Minneapolis, MN – Story County’s 4-H FIRST Robotic Competition (FRC) Team Neutrino attended the North Star FIRST Robotics Competition Regional at Mariucci Arena this past weekend. The team of high schoolers designed and fabricated a robot to complete the challenge of retrieving and shooting Frisbees into goals almost 8 feet in the air and climbing a 7 ½ foot pyramid during the regional competition.
Team Neutrino finished with a 13-2-0 record. They won the Innovation in Control award for their work with programming a 7 disk autonomous mode, which utilized their utility arm to pick up an additional 4 disks and shoot 7 disks during the 15 second period where programming controls the robot.
On Saturday, they finished qualifications seeded first. They selected Team 2574 Robo Huskies from Saint Anthony Village, Minnesota and Team 4239 WARPSPEED from Willmar, Minnesota. They continued undefeated up until the second finals match, when they lost by 8 points because their robot suffered a blow to their pneumatics system that took out their scoring mechanisms, making them lose the last 2 finals matches of their season.
Even though Team Neutrino suffered a tragic loss at regionals, they are still proud of all their accomplishments, awards, and new friends they have made this year. The team would like to invite you to visit them at their upcoming outreach events such as VEISHEA, which can be found at www.teamneutrino.org/events.
To learn more about Team Neutrino visit www.teamneutrino.org or contact our coach Tony Milosch by email tony@teamneutrino.org. For additional Story County 4-H program information visit www.extension.iastate.edu/story or contact Mary Wilkins, County 4-H Youth Coordinator, by phone 515-382-6551 or email mwilkins@iastate.edu.
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach programs are available to all without regard to race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran.

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Kansas City, Missouri – Story County’s 4-H FIRST Robotic Competition (FRC) Team Neutrino attended the Greater Kansas City FIRST Robotics Competition Regional at Hale Arena this past weekend. The team of high schoolers designed and fabricated a robot to complete the challenge of retrieving and shooting Frisbees into goals almost 8 feet in the air and climbing a 7 ½ foot pyramid during the regional competition.
Team Neutrino finished with a record of 11-4-0. They won the Excellence in Engineering Award for the design, elegance, and accuracy of their drive train, shooter, and pickup arm.
On Saturday, they were selected by the second seeded Team 1939 the Kuh-nig-its, from Kansas City, Missouri, to be their second alliance partner in the elimination rounds along with Team 1987 Broncobots, from Lees Summit Missouri, They easily won their two quarterfinal matches scoring a total of 223 points. In semifinals, they continued their push for a chance to compete at the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, when they recorded their second highest match score of 133 points. This win built the confidence that carried the team to the finals. Unfortunately their run ended early after their first finals match, when they were forced to drop out due to a failed speed controller in their drive train system. The Kuh-nig-its substituted their selected backup robot in Team Neutrino’s place during the second finals match where they could not hold back the first seeded alliance. Along with the Kuh-nig-its, Team Neutrino claimed the second finalist award.
Team Neutrino is already looking ahead to their next regional in Minneapolis. The team is planning to work hard over their spring break to fabricate a completely new climbing system named ‘Kraken 2.0’. You can virtually join them at their second regional happening in Minneapolis, March 29th and 30th, by visiting www.teamneutrino.org/live to watch the live webcast.
For more details on the North Star Minneapolis regional along with a link to a live video feed, please visit www.teamneutrino.org/ns. To learn more about Team Neutrino visit www.teamneutrino.org, or for additional Story County 4-H program information, contact Mary Wilkins, County 4-H Youth Coordinator, by phone 515-382-6551, email mwilkins@iastate.edu, or visit www.extension.iastate.edu/story.
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach programs are available to all without regard to race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran.

Saturday – Day 3

So today we exceeded all of our expectations. We were ranked eighth up until the last match when a team in 14th place jumped up and pushed us back to ninth place. At the alliance selection before lunch, we moved up to become the eighth seeded alliance captain after SWAT was picked by the first ranked team. But when it came to the second seeded alliance selection, The Kuh-nig-its selected us as their first team on their alliance. We were honored to be selected to be on their alliance. We did very good as can be seen on TBA. We made it through elims, quarter, and semi-finals very well. But after the first final match, we noticed we had an issue with one of the victors that was driving one of our drive train wheels when the first finals match ended and we went to grab our robot. That should have pointed out that our victors was bad. We concluded that some metal got in it, and it burnt out when it was open. But our drive team did a great job driving our robot with that issue. We were proud to finish in second place and wish Kuh-nig-its well in St. Louis.

Friday – Day 2

Today was the start of the qualifier matches. We did pretty well, ending up being ranked 15th overall out of 53 teams, not too bad for Day 1. Our 7-disk 42 point auton is meant by only 1 other team, whom is currently in first. We had a match where we lost by 3 points.
At the awards ceremony today, we were greatly surprised and deeply humbled when we were announced as the winner of the Delphi Excellence in Engineering award. The judges noticed our disk pickup, accurate shooter, and drive train. We would like to thank the judges for selecting us to receive this honorable award, along with our fantastic mentors who helped us to design our award winning subsystems.
Once we got back to our mentor’s house, we focused on reviewing scouting results for 4 hours. We finalized our selections/strategy for tomorrow. Our coder also finished a 5 disk auton that works in conjunction with other autons for tomorrow.
We are hoping for a successful day tomorrow. In the mean time, check out our release of Kraken 1.0 along with photos from today.

Thursday – Day 1

I’m going to keep this update kinda short as it’s almost 1 (on Friday). Yesterday we ran practice matches on the robot while perfecting odds and ends to make our robot better and adding some nice led lighting on top as well. Here is the set of photos we shot of robots for our scouting. As promised for other teams, you can find OUR photos here and here.
Check out our LIVE Events Coverage page for match schedules and results and the live stream!

Wednesday – Day 0

We made it to Kansas City! We would first like to thank several people who helped us attend the KC regional. Our transportation sponsor, CIT Signature Transportation, who drove us to Kansas City and are transporting us around Kansas City and back home. We would also like to thank our mentor Corey and his family for accommodating us while we are in Kansas City. Major thanks also goes out to Team 1710 for housing our mentors.
We would also like to thank YOU, our friends, family, parents, sponsors, and fans for keeping up with the team and following us either physically or virtually! Without you, we wouldn’t be a team.
Tomorrow, Day 1, is practice day and fixing up our competition robot. We will also be starting to scout other teams. I will be attending a training to be a part of the KC Regionals Media Relations Team, so look for updates throughout the day on Twitter and Facebook. I will be posting daily updates above at the end of each day, so keep checking back.

Until tomorrow, keep those batteries charged! -David