This is the page for FIRST Robotics Competition Team 2194, Fondy Fire from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. But the story isn't over, for a team also needs members!
Fondy Fire Robotics Team 2194 was the brainchild of the McEathron family. Looking to promote the interest that her children had in science and technology-related topic, Lori McEathron attended the 2006 FIRST Midwest Regional and were immediately caught up in the excitement that is embedded in these events. Their son Carter was soon actively engaged in all that is FIRST! After much exploration the
07/26/2026
Fondy Fire student Abigail Fenrick was awarded one of two R2OC scholarships at the event on Saturday. The scholarships were awarded to two high school students who will be graduating in either 2026 or 2027.
Congratulations Abigail!
We finished our 5 - R2OC qualifying matches in third place with a 4-1-0 record.
We chose team 5934 Crowbotics and team 5125 Hawks on the Horizon to form our alliance.
We were finally eliminated in playoff match 13 - one before the final.
07/25/2026
We are competing at the R2OC in Rockford Illinois on Saturday. On Friday evening, the organizers held a Team Social at Volcano Falls Adventure Park, 7602 Rock Valley Parkway, Loves Park, IL. Team members and mentors were given wristbands for mini-putt, go-carts, and more. Pizza and pop were provided.
We had a very enjoyable time bonding with each other and with other teams.
We are competing at the R2OC event this Saturday. It is at
Rock Valley College PE Center
3301 N. Mulford Rd.
Rockford, IL 61114
Schedule is
7:15 am Doors open to teams and general public .
Drop off Donations.
8:30 am Opening Ceremonies , Guest Speakers,
Presentation of” Make it Loud”(tentatively)
8:45 am Qualifying matches (8 minutes per match)
Noon Alliance Selection
Lunch & Scholarship Announcements
1:00 -5:15pm Elimination Matches
5:30 pm Awards
Live stream video at https://www.twitch.tv/funroboticsnetwork
07/01/2026
A new controller and software libraries will be used in FRC competition next year and FTC competition in the years following. It is called Systemcore and is based on the popular Raspberry Pi architecture. We saw one for the first time at the Synthwave competition. It is a test unit being used by the Lakeshore Robotics teams.
Because of the uncertainty about delivery, we used Claude AI to adapt the current Systemcore code to run on a Raspberry Pi 5. It has been a big step forward in our understanding and we had a lot of interest when we demonstrated it at the competition last weekend.
Students and mentors received the Synthwave trophy on Saturday.
06/29/2026
The lighting at Saturday’s competition created some interesting effects. Fortunately we were able to tune our robot camera to see the alignment markers on the target and continue to perform well.
06/28/2026
After winning all 7 of our qualifying matches, we chose FIRST Team 1732 - Hilltopper Robotics and FRC Team 9578 : Player One for our alliance.
The alliance then proceeded on to win the inaugural Synthwave competition.
Thanks to Lakeshore First Robotics for putting on a unique and very well organized and run competition.
06/25/2026
We combined practice for our next competition on Saturday with some outreach, demonstrating the robot to students attending local summer camps.
The competition on Saturday is called SynthWave Showdown 2026 and will be held in Manitowoc at the Lakeshore Robotics Education Center. It will be unique in its lighting, with only black light being provided. Going to be interesting.
06/11/2026
Students and mentors pictured after a very successful season. Many thanks to John Deere, the Gene Haas Foundation and all our sponsors for their indispensable contributions.