven or so other teams. At the scrimmage, we managed to get our cow-catcher working, even though we nearly burned out our servo. During the process of finding the right positioning and testing it while driving we managed to tear up quite a few rubber inserts on our treads. Even though the scrim was scheduled to...

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    Business Planning

    Business Planning By Alisa

    Task: Making a Business Sponsorship Template

    I worked on making a rough draft of a sponsorship template. This template will be used to email companies to ask for their sponsorship. I have a list of companies that have a high chance of sponsoring us. I found several more to add to the list Evan started last week. I also added sponsorship levels to increase interest for the companies: Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Steel, Iron. Different levels through our list imply greater rights and priveleges in...

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    Helping the Travis Team

    Helping the Travis Team By Tycho

    Task: Help the William B. Travis FLL Team

    Starting September 10th and lasting through today, I went to our old middle school, William B. Travis, to help their newer FLL team with robot design and programming. There were also some one on one sessions during practice to teach their main programmer, who used to be on the older FLL team until it disbanded, how to use the code library that we had previously written. I also went to a scrimmage with them...

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    Researching Awards

    Researching Awards By Lin

    Task: Research and understand the various awards

    We rarely prepare enough for awards, usually hoping the practice before that we've done enough to be in the running. Last year we won the PTC Creo award at one competition, but that was a one time deal. This year we can prepare our journal in such a way to make it easier for judges to find what they're looking for when deciding.

    Reflections

    Out of the 9 awards, 7 are given at every tournament....

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    Driving That Robot

    Driving That Robot By Evan, Darshan

    Task: To try out the robot in a competition setting

    Last weekend Darshan and I tried to drive the robot in a small scrimmage with eight other teams. Even though we hit a few bumps along the competition we were able see how the robot drove and handled. We also saw what we could do easily and what was hard for us. Among the bumps was an incident involving a tread falling off the track because we hit...

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    Meeting other Teams at the Scrimmage

    Meeting other Teams at the Scrimmage By Lin, Omar, Darshan, Jayesh, Tycho, Max, Evan

    Task: Get a feel for where we are and the progress of other teams

    Whether or not we were allowed to compete, we felt that it would be worthwhile to go to the scrimmage, if only to see how we compared to other teams. Climbing the mountain is the hardest mechanical design challenge so far, and we were able to see their solutions.

    Reflections

    Many teams had treads like ours, with different arrangements of idlers, while...

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    SEM Open House 2015

    SEM Open House 2015 By Jayesh, Lin, Omar, Max, Tycho, Darshan

    Task: Publicize our school and team + showcase the benefits of robotics

    Iron Reign was once again invited to attend our school's open house and present our robotics group and speak about what we have and will do. We mainly focsused our topics on the transition between middle school level robotics and high school level. The topics covered included the overall engineering and computer programmming that we undergo as a part of FTC. The classes that these possible future...

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    Helping the Travis Team

    Helping the Travis Team By Tycho

    Task: Teach Travis Team how to Use Previous Team's Code

    After retiring from FLL at Travis, we decided to share our code library with the other team from the school. We set up a meet with Clay, one of the main programmers of the team, so we could teach him how to use our core functions; the next step is for him to teach the other members of his team how to use the code.

    Reflections:

    I spent a couple of hours to...

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    FTC Kickoff 2015

    FTC Kickoff 2015 By Jayesh, Omar, Max, Tycho, Evan, Ethan

    Task: Attend FTC kickoff and assist newer teams in understanding task ahead of him

    We were invited by team Technical Dificulties invited Iron Reign to attend first FTC kickoff for our region ever. With the Technical Difficulties coach leading the discussion, everything relating to the game and coopertition in North Texas was discussed. Technical Difficulties, with some input from us and a few other veteranss, was able to assist the...

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    Mayor's Back to School Fair 2015 and Dallas City of Learning at Fair Park

    Mayor's Back to School Fair 2015 and Dallas City of Learning at Fair Park By Jayesh, Max, Tycho, Omar, Darshan

    Task: Share STEM opportunities with returning Dallas ISD Students

    On August 7, 2015 we tried to inspire returning DISD students to think of themselves as budding engineers and scientists. At the Mayor's Back to School Fair and as guests...

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    Moonday 2015 at Frontiers of Flight Museum

    Moonday 2015 at Frontiers of Flight Museum By Max, Tycho, Lin, Omar, and Jayesh

    Task: Represent SEM and STEM at Moonday 2015

    The Frontiers of Flight Museum hosts an event every year called Moon Day that exhibits a lot of STEM topics to anyone who drops by. Iron Reign always has a booth with DPRG and exhibits most of the previous robots and topics that we've been involved in. This year we showed off Argos and Kibosh in particular, also having GyroBoy as an example...

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    Argos the Chromovore

    Argos the Chromovore By Max and Tycho

    Task: Get some pre-season experience with Android controlled robots

    We've been experimenting with Android controlled robots while we wait for our ModernRobotics modules. Argos is a chromovore - it seeks an identified color using OpenCV4Android machine vision processing. It tries to maintain a given distance from the colored object and follow it around. It's built using the IOIO-OTG for low level interface with the motor control electronics. The ZTE Speed phone is mounted on pan/tilt hardware from ServoCity...

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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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