Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

The registration for the off season event hosted by FIRST Team 1730 Team Driven has been opened up. If you have an interest in attending please go to http://cttd-robotics.com/pages/home and check it out. The event will take place at Lee's Summit MO High School Nov 1-2, 2013.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Looking forward to this year's Cowtown Throwdown! It is always a blast and we have so many competitive teams in the area this year. Team 1939 signed up early in the week.

For teams out there that are considering attending, sign up early. I'd love to see some more out of town teams again this year. It is always fun getting to meet new people and it is a helpful group of teams if you need anything.

Specifically, it would be cool to have 525 and Neutrino come down from Iowa. We missed having 525 at the GKC Regional and Neutrino is just cool.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Mr. Brown, who should we contact if we would like to volunteer at CTTD? Two of 2410's alumni, myself and Liz, would like to volunteer at this absolutely wonderful event. We're both going to Missouri S&T at Rolla, so it's a short drive back. In particular, I was wondering if I'd be able to shadow the MC, as I'd eventually like to MC an event or two myself in the future. We, however, would be available for any volunteering position y'all find yourself short in. If you or anyone from Driven could either post back here or PM me then we'll work out details from there. Thanks!

I'll also let our head mentor know that registration is open, and you can expect Team 2410, BV CAPS Metal Mustang Robotics to have a strong showing at the event, and we'll be sure to bring our spirit too!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

I'm sad that I'll be missing it this year. This will be the first time since it started that I won't be attending. =(


For any teams outside of the Kansas/Missouri area that have never attended I strongly urge you try to attend this event. It has always been a blast with wonderful teams both locally and teams that traveled to get there.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

1985 will be there! We're excited to finally be able to compete with the teams in the Kansas City area, including the ones we've already played with at Championships.

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3397 should be there! We are super pumped for the event.

Edit: Just registered us!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Just uncrated the robot today from Champs. Looks like it has at least one more tournament in her. ;)

Team Driven always hosts a fantastic event and we are looking forward to getting our new crop of rookie members up to speed there. Deffinetly a bonus to get to see some of our St. Louis friends come over whom we missed this year at GKC.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Team 3937 is planning on attending. It is always a blessing to play against some of the best. We had the honor of playing with some great MO teams at the Brawl last year. Looking forward to one last ascent with our 2013 robot!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Is there somewhere that has a list of who is attending cowtown this year?

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

http://cttd-robotics.com >> Competition Info >> Team List

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Is there a webcast?

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Last year there was. Imagine there will be again. Wonder if anyone wants to get together a 2337 style system. Really enjoyed the high def fish-eye view.

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Agreed! I'd love one last chance to be with my alma matter :) I'm hoping to convince my *new* team #2167 Radical T3ch to come down if they aren't busy with FTC stuff, as I feel that CTTD is crucial to give a team some much needed off-season practice.

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Was disappointed to not have the opportunity to see our 7 disc auto's go head to head in the finals of GKC. Perhaps a rematch is in order. ;)

With your new team... Are you joining the 2 year Missouri Academy as a high school student, or attending NWMSU? Kind of curious to learn more about the Academy.

Don't think we'll see 525 unless we all take a trip up to Iowa.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

It was tough not competing against you guys! Maybe we'll see you at CTTD!
And I'm headed off to NWMSU as a 2nd semester freshman.. I'm majoring in Geographic Information Systems w/ an emphasis in Emergency Response & I'm also going to take a few pre-engineering classes as well :) I'm looking forward to bringing my knowledge to the team.
Are you a senior?

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Mr. Bailey's a mentor for Titanium. Does their scouting. (Just a WFFA winner, nbd...:rolleyes: )

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Haha... Thanks for letting me know. I bet that made Mr. Bailey feel a bit younger for a few minutes :)
I got a note today from the Ultimate Ascent Season President of the Academy team. I'm amazed at how they have been able to sustain themselves for this long (~7 years) by only having a staff "mentor" lead their team and not allowing outside college student mentors to help lead their team. I was also poking around TBA & noticed you guys played them in Match 37 @ KC. We played them in 81 & they barely even moved. I suppose it's the members' team when it comes down to it, but one would think a team that ranked at the very bottom of our scouting guide would jump at an opportunity to have a mentor like me help them on the mechanical side of things (I'm no Aren_Hill, but he taught me quite a bit :)
So it sounds like they drastically change every year and most of their team only has 1 year of experience under their belt before they are left to fend for themselves and teach the next kids, which isn't very sustainable.

I believe STRONGLY in youth leadership, coming from my 4-H background, but I believe teams still need some technical mentorship from mentors with engineering knowledge. That is how/why our team was so strong in our second year competing (ranking 47th in the world), because our mentors were AMAZING (I suppose that their 50+ years of FRC knowledge they brought to the table also helped)! But seriously, I couldn't ask for ANY better mentors than THE Aren_Hill, CoreyBrown, AlexGrant, Katie_UPS, and ALL the other mentors! They were so caring and compassionate, they benefited our team so well.

That being said, I'm seriously pondering just STARTING my own team down there through Nodaway County 4-H IF I have time and no, I'm not crazy (just keep reading :), as the above doesn't sound very positive about their mentorship and I haven't heard back from their mentor since I wrote him in March. There are MANY added benefits of going through 4-H to start a team. Here are a few: You are automatically a 501(c)3 organization, which is really big from a funding/sponsorship standpoint. You already have a solid leadership platform + a membership base + a volunteer base in place for building a team/club from the ground up! I feel that all the student mentors would need to do to make the team successful, is to facilitate the mechanical design/building process, as the parents/leaders would be able to facilitate the business/leadership side of things. In addition, Missouri 4-H strongly supports FIRST programs (they have 3 FRC teams) & has implemented robotics into their robotics program!

So if you know of anyone else going to NWMSU this fall, or anyone that is in Nodaway Co./Maryville area that would be interested in helping with a team, let me know, as this would help turn my thoughts into actions much quicker... Although I probably won't get the team officially started until the 2015 season, but who knows!

Thanks again,
David

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

As it stands, it looks like there are 40 teams signed up for this year's Cowtown Throwdown. It looks like it will be an awesome event as usual. Only 8 slots left!!! It will be great to see our friends from all the other teams. As for us, we have some work to do to get our robot back in competition form, but we'll be ready come November 1st and 2nd.

Team # Team Name- School Name
876 Thunder Robotics- Hatton-Northwood High Schools
938 Team Botman- Central Heights High School
1094 Channel Cats- River City Robots
1108 Panther Robotics- Paola High School
1619 Up-A-Creek Robotics- Career Development Center
1730 Team Driven- Lee's Summit High School
1737 Project X- Excelsior Springs High School
1764 Liberty Robotics- Liberty Public Schools
1775 Tiger Bytes- Lincoln College Preparatory
1777 Viking Robotics- Shawnee Mission West High School
1785 United Robocats- Blue Springs School District
1802 Team Stealth- Piper Robotics
1806 S.W.A.T.- Smithville High School
1810 Jaguar Robotics- Mill Valley High School
1825 Metro Homeschool Robotics- Metro Homeschool
1847 Ladder 1847- Wyandotte High School
1939 The Kuh-nig-its- The Barstow School
1982 Cougar Robotics- Shawnee Mission Northwest
1985 Robohawks- Hazelwood Central High School
1986 Team Titanium- Lee's Summit West High School
1987 Broncobots- Lee's Summit North High School
1994 Horse Power- FL Schlagle
2001 HERMES- Ruskin High School
2346 Cel-Techs- Archbishop O'Hara High School
2410 Metal Mustang Robotics- Blue Valley CAPS Center
3172 HorsePOWER- Salina Central High School
3284 Camdenton 4H LASER- Camdenton High School
3397 Robolions- University City High School
3485 Cyclone Robotics- Bishop Ward High School
3528 Up Next!- KC Northland Homeschool
3593 Invictus- Victory Christian School
3784 Bit by Bit 4H Robotics- Bit by Bit 4H Club
3792 Army Ants- Columbia Area Career Center
3928 FIRST Team Neutrino- Ames High School
3937 Breakaway- Harding Academy
4329 Lutheran Lugnuts- Lutheran High School St. Charles
4522 Team SCREAM- Smith-Cotton High School
4455 The Burger Bots- Warrensburg High School
4646 ASAP- Des Moines
xxxx Trobots- Park Hill High School

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

4329 has been steadily making improvements and can't wait to play with all the great teams attending Cow Town. See you all in November!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Cow Town is now at wait-list status.

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Do you guys need any volunteers? I'm interested in possibly volunteering if you guys would need some help. Feel free to email me if you guys would david@runneals.com.

Thanks!
David

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Well, with competition starting in about a month, I figured I'd help my former team with a bit of pre-scouting (Crowd sourced):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmeevXa1knKRdGg2UkVGTmF4Yy1mWHI3TnBWZzFxe lE&usp=sharing
If you could go and fill out the link for your team, or other teams, that'd be appreciated! Thanks! Feel free to use the data for your own use too.

UPDATE: Went back to the spreadsheet, set up public editing. Kinda important when attempting to crowd source information...

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Does anyone know of any plans to livestream the matches for Cowtown?

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

There was never and answer to whether it was going to be streamed this weekend or not. I'd really like to know so I can make plans to possibly watch my former team 1802 play on my day off on Saturday since it wasn't feasible for me to fly back for this event.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

We will be having a live stream for Cow Town.
It will be availible on the Cow Town Home Page or on the Ustream Channel.
Hopefully it will be on The Blue Alliance as well.

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Will the stream be available soon

Edit: Nevermind it's up now.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Wow, everything ran on time, no communication issues, nice venue. What an awesome event.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

What a great weekend. Many thanks to Team Driven 1730 and Cerner for hosting this event. Congratulations to the winning alliance 1986, 3284, 1825, and 2410.

1986- I'm sure many in the FIRST community will join me in thinking- Thank Goodness we don't have to compete against the Kraken again. :yikes: Amazing machine. Can't wait to see what 2014 brings.

3284- What a solid, classy team and robot. We enjoyed competing with you in Arkansas, Championships, and again this weekend. Hopefully we will meet again soon.

1825- We always love it to see our fellow homeschool team do well.

2410- You guys must have totally rebuilt your bot during the off-season. Good job.

We would like to thank our own alliance- 1619, 2335, and 1802. We came so close on that 2nd semi-final match.

Up Next 3528 wishes all the teams a great 2014 season.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Thanks. We're happy not to compete with the Kraken again too. The joy is in creating, and we can't wait to start that process over again in a few months. Not to mention the beating it took through the eliminations is going to take some time to repair before we invite local elementary students to drive it at our annual science carnival ("Burgers, Beakers, and Bots") this Tuesday. :ahh:

Those not in attendance may not realize the depth of talent at this event. Our last two qualification matches came down to the wire, winning our last one by a single point, and the one before that by two only after our human player made a last second shot. :cool:

A huge thanks to our alliance partners. It was an honor to work with another Championship division finalist. 3248 did everything well, including being able to shoot over 1982's defense in the finals. I'd rather play with than against you guys any day. 1825 was a steal in the draft. Your offensive production gave us a suprising amount of versatility, and forced the opposition in our first semifinal to block a feeding station just to slow down all of our cycles. 2410 showed great driving skill to go along with a strong autonomous and 10 point climb. You played the best penalty free defense on 1806 and completely changed the game.

It was great to see teams travel from way out of the area to join us for the competition. 876 from North Dakota had a great combination of shooting and climbing. 1619 from Colorado was among the fastest climb and dumps I'd seen all season. Thank you both for bringing in such impresive machines. No surprise you both ended up alliance captains.

A huge thanks to all the organizers and volunteers who made the 6th annual CTTD possible. 1730 was a gracious host, and along with 2001 ran a tremendous event.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Here is a video from Saturday i think everyone would enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduHoKZM1GI

Danny and Jerry said that the production guys at AndyMark are going to combine all the videos into something special, so I can't wait for that.

But on behalf of myself and all of the refs, I want to thank all of the teams for being extremely respectful and fun to be around. Like always, we enjoy helping out with the event, and hope to be invited back to help out. I also want to thank 1730 and everyone involved with setting up the competition. The coordinators always treat their volunteers like royalty, and for that I'm extremely grateful.

So with that, I look forward to coming back as the head referee at the Greater Kansas City Regional, and will see everyone in January at kickoff!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

(This post is on behalf of myself; I came down as a volunteer. One from the team will follow.)

Wow, what a competition to have as my first volunteer experience. Volunteering is certainly much different from actually competing. It was such a friendly atmosphere between all the volunteers, and actually made collecting the high volume of discs not as stressful as one would expect. Also, working field reset meant that I could wish my friends good luck before each of their matches, and congratulate them on a job well done after those matches.

Thank you to Team Driven (1730) and Hermes (2001) for putting on one heck of a show again. Team Driven never fails to host an amazing tournament, and I can say that I'm pretty sure that for all the years I'm a student at Rolla that I will be coming back each November to volunteer at this event.

Congratulations to the winning alliance!
Team Titanium (1986) - Wow, what a robot. The Kraken was definitely the most feared robot in this town, completely living up to it's name. Your incredible 7 disc autonomous usually won you the match before the controls were even touched. Then, to solidify those wins, your drivers ran amazing cycles and slipped through the smallest of holes in the defense. It was really something special to see my former team finally get to be on an alliance with y'all.
Camdenton LASER Robotics (3284) - I am simply amazed that teams would pick to defend Titanium over your robot. It was simply a scoring machine, and incredibly designed. As part of the field reset crew, I got to watch your robot up close as it was being fed by your human player, and that funnel for the discs up top worked with such a wide margin for being lined up at the station.
Metro Homeschool Cyborgs (1825) - A steal of the draft, your scoring was amazing and really helped boost the scores in eliminations. The way that your robot moved and scored when either 1986 or 3284 were pinned was such an asset to watching the Number 1 alliance take the win.
BV CAPS Metal Mustang Robotics (2410) - Boy did y'all come a long way from what we started with in season. The new robot Buckbeak did incredibly, as did your new drive team. I have full confidence (and high expectations ;)) that the team is climbing up in their ability to create simple but elegant and effective designs for the up coming season. I can't wait to see what you come up with in season, and know that I am always available if you're ever feeling lost or just need to bounce an idea around.

To everyone else I interacted with: Thanks for one incredible weekend that I'll remember for quite some time to come.

Until next year!

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Find my scouting notes today. :)

No picking permitted amongst the top 8. Alliance captains pick a 4th team, and can select any combination of 3 teams for each match. No timeouts permitted.

Alliance Selection Results
1. 1986, 3284, 1825, 2410
2. 1806, 3928, 1777, 1982
3. 1810, 1939, 0938, 5013
4. 1619, 3528, 2335, 1802
5. 1985, 1775, 1094, 1769
6. 1764, 4522, 1987, 2353
7. 0876, 3937, 3612, 3784
8. 1730, 3792, 1108, 4455

Quarter Finals
1 over 8 in 2
4 over 5 in 2
2 over 7 in 2
6 over 3 in 3

Semi-Finals
1 over 4 in 2
2 over 6 in 2

Finals
1 over 2 in 2

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

The one thing I was wondering at the event was how you guys at Team Titanium came up with your drive system. If I remember correctly, it consisted of a rocker with a mecanum wheels on one side and high traction wheels on the other? I remember your system had both mecanum and traditional drive systems which our team spent most of the ride out to Missouri trying to figure out (since it was on the scouting spreadsheet).
Before coming to the event we changed out the gear ratio on our climbing transmission from 36-1 to 27-1 (3-1 x 3 stages) and timed it with a fresh battery at 14.8 seconds to the top. In our last Semifinals match against you guys (team 1986) our hooks clicked over the top rung at almost exactly the same time as the buzzer went off I remember. Was an extreme bit of luck on our part there.

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Of teams that ran octocanum, I do not believe Titanium was one of them...

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They have omni wheels on the corners, not mechanum. I am assuming they ran it to avoid bounce on turns.

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If 1986 could still elaborate on why their drive train is the way it is that would still be appreciated. Multiple minds are interested.

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Our drive arrangement consists of four 6" traction wheels in a wide aspect ratio in the center of the drivebase. These are supplemented by four omni wheels (4" in this year's robot) at the corners of the drivebase. The traction wheel arrangement combines good 4-point traction with excellent turning, without the toddering and over-steering of a drop-center 6-wheel. The omni wheels are very slightly raised, and simply provide the broadest possible stance for stability without inhibiting the turning. There are good views of the arrangement in this weekly update video from build season: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnnjSXMRVo

Re: Cow Town ThrowDown Nov 1st & 2nd
 

Yes, we did, thanks for noticing.

Pegasus, the old robot, was ruled a total loss after the Razorback Regional. It had about one weld and one hundred zip-ties holding it together. The frame was lower than the wheels (it was almost entirely built with 1/8" aluminum). We decided it would be better to build a new, stronger, more accurate robot with 1/4" aluminum than try to fix up Pegasus. And hence, Buckbeak was born.