Our VEXnet field controller works fine (thank you, Ricky Torrance) and the only Exothermic team with the VEXnet upgrade is up and running. I sure wish we had nine more of these upgrade kits.
Only two days…
only a few more days
everyone is making final adjustments
and of course autonomous 
we dont even have a proper field yet with the tees and such so we can only guess its “half” done…
see you all there 
oh btw
just a thought on running the event:
last year there were 2 fields being played on
while one field was “on air”
the other field were being reseting up and placing the robots
the only thing is that there were 3 “queing spots” on EACH SIDE
so that means if you got called,
you would have to wait in line behind 3 sets of aliences
PER side
meaning you would have to wait for 6 matches to be played before its your turn
and if each match is 4 mins long (setup, lag, counting scores included)
you would need to wait 24 mins in line!
thats is a bit too much for my taste
my team and i would rather be at the pits fixing something or making adjustments
last year at gladstone there were only 3 “queing spots” in total so the wait wasnt that bad
just something for the event organisers to think about
thanks
(ive finished rambling now :))
Thanks for the feedback.
You can’t tell from the team list who the students are, however since I am the teacher responsible for the teams, I can assure you that all of the students from David Thompson will be taking part in their first VEX tournament. Allan will be there to help out, but we’ll probably find a job for him as some kind of tournament volunteer.
That said, this won’t be the first robotics tournament for all the students coming down. A few were at Key Arena last year for FRC.
We don’t have enough VEX kits at DT for everyone who wants to play to play every year. Many of the students from last year’s VEX teams are doing PIC Machine language programming at the moment and working towards building their very own mini-sumo robot, built and programmed from the ground up for about $20 each.
Others are gearing up for another run at the Microsoft Seattle Regional FRC tournament.
Wow! What a tournament. Lots of returning veterans, some great new teams, and further proof that I am completely hopeless when it comes to predicting who is going to win a robotics tournament.
It was great to see some new teams from Washington taking part (a special welcome to our FRC friends from Aviation High School), to see the very talented teams from Cambie Secondary taking home some heavy hardware, and a fabulous run by 1426 from Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary in Surrey in their very first VEX tournament.
I’ve posted some photos here. If you’re posting media from the tournament, please add a link to it to this thread.
The next tournament in the Pacific Northwest is the Gladstone tournament, December 12th at Gladstone Secondary… but that deserves its own thread.
P.S. Congratulations to the GDC for designing a great game… there is SO much room for gameplay to evolve, and so many different ways to play the game well.
Which teams won?
As I recall, with alliances listed in no particular order:
Champions: 1346c, 2z, 1899
Finalists: 1346a, 1107a, 1426a
Excellence: 1107a
Why we never realized that the second place alliance should have been called “The A team” until the tournament was over is beyond me, especially as “The A Team” movie was being shot in Vancouver this weekend.
Team 1107 however, did notice that the tournament took place on 11/07. Will team 1212 be competing at Gladstone on December 12th?
P.S. Those familiar with VEX in the Pacific Northwest will notice the absence of perennial favourites 721 and 575 from this list. Although they were on top after elims, and formed 2/3 of a very formidable alliance, they were knocked out in the semis in what has to be one of the biggest “upsets” I’ve seen in VEX. That’s what makes this a sport… you have to play the game to find out who wins! Watch for them at Gladstone, though… they’ll be back even better than they are now.
Event winners: 1346C, 2Z, 1899 (Fifth seed)
Event finalists: 1426A, 1107A, 1346 (people call it “1346A”, but the team is registered as “1346”)(Sixth seed)
Excellence Award: 1107A
Amaze Award: 1426A
Build Award: 575
Innovate Award: 2Z
Judges Award: 10V
Standings after Qualifications
Rank, Team#, Team Name, Wins, Losses, Ties, WP, RP
1 575 Exothermic Haiku 5 0 0 10 276
2 2K Epic Farce 4 1 0 8 314
3 10Z Exothermic Billy Mays 4 1 0 8 303
4 721 TBA 4 1 0 8 231
5 2A Ourselves 3 2 0 6 338
6 10E Exothermic Albatross 3 2 0 6 321
7 1346C Trobotics 3 2 0 6 308
8 1426A LTSS 3 2 0 6 291
9 1107B GorDova 3 2 0 6 287
10 10B Exothermic AI3 3 2 0 6 284
11 10C Exothermic Astley 3 2 0 6 281
12 2Z DeathFromAbove 3 2 0 6 263
13 1107A Donuts and Timbits 3 2 0 6 246
14 10X Exothermic Stairs 2 3 0 4 340
15 1346 Trobotics 2 3 0 4 335
16 10D Exothermic Flounder 2 3 0 4 321
17 2Y Know One 2 3 0 4 321
18 2T Xsis 2 3 0 4 320
19 10V Exothermic Victory 2 3 0 4 310
20 10Q Exothermic Salsa 2 3 0 4 300
21 1983A Skunkworks Robotics 2 3 0 4 294
22 10A Exothermic Cybernetics 2 3 0 4 276
23 2605A Sehome Robotics 2 3 0 4 275
24 1899 Interlake Saints Robotics 2 3 0 4 274
25 1983B Skunkworks Robotics 2 3 0 4 254
26 1346B Trobotics 0 5 0 0 319
27 2C Tyrannosaurus VEX 0 5 0 0 268
Wow…5th seed alliance took home the gold.
Team 1899, Saints Robotics from Interlake High School, meets and practices with Exothermic Robotics. They are a separate team, but they are a part of our extended family. For a robot that was in what you might call “really bad shape” a couple of days before the tournament, they clearly over-achieved. Super job, guys.
My personal favorite moments were 10V winning the Judge’s Award and 1107A winning Excellence. 10V is a junior high school all-girls team (average height about four foot-eight ) who LOVE robots and LOVE their team. They are a great group and I’m very proud of them. I wonder (a little) if 1107A was just about the most surprised group in the building when they won Excellence. A hot, fast robot that reminded me a lot of 420 from last year. Good jobs, and congratulations to Cambie Secondary.
I’m still tired and sore, but I think I can recover before Gladstone.
Oh, and we had dinner last night with students from 575 and 10Q (last year’s 417). I don’t think their robots will look the same at Gladstone as they did at Redmond.
Side note: Has anyone else noticed that most of the Exothermic teams are now 10, and most of Gladstone is 2? And that “10” in binary is “2” decimal? I don’t think this means anything – or does it?
Well, actually, as Rick Tyler points out, the champions were actually the fifth seeded alliance after “moving up” when higher ranked seeds selected high ranked partners.
But you’re right… the winning alliance, comprised of teams that were ranked 7th, 12th and 24th after qualifying were definite “underdogs”, at least until the finals when they met the equally “underdog” alliance of the 8th, 9th and 15th seeds.
P.S. I have noticed Gladstone teams registering under the team number “2_” and the Exothermics as “10_”, and appreciate being able to identify group/school affliliation from the team number. I just hadn’t realized they were the same number but in a different base.
Haha…
Well it definitely was a great event to be at, but lets not consider an upset shall we ^^? I think every team had an equal chance to win and the 5th alliance pulled through because they didn’t give up (even if their semi-finals was against two super-monsters).
Hope to see you all at our event in Gladstone!
Not quite monster sized. 721’s bot didn’t max out the 18"x18"x18" quite as well as you guys did. We only got within a quarter inch of 18 in two dimensions 
On another note though, our bot is in for a pretty large redesign
I nearly forgot – the one team that just blew me away was 1426A, competing brilliantly with a modified Protobot. It was a robot with modest ability but they drove it with intensity and got more out of that simple little 'bot than a lot of more-experienced teams with huge, complex mechanisms. It was inspirational.
I, for one, thought we’d get Build, but heck, I’m not complaining
The whole date/number thing was pure coincidence. We’ll probably stick to 1107 A, B, (and possibly C and D, we’ve got a couple kits and eager competitors) though. Maybe we’ll name them Bagels and Ho Hos.
Congrats to the winners of course, and hope to see you all at Gladstone.
Rick Tyler and Crew did an excellent job of hosting this tournament.
It was very interesting to see the game played for the first time this year. I know many of the teams will see significant rebuilds before the next tournament they compete in. Strategies and tactics have started to emerge but will still evolve over the next several tournaments.
Hopefully many of you will choose the tournament at Gladstone on Saturday, December 12th to test you “new and improved” bot.
During the Redmond tournament while I was talking with one of the Exothermic Alumni, he mentioned that the Gladstone tournament’s average score per game, was higher than the average score per game at the worlds that year. It made me think how beneficial it has been to have a great but supportive rivalry.
The Redmond tournament was also very important as we saw the addition of some new teams in the Pacific Northwest from both sides of the border.
So thanks again to all the tournament organizers and volunteers.
@ end post P3: hmm… can i say… extended family? =P (jk)
I’m still… shocked at 1107A’s defeat… even though their competitors had the advantage, their robot exceeded almost everyone’s expectations to the very end. It was a fast and zippy robot. Unfortunately the downfall to their design (which was discovered as the games progressed) was that their shovel was too low and prone to blocking. Maybe another problem might be how the shovel pivot points are independently controlled… which makes it much harder to control.
A lot of robots this year have headed in the direction of huge shovels and buckets. A few robots did use pick-up type mechanisms (tank treads, VEX spider wheels, etc) but the former type seemed to dominate (as well as some hybrids of the two).
There is one type of design however that I didn’t see… and one that may overcome some types of blocking and still get balls on the other side. Unfortunately I don’t have the resources to test out how it might work.
EDIT:
1246A… oh right.
Actually they did something clever during some of their games… they stuck footballs in the holes of the dividing wall so the opposing teams had a harder time wedging those through.
- Allan Kuan
It’s interesting because people mistake efficiency for how many balls a robot can carry.
Actually efficiency includes time and other factors. It seems like to me that 1107’s dump would be a bit slow, making it less effective against a constant barrage of 2-3 footballs and 3-4 small balls. That what makes robots like 721, 575, 10E, and 2Z so effective. There were definitely other well executed designs, the ones above just stood out to me.
- Sunny
But no one… NO ONE… put green balls into the vertical goals.
And no one built a bulldozer that just cleared balls out of the playing field and dumped them over the edge. You can’t lose if your opponent’s score is zero!
There is still a long way to go before people will be able to get bored with this game.
Ah, but at this time last year nobody was using the autoloaders either…