Houston Maker Faire first VEX event of the year

First VEX tournament of the season in the books! 3 teams traveled to the Houston Maker Faire for a fun 2 day tournament October 13-14, 2018.

Congrats to 2158R (qualified for State by winning the Excellence Award; they also took home the Robot Skills Award), 2158K (Undefeated Tournament Champion), and 2158X (Alliance 2 Captain). All 3 teams did well in Skills (#1, #2, and #3 for the tournament!) and came home with a few new ideas for finessing their designs.

Many thanks to our Mentors for making the trip.

Those convention center hallways can be very long when you are carrying toolboxes!

REC rep Luis was so enthusiastic about seeing those new V5 motors in action!

Legos and Drones and LEDs, oh my! Houston Maker Faire was an exciting venue.

Point counting at the end of a match

Team dinner following Day 1 of tournament

What do you do on the night between tournament days? Fine tuning and new programming, of course!

Nice match!

Robot Skills Winner: 2158R

(Undefeated!) Tournament Champions 2158K with their alliance partners 1814D

Excellence Award Winners: 2158R

This award was the only one of the tournament that qualified for State tournament in February. Great job, CANs!

Austin Robot Roundup!

Today is a big day for us and all teams because we have 4 days left until Bag Day, and today is the Austin Robot Roundup! For those of you guys that are not familiar with ARR, it's an end-of-build-season practice event for teams in our region.

Before ARR, we had to set up the entire field at our Cafeteria. It was a lot of work, but many team members worked together to get it done!

And here's the final look of our field. Looks great, right?

This year, Lady Cans (2881), RoboWarriors (2583), and ViperBots Valor (6800) came.

Sadly, RoboWarriors aren't in this picture :(

Before we get into the details, take a sneak peek at our robot!

Teams are here, bring the robot in!

Since the competition season hasn't started yet and we are not quite finished with the robot, you're going to be seeing many colored blocks covering the robot. Sorry:(

Even though it's a fun day at ARR, we can't stop working on the robot because we only have 4 days left until the Bag Day. Wait, but working on robots is fun!

A great thing about ARR is that we get to talk to other teams about our robot and also about their robots.

ViperBots Valor, Lady Cans, and RoboWarriors are all doing so well!

Don't worry, we're doing great as well.

Well, we hope to see everyone's fabulous robots at Hub City and Alamo Regionals. Good luck!

STEMBouree astronaut CANTalk

Day 29 of Power Up

Sorry for the large gap in between Day 18 and Day 29. Our team has been very busy due to essay submissions and crazy robot building :(

Last week, we finished our drive base and mounted a temporary lift from REV Robotics. Some team members stayed until 3 AM to get this done. Sounds like the hardest fun ever!

Big news! After finishing the drive base, we were able to get some driver practice

Another big news, with our Manufacturing Class, we completed the Switch and Scale! We're now  waiting for more driver practice and Austin Robot Round Up! (February 17)

Similar to last year, we are making our own wheels, which always requires a lot of work. But it's worth it!

Now that it is Week 5, we are getting more excited about Bag Day and competitions (Alamo and Hub City). We hope other teams are enjoying this great year as well!

Day 18 of Power Up

Welcome to Day 18 of Power Up!

The Chairman's team has started memorizing and practicing for their presentation, and they're looking forward to another great Chairman's presentation.

Busier than ever, the Manufacturing Department is still building parts, and they can't wait to start the assembly process!

And of course, the Electronics Team is always working to help with more prototypes and mechanisms!

Good news! This year we are working to create an amazing scouting app.

Programming and CAD are continuing their work, so don't forget about them!

Howdy Qualifier & Expo

Last weekend, four of our team members have volunteered at Howdy Qualifier & Expo, at College Station!

Four including the person who took this picture.

Greg and Elena were a judge assistance and queuers, and Leah and Cindy were Buddies and Reviewers for FLL Jr.

We also had chances to talk to many FLL teams about their robots!

In the end, it was amazing to help out at this huge FLL qualifier event!

It was our team's first time participating at FLL Jr. event, and it was fun to be a Buddy and a Reviewer.

We were tired from the long drive to College Station, but it was definitely worth it!