On Saturday, October 14th our team traveled to Midland to compete in the Great Lakes Bay Region Bot Bash held at H.H. Dow High School.  30  other FRC teams from all over Michigan came together to compete for the title of "Top Bot". 
After 6 qualification matches our team landed in the 1st seed alliance along with captains, Team 2619 The Charge and Team 9832 Livonia Warriors 2.  
Our alliance charged through the elimination rounds and came to the finals against the 2nd seed alliance, winning both matches with the final one also resulting in the high score of the competition.
This was an amazing competition, a fun event to be a part of and and incredible win for our team.  For our male members this was the last time they were able to play the 2017 FIRST Steamworks game, so to finish with a win after a fantastic, award-winning season was a huge plus! 

We were also honored to win the award for "Hottest Bot" which is given to the team who inspires by design or style of play. 

HUGE thanks to our alliance partners and the host teams that worked hard to put on this event.  We had a great time and will definitely look forward to next year! 

Also a shout out to the announcers, especially Nick Clarke who had a fun day with our name and creating even more nicknames for us.  Pretty sure we went from Chimichangas to Tacos to eventually just "The".  It's a long standing joke and one we think its just hilarious and have a team t-shirt to prove it! 

It happens...the blog gets behind!  We've been busy competing, still improving our robot design, training new members and refreshing veterans, doing public events and demonstrations as well as starting up youth robotics teams.  So the blog may take a bit to be updated at times! 
BUT you can see real time and past updates via our social media! 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/first1684/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/chimeras1684/
Twitter: twitter.com/Chimeras1684

It's been a lot of planning, organizing and soon to be setting up and it's almost here!  The 4th annual ROBOCON Festival! 

This is a free festival we put on every year for our community. It showcases all levels of FIRST and VEX Robotics, with a full FRC field for other teams to come out and be a part of.  We utilize each robotics field to have attendees obtain their ROBO Driver's License by driving each of the different robots on their competition fields.  For the highest level, FRC, attendees must watch a match first, get a little coaching from the participating drive teams and then drive the robots in a full competition match! This is by far the biggest attraction!

We also have a wide array of interactive and engaging STEM related activities and exhibitors for the public to enjoy. 

It'll be a week of setup and getting everything in order, but by Saturday we'll be ready! Looking forward to seeing the other 18 FRC teams who are coming out to play on the Steamworks field one more time and all the generous volunteers who offered their time to help make this event a success. 

Many thanks to the View Newsgroup staff who helped immensely this year! It's going to be an even better event due to your amazing help and efforts! 

For more info visit the ROBOCON website and Facebook page

The Lapeer Area View - ROBOCON returns July 22nd at the Center for Innovation 

Some photos from the 2016 ROBOCON Festival

Our team competed in The Big Bang Competition at the Taylor Sportsplex on July 7-8th.  The off season event was hosted by Team 280 TnT and had 23 FRC teams competing. 

Since competing at the World Championship, we've made a few changes to our robot, so it was nice to see how things would work and if we needed to make more alterations. We also had to have a new pilot for this competition as our season pilot was a senior, but also unable to attend each day. He did a great job!

We held 1st place through the end of qualifications which gave us the 1st seed alliance captain position.  There were only 23 teams so each one got to compete in the finals on an alliance. One alliance was able to pick no third robot since there was not a 24th team and get point allowances for going in with only two. We were hoping for this, to try something different, but the 3rd alliance chose it before the opportunity could get back to us! We still had a great alliance that fought hard in the elimination matches! 
We chose Team 862 Lightning Robotics (part of the winning alliance at St. Louis World Champs) and our 3rd robot was Team 280B TnT Divas, three girls who built their robot in two weeks and this was their first time competing! So awesome! 
Ending the competition as Event Finalists and taking home a really neat looking trophy was a great way to end a "blast" of a competition!! 

Thanks to Team 280 TnT for hosting a great event and to Teams 862 and 280B for joining our alliance and taking it all the way to the end with us! 

We were invited to participate in our local library's STEM week. Our team took our FRC robot as well as our smaller robots from our VEX teams to show attendees.  We gave a presentation about what we do and then showed the kids how to drive each of the robots. 
It was a great way to get kids excited about robotics and what they could learn on a team.  Many were interested in our youth teams and we even had one sign up for our FRC team to learn more about programming! 
Many thanks to Janelle Martin at the Lapeer District Library for inviting us! Even she took a turn driving the robots! :) 

The County Press - Marguerite deAngeli Library to host Chimeras robotics team on Tuesday

A few important things about being a part of a FIRST robotics team is maintaining the core values of FIRST and spreading the word about robotics and STEM through community outreach, demonstrations and volunteering. We had a busy few days doing just that!  These are fun, rewarding and learning events for our team. 

Lani Ward's 6th grade PTLW class visited our room and were given insight about what we do as a robotics team as well as turns driving robots.  Strike Zone, Team 5460 joined us to help give the students a fun and educational demonstration. 

Later that afternoon, we went to Lynch Elementary to help with their annual Kid's Carnival! A fun time was had by all...kids attending and team members volunteering. 

The next morning, a few team members took our robot Artemis and volunteered at the LEADERFund's Golf Outing. They were gracious enough to give us funds to help expand our VEX Robotics program this year, so we were more than happy to help with their fundraiser. 

Season wrap-up, highlights and what we are going to be up to in the off season. 

Read the full article which was published in The County Press here: Lapeer Robotics team powers off after a successful year

Last week we traveled to St. Louis Missouri to compete with 406 other teams from around the World. We were placed in the Carson Division along with 67 other teams. There were 6 Divisions total and the winners of each went on to compete for the title.

After 2 days of qualification matches, we ended ranked 38th in our highly competitive field with a 5 win, 5 loss record. 
We had some great matches and some that were quite tough, including one in which our pilot (human player) was the only one in the airship, where normally there are two. 
View our matches HERE

Our team pushed on, kept the robot in peak performance and played hard. We didn't move on into the playoffs, but were right there to cheer on the other teams that did!

We were honored to with the award for Gracious Professionalism in the Carson & Tesla Divisions. This award "celebrates outstanding demonstration of FIRST Core Values such as continuous Gracious Professionalism® working together both on and off the playing field."

Overall, it was amazing to be able to compete side by side with some outstanding teams, have the experience once again on that level and strengthen the bonds within our team.
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We've had an incredible award winning season that has been at times grueling, intense, challenging, rewarding and downright exciting! Being a part of this experience is definitely more than robots!! It's life changing.

Photos below credit to Daniel Ernst. 

Our team after an amazing award winning competition! 
Standing:  Tony, Rob, Steve, Dave, Will, Alicia, Marshall, Bernadette, Matt, Grace, Trista, Scott, Sam
Front Row: Hunter, EliAna, Gavin, Jacob, Dawson, Sydney, Jon

Our team won the prestigious Engineering Inspiration Award as well as the award for being an Event Finalist. 

THE LOWDOWN:

After competing in 12 qualification matches, our team was ranked 1st out of 40 teams, making us the first seed alliance captain. For our alliance partners we chose Team 217 ThunderChickens and Team 1701 RoboCubs.  It was an intense battle through the playoffs and in the very end we  lost the tiebreaker to the 3rd seed alliance in the final matches.
Finishing second awarded us as Event Finalists!! 

View our matches HERE. 

We played consistently, worked well together to keep our robot at peak performance and held the highest match score in both the qualification and playoff matches. Due to our overall results from both District Events we are ranked 42nd in the state out of 451 teams and qualified to compete at the Michigan State Championship at Saginaw Valley State University along with 139 other teams! 

We were honored to win the prestigious Engineering Inspiration Award. This celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community.
This was the first time our team has won this award and it truly shows how far we have come as a team and reflects who we are and strive to be! Not just for our members, but for our community as a whole. We love what we do and enjoy sharing that passion!

On April 12th we head out to SVSU to compete again and hope to qualify for the World Championship in St. Louis, MO.

Article in The County Press - Imlay City, Lapeer Robotics Teams Finish Strong
 

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PICTURES FROM DAY 1: Practice matches and Chimeras on field reset duty! 

PICTURES FROM DAY 2: Full day of qualification matches! 

PICTURES FROM DAY 3: Morning finishing qualification matches then playoffs!