2006 WIRED Vex Challenge and Milwaukee Vex League

Competition Off-Season Events
1

The wait is over! I’d like to officially announce the Vex activities coming up this fall in Milwaukee.

This years league and tournament will both use the same game, and that game is currently under development. Several students from MSOE, including myself, are designing this game, which promises to be like nothing you’ve seen before. Please note that this is completely seperate from and unafilliated with the FIRST Vex Challenge.

The schedule is as follows:

September 16th, 2006 – Kickoff Event at Discovery World Museum (Tentative) and online documentation release

September 26th, 2006 through November 14th, 2006 – The Milwaukee Vex League
**
December 3, 2006** – WIRED Vex Challenge at MSOE’s Kern Center

The Milwaukee Vex League:

The Milwaukee Vex League (MVL) is a 9 week program that starts with the release of the Challenge on September 16th. Each Tuesday, from 5:30pm – 8:30pm, teams will have the opportunity to meet and compete with their robot against other teams. Each league night will also include a workshop on topics related to the FIRST Robotics Challenge. These topics may include: safety, chassis/drive train, materials and machining, CAD design, 3D Studio Max, DC Motors, electrical systems, programming and AutoFlex, competition scouting strategies, and pneumatics. League locations are still being worked out and details will be forthcoming.

Teams are welcome to participate in any portion of the league night. Vex teams do not need to be affiliated with FIRST Robotics Challenge teams. Although we encourage active participation, we realize that it may not be possible for teams to attend every league night. Although competitions will be scored and awards presented, the emphasis for the league is on improving robot design, learning from each other, and having fun! The Milwaukee Vex League will culminate with the 2006 WIRED Vex Challenge.

2006 WIRED Vex Challenge:

The 2006 WIRED Vex Challenge tournament competition using the Vex Robotics Design System. High school teams design and build robots to compete in the head-to-head competition. This competition is is open to any team of high school aged students. Participation in the Milwaukee Vex League is not mandatory for participation in this competition.

Cost:

Registration for the Milwaukee Vex League is $75.00 per robot
This includes the registration fee for the 2006 WIRED Vex Challenge

Registration for the 2006 WIRED Vex Challenge is $50.00 per robot

The primary purpose of the league and tournament is to bring rookie FRC teams and new members of existing FRC teams up to speed before kickoff in January. The workshops cover most of the common areas and a few more specialized ones as well. The league and tournament also give groups that cannot afford FRC or even the FVC at this point a chance to compete and learn just like the rest of us. The league and tournament are open to anyone, not just Milwaukee or Wisconsin groups. I want to see some Michigan teams here in December! We had 21 teams last year and we expect to double that number for the tournament this year.

More details about the league, tournament, and registration will be available later in the summer, but before kickoff. Stay tuned to wirobotics.org for updates, as well as this thread. If you have any questions, you can contact myself (Co-Chair) via PM or email (kevin <dot> kolodziej <at> gmail <dot> com), Eric Brunsell (WIRED) (eric <at> spaceed <dot> org), or Mike Wittman (Co-Chair) (Wittman <at> execpc <dot> com).

*WIRED = Wisconsin Institute for Robotics in Education, not the magazine.

2

I can’t wait… just tell us about the game already!!

i hope you get better. :slight_smile:

3

UPDATES!!

We are only a few weeks away from the beginning of the 2006 Milwaukee VEX League. Even if you are not in the Milwaukee area, feel free to play our game, start your own league, and then come compete at our tournament.

Important Dates

Saturday, September 16th - Kickoff at Discovery World Museum, Milwaukee, WI. The game will be revealed and all documentation will be posted at wirobotics.org/vex

Tuesday, September 26th - First League Night at Discovery World Museum. Every Tuesday, for 8 weeks, teams will have a chance to come together and listen to a presentation on a specific topic geared toward the FRC and play a series of matches with their Vex robots on the official field. Go home and tweak your design and see if you’ve improved the following week! Statistics for the league WILL be kept! If teams step forward to host a league night at their school, we will try to accommodate that request. We are still looking for presenters - contact me if you would like to be one.

Tuesday, November 14th - Final League Night.

Sunday, December 3rd - 2006 Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge at the MSOE Kern Center, Milwaukee, WI. We’re hoping for 40 teams this year to assemble at the new Kern Center and have some robot fun. Matches will be payed, teams will be judged, awards will be given, and much fun will be had!

**Registration is open now **at www.wirobotics.org/vex - please sign up now!

League and Tournament - $75 (Attendance at all 8 nights is not required, but heavily encouraged)
Tournament only - $50

Prices are PER ROBOT and we encourage multiple robots per FRC team.

Feel free to ask me any questions if you have them.

Kevin - We’ll see you there!

4

And the robotics season begins.

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It’s great to have more opportunities for Vex! Be sure to watch the FVC website for news of the official events as well (official season begins Sept. 13).

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The time for the 2006 Milwaukee VEX League and 2006 Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge is here! These two events, while not affiliated with the official FVC program, promise to offer some of the best opportunities for training new team members, learning new techniques and practices, and having fun. All this at a ver LOW cost too! You have received this notification because you either attended the event last year, attended the FRC Wisconsin Regional, or have expressed interest in this event. Feel free to spread the word and pass on all information to other teams or groups.

Registration

Registration is open NOW at http://www.wirobotics.org/vex/2006/index.html and will remain open until just before the tournament. If you participated in the tournament last year, please re-register. You must register before you can participate in the league. Costs are as follows:

Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge: $50 per robot

Milwaukee VEX League AND Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge: $75 per robot

FRC teams are encouraged to field more than robot. For example: FRC team 1234 registers two teams and plans to have one for veteren students and one for rookie students. Teams typically work best with 5-10 students and 1 mentor, but feel free to organize your teams however you choose.

Registration is not limited to FRC teams. If there are other groups that feel they are up to the challenge, encourage them and offer them any assistance they may need. This includes pre-high school groups, but we ask that before younger groups register, they fully understand that the event will be run similar to an FRC event, which can get pretty intense. The emphasis is on fun and learning above all other aspects, so younger teams with those desires should have no problems.

Kickoff

The game and manual will be released online at the above website on Saturday, September 16th. There will be an actual kickoff event held that same day at the new Discovery World Museum located on the lakefront in Milwaukee. This kickoff will run similar to an FRC kickoff, but not as long. The actual game field will be on display and this will be the first opportunity for Q/A. Some other surprises are in store as well. Details will be provided soon for this event. Again, this game will NOT be the game that the official FVC program will be using. This game has been created by students from MSOE, all of which are former FIRST participants.

Milwaukee VEX League

The Milwaukee VEX League is somethiung that was tried on a very small scale last year and seemed to be a great success. It has been largely expanded this year. The league will run from Tuesday, September 26th until Tuesday November 14th. For 8 weeks, teams will have a chance to come together and listen to a presentation on a specific topic geared toward the FRC and play a series of matches with their Vex robots on the official field. Go home and tweak your design and see if you’ve improved the following week! Statistics for the league WILL be kept! It is not required that a team attend all 8 weeks, but it is heavily encouraged.

The League Nights will run approximately from 5:30pm to 8:30 pm every Tuesday and will be held at Discovery World Museum. The first hour wil be dedicated to a presentation on various topics, ranging from safety, to animating, to pnuematics, to material selection. Topics during the first coupe of weeks will be broad and basic while topics towards the end of the league will be more advanced and specialized. The rest of the time will be spent playing matches just like at a real competition. It is likely that each league night will be limited to the first 20 teams that sign up to attend. Again, details will be provided soon.

If teams step forward to host a league night at their school, we will try to accommodate that request. We are still looking for presenters - contact me if you would like to be one.

Obviousy we can’t expect all teams to participate in the league. Teams that are unable to attend the league are encouraged to start their own league with other nearby teams.

2006 Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge

This is the culmination of everyone’s hard work. Last year’s event was a huge success and we hope to nearly double the participation this year. This year’s event is:

Sunday, December 3rd
Milwaukee School of Engineering’s new Kern Center in downtown Milwaukee
Approximately 8:00am-5:00pm

This event will run just like an FRC event, with pits, qualifying matches, elimination matches, judges, and awards. Stay tuned for further details.

If you ave a ny questions, please feel free to email myself or the contacts listed in the above website. We hope to hear from you soon!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kevin

7

Hello everyone!

Some of you may be hearing about this event for the first time, but you are hearing about it because you either attended our tournament last December, attended the Milwaukee FRC Regional in March, or have otherwise expressed interest. The Milwaukee VEX League and 2006 Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge are NOT official FIRST competitons and will NOT be using the official FVC game. These events are planned by members of Team 1675, Team 1714, students from Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), and leaders of the Wisconsin Institute for Robotics in Education ()WIRED). The game has been developed by MSOE students who are former FIRST participants. The aim of these events is to give new members of teams and rookie teams a chance to learn from their veteren counterparts in an informal competition format. Workshops will be combined with league nights to give local experts a chance to offer their knowledge to the group, and teams should be able to have tons of fun! The previous information about dates, locations, and fees can be found here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=521384&postcount=6

Watch http://wirobotics.org/vex/2006/index.html for all official updates.

UPDATED REGISTRATION INFORMATION

If you have not registered yet, you must register your team before you can attend league nights. Registration happens on the WIRED web site. Payment can be made through PayPal or by check. Payment can also be delivered on site at your first league night or the tournament.

KICKOFF INFORMATION

The kick off will be held in the Pilot House at the Discovery World Museum located at 500 N. Harbor Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202. It will be on Saturday, September 16, 2006 and will run from 10:00am to 12:00pm. We are hoping to be able to webcast the event and will send out further info on that possibility once it is available. Any team interested in the joining the league, attending the tournament, or just interested should attend. The main focus of kickoff will be to reveal the actual game field and begin the Q/A process. All documentation will be available at the WIRED website beginning at 12:00pm that day. You should be able to gain entry to the museum for the Kickoff event for free, but we are still trying to confirm this and parking and we will let you know with the webcast information ASAP. (Parking for league nights will be free since we are an after hours event)

TEASER

Here it is, your first glimpse into the 2006 game:

Rock and Roberts nearly took the title
A (w)hole lot of nothing is what you’ll find inside
Stack the floats twice for nearly thrice

Bring your guesses to the kickoff event and see how close you were!

Again, feel free to contact me if you have ANY questions.

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Better late than never, that’s what I always say!

I apologize for the delay in this information, but some details took longer to get settled than expected.

The KICKOFF event for hte Milwaukee VEX League and Tournament wll be this Saturday, September 16th. An actual event will take place from 10-12 at the new Discovery World Museum on Milwaukee’s Lakefront (500 N. Harbor Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202 ). We will be in the Pilot House, which is at the far end of the building, over the lake, on the top floor. There will be no charge to get in the museum, however, parking will not be free. For a short event such as this, however, it will not be too expensive. Carpool as much as you can! The parking garage is actually under the museum.

For those of you not close enough to attend, the event will be webcast!! The link will be on the www.wirobotics.org/vex/2006 website, but here is the direct url to plug into Windows Media Player: mms://205.213.124.42/vex

We will be able to record the live webcast, however the archive may take a day or two to post on the website. If anyone out there is able to record the stream and host it (at least the game portion) temporarily, please let me know ASAP.

We are very excited about this endeavor and hope you are too. We’ll see you there! Here’s the teaser one more time:
**
Rock and Roberts nearly took the title
A (w)hole lot of nothing is what you’ll find inside
Stack the floats twice for nearly thrice**

9

KING OF THE RINGS is now unveiled!

The manual and kickoff video (Monday) are available at http://wirobotics.org/vex/2006/index.html.

PLEASE DO NOT ask official questions on this site if you are participating - there is a forum for teams on the WIRED site. Casual conversation about the game and pour league is encouraged here though!

Enjoy!

Kevin

10

Greetings everyone!

We hope you are deep in thought about how to approach King of the Rings, but please take a minute to complete team registration for your team or teams.

Directions:

Part One: Register your Team

  1. Go to www.wirobotics.org and click on “Vex.”
  2. Click on “Register a Team” on the left nav bar.
  3. Select Vex Robotics League (even if you are just doing the tournament)
  4. Do not enter a team number. You will be supplied with one at the end of registration.
  5. Enter the required information. Your login username will be V + team number (ie: V99999) and you will select a password.
  6. Log in.

Part Two: Register for an Event

  1. Make sure you are logged in.
  2. On the Vex page, click “Sign up for an Event” (Left nav bar)
  3. Select either league + competition or Competition only.
  4. Pay either by check or credit card.

Part Three: Team Details

  1. Make sure you are logged in.
  2. Select “Team Members” (Left nav bar)
  3. Add your team members. The “affiliation” section can be used to highlight your mentors.
  4. This information will be used for the official tournament program.
  5. Select “Demographics” (Left nav bar)
  6. Estimate the number for each category.
  7. This information is only used in aggregate. Individual team information will not be shared.
  8. Our funders would like us to report this information.

Thank you for your continued interest and support. We hope that you enjoy King of the Rings nad we will see you in December, if not sooner!

The first league night was this past Tuesday night with 6 operational robots. The game has proved to be very dyanmic and some of the new features for the tournament were tested and will make the event run even smoother than last year’s tournament. Remember to keep checking www.wirobotics.org/vex for game updates. Field border information will be up shortly - we apologize for the delay. If you have any questions pertaining to the game or rules, please use the message board on the WIRED site after you register and we will address each question as quickly as possible.

Good luck!!

Kevin Kolodziej
Milwaukee Vex League Co-Chair

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The official picture gallery for the Milwaukee VEX League is available at http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/MKE_VEX/.

Take a minute to check out the action from the first two weeks, and keep checking back after every Tuesday for new updates!

Kev

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Greetings Teams!

The 2006 Fall WIRED Robotics Challenge is now only a month away and will be here before you know it! The League Nights have been a huge success and we hope to expand the league to several locations next year so that more teams may take advantage of the extra play time and information sessions.

Team leaders, please pass on following information to your teams.

If you will be competing in the December 3rd tournament, please register ASAP at the WIRED website (www.wirobotics.org/vex). We currently have 20 teams registered and will accept registrations until 11:59PM Tuesday, November 28th. We need time to print event programs and materials for teams, as well as generate the match schedules, so we cannot accept any registrations after that time. This means no onsite registration (you may pay at the event, however we really want you to pay in advance).

As you register (and teams that have already registered), be sure to completely fill out the student information sections.

If you have not been regularly checking the WIRED website, go there immediately and check out the 4 updates to the rule book. League Night matches have produced some situations that had not been expected and the updates address those situations and update several key rules to the game.

Also on the website is a link to the official photo gallery from League Nights. Teams that have been participating – if you would like some of your own pictures included in the gallery, let me know and I will get you the login details to do so.

For the December 3rd tournament, details and the agenda will be released shortly. Doors will open at 8:00am and we will be finishing around 5:30-6:00pm. The parking situation will be clarified shortly as well, but know that because it is a Sunday, there is free street parking in the area where you can find it. I am working on getting MSOE to reserve space on the campus lots for visitors, but that is not confirmed yet.

When identifying your robots with names, numbers, and colors, remember that these can be any material and can be attached by any means. The numbers you will be using will be the last two numbers of your registration number (i.e. V12345 = Team #45)

The awards list is now available at the WIRED website.

Finally, we are still in need of some volunteers for Team Queuing (mentors or parents please), Crystal Control (mentors or parents please), and Reset (students of any age). Please have anyone that is interested contact me ([email protected]) with their name, email, phone number, t-shirt size, and association (school, business, team #, etc.).

Thanks, see you in December!

13

Greetings teams,

Some of you are receiving this blast for the first time - please review all documentation on the WIRED website - there have been several rules updates and postings.

We are now less than two weeks away from the event. We have some news for you all! Posted at www.wirobotics.org/vex is the event schedule for December 3rd. There is a condensed version and a detailed version. The detailed version explains how certain things will be handled. We will be running around 60 matches during the competition, so please be sure to be on time while at the event.

Please be sure to register by November 28th if you have not already! We cannot accept registrations after that date, which includes the day of the competition. At the end of this list is the current list of registered teams. These are the official numbers that will be used at the competition. Please plan accordingly when making your robot ID tags and color indicators - these will not be supplied by the event staff!.

The Milwaukee VEX League came to a close last week. We thank the 11 teams that participated in one form or another for an excellent inaugral season. We are open to suggestions and would love to get as much feedback as possible so we can improve for next year.

As a reminder for the tournament on the 3rd, please bring safety glasses for all team members that will be in the pit and on the field. The event staff will not be supplying any. Also, leave your frequency crystals at home! The competition fields will supply the necessary crystals for competition, and robot operation in the pit is only allowed by tethers!

Food at the event will be available from the MSOE Concession Stand and Juice Bar. Please support MSOE as they have generously donated use of the facility for this event.

Parking for the event may be tricky, but MSOE has also granted blanket permission throughout the entire campus. You may park in any MSOE parking lot without need for a permit. A map of available parking is available at http://www.msoe.edu/pub_safety/pdf/visitor_parking_map.pdf. Some street parking may also be available along Knapp, Broadway, Milwaukee, and Juneau. Directions to the Kern Center can be found at http://www.msoe.edu/kerncenter/. An alternative to the directions on the website would be to take the McKinley Street exit (available when coming from North or South on 43). If you take McKinley east, it turns into Knapp after crossing the river and runs on the north side of the Kern Center. If you have any questions about the location or parking, please email me.

Registered Teams:

00 Rufus King Rufus Kings of the Rings

01 Rufus King R.K.K.A.

10 Spring Valley HS Orbis Rector Black

36 Marquette Hilltoppers 5

46 Thomas More Ms. Roboto

47 Thomas More Jolly Rogers

48 Thomas More Average Joe

49 Thomas More The A Team

59 Bradley Tech No Clue

60 ?? ??

61 Spring Valley HS Orbis Rector Blue

63 Bradley Tech Purple Cobras

64 Bradley Tech M.O.E. Bot

82 Marquette Hilltoppers 1

84 Messmer HS Bishops Robotics

87 Marquette Hilltoppers 2

88 Marquette Hilltoppers 3

89 Marquette Hilltoppers 4

90 Janesville Nanobots

93 Oconomowoc OHS 1

94 Oconomowoc OHS 2

95 Oconomowoc OHS 3

96 Oconomowoc OHS 4

99 LaCrosse Homeschool BOB

Thanks, we’ll see you on the 3rd! Be on the lookout for the practice schedule to be posted online shortly after the 28th.

Kevin Kolodziej
MVL Co-chairman

14

Great job to everyone who was apart of putting together this fantastic event. It was a ton of fun and, hopefully, we’ll be back next year.

15

WOW What an event!

Congrats to all the teams that participated, especially the middle school and elementary teams that competed with the best of them! This just goes to show that VEX does not have to be limited to high school particpants.

I will get some pictures posted later today, and we’ll get all of the results updated on wirobotics.org/vex shortly. I need a little more sleep after call though :ahh:

Kev

16

This was a very exciting event. I just wanted to add on to Kevin’s note that there was a middle school team who was part of the winning alliance. A huge congrats to them!

It was great to see the excitement in the kids faces after many of them had experienced a robotics event for the very first time.

Side note: Congrats to Kevin Kolodziej on receiving the Inspirational award. Kevin poured his heart and soul into making this competition happen and it is nice to see his hard work recognized.

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