---
title: FRC Team 1418
team:
  type: FRC
  number: 1418
  name: Vae Victis
  rookie_year: 2004
  location: Falls Church, Virginia, USA
  district: Chesapeake
  sponsors:
  - City of Falls Church Public Schools
  - Booz Allen Hamilton
  - Clark Construction Group, LLC
  - Markon Solutions
  - The Borja Family
  - Mr. Stan Fendley
  - AT &T
  - AFCEA NOVA
  - VirginiaFIRST
  - Mission Analytics, LLC
  - Falls Church Education Foundation
  - AV3, Incorporated
  - The Rondon Family
  - SAIC
  - Janice C. Nette, Quilter Extraordinaire
  - Financial Management Institute
  - Steve Miller and Anne Polivka
  - Kieran and Barbara Sharpe
  - George Mason High
  links:
    Website: http://1418.team
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/robotics1418
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robotics1418
    GitHub: https://github.com/frc1418
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/robotics1418
robot_code:
  2014:
  - Robot:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2014
    - Python
  2015:
  - Robot:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2015-robot
    - Python
    Vision:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2015-vision
    - Python
    UI:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2015-ui
    - JavaScript
    VR:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2015-oculus
    - C#
    Dashboard:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2015-ui
    - HTML
  2016:
  - Robot:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2016-robot
    - Python
    Vision:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2016-vision
    - Python
    UI:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/FRCDashboard
    - JavaScript
    Dashboard:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2016-UI
    - JavaScript
  2017:
  - Dashboard:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2017-dashboard
    - JavaScript
    Robot:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2017-robot
    - Python
    Vision:
    - https://github.com/frc1418/2017-vision
    - Python
---

{% include cleanup %}

## History

Started in 2004 at George Mason High School as a small team of roughly 10 core members, many of whom did a lot of programming. The team grew significantly in the 2006 season and slowly since then. Over the coming years the team won the 2008 Chesapeake Regional and the 2010 Virginia Regional. In 2014 they were Woodie Flowers Finalists at the Greater DC Regional. Then, in 2016, the team famously rose to the challenge of FIRST Stronghold, building their most successful robot ever and claiming sweeping first-place victories at the Greater DC District Event, Northern VA District Event, and becoming Chesapeake District Tri-State Champions. After a hard fight at the St. Louis World Championships, they made it to quarterfinals in the Newton division, one of the toughest in FRC history.

- Starting in 2005, team 1418 has brought their robot to both the 3K fun run and the memorial day parade on Memorial Day in the City of Falls Church, VA.

## Programming
Until 2014, 1418's programming team was generic and unimpressive, using LabVIEW for all robot code. However, in 2014, with the assistance of Dustin Spicuzza, the team revamped its programming to use Spicuzza's [RobotPy](https://github.com/robotpy), to which they made large contributions. Most notable of these contributions was programmer [Leon Tan](https://github.com/lleontan)'s creation of [pynetworktables2js](https://github.com/robotpy/pynetworktables2js). They also started using a PyGTK-based driving dashboard to control their robot. In 2015, that system was replaced with [the team's first web-based dashboard](https://github.com/frc1418/2015-ui).

[Erik Boesen](https://github.com/ErikBoesen), who joined the team in 2016, was unhappy with the code quality and ease of use of the 2015 and 2016 dashboards, and subsequently developed [FRC Dashboard](https://github.com/FRCDashboard/FRCDashboard), a boilerplate web dashboard system which team 1418 -- and several others -- continue to use to this day.

The team released a revamped website in 2016 at [1418.team](http://1418.team), replacing their old domain of team1418.org.

They have also released several open-source repositories through [their GitHub organization](https://github.com/frc1418), such as:
- [tba.rb](https://github.com/frc1418/tba.rb), a Ruby library to interact with The Blue Alliance's API
- [victibot](https://github.com/frc1418/victibot), a simple chatbot for the team's Discord server
- [VictiScout](https://github.com/frc1418/VictiScout), a scouting application in Node.js/Electron

## Robots
- 2016 - [2016 robot](http://1418.team/robot/2016) - Northern VA District Event, Greater DC District, and Chesapeake District champions. Made it to quarterfinals at worlds.
- 2015 - [2015 robot](http://1418.team/robot/2015)
- 2014 - [2014 robot](http://1418.team/robot/2014)
- 2008 - Stingray - Won the Chesapeake regional. Named for famed non-member Steve Earl Walsh.
- 2007 - Manus Tazeronus - Ranked eighth at Chesapeake, finished third. Won the Delphi Driving Tommorrow Design Award.
- 2006 - Elephantus (Scrapped for parts)
- 2005 - Manus Imperatorus (mechanically complete, but electronics were yanked in Feb '06, up and running again by January 2006)
- 2004 - The Grue (dismantled summer '04)
[List of all 1418 robots on the team's website](http://1418.team/robots)

## Other
- [Official Member List](http://1418.team/team)
- [Robot history](http://1418.team/robots)