What will you be developing during offseason?

[jtrv]

I've got a couple ideas that I'll be starting on soon, and I'm curious as to what others are doing (or if you're taking a breather - understandable..).

I'll be developing either a cubic or quadratic spline generator, and then applying something i've developed previously to that so that we can just freely drive along a spline in auton. Both west coast and mecanum drives will be hopefully supported. The drive-along-a-function code has been written, but not even tested yet. We shall see...

So, what are you up to this offseason?

[IronicDeadBird]

A better sleep cycle.
BOOM

Still just poking around at Kontrol Freeks though

[Sperkowsky]

we are building a new rr bot with our new resources. First waterjet components sent out to our sponsor yesterday :)

[Qbot2640]

New members

Building a new (second) Recycle Rush robot for the off season to be designed and built by the incoming freshies (with some help, of course). So far it looks like it will be a great group - I can't wait to see what they can come up with.

[faust1706]

Here would be a great starting point for you for your project: https://github.com/faust1706/Smooth-Swerve

I don't generate my path off of splines though, that is something you could add to it. I'd love to see an analysis of both and see which one is better (accuracy and runtime)

[cadandcookies]

For FRC: Literally restructuring the entire team. Recruiting new members, learning how to use the new Fab Lab at our school, building a t-shirt cannon.

For FTC: Learning to use Fab Lab, ridiculous amounts of outreach (except for July, that's break month).

Personally, I'll be designing a parametric belt-in-tube drive with a variety of configurations, and learning to program the RoboRIO with LabVIEW, Java, C++, and Python. Also more work on a mini series of robots/drive trains that is three months overdue and considerably over budget.

[MikLast]

Teamwise: Building new members and sponsorship's (which we seriously need to work on)

Personally, i will be trying to learn HTML and CSS over the summer, along with blender.

[dubiousSwain]

Immediately: Chairmans and some kind of vision code. Currently im leaning towards learning to use opencv and running python code on a raspberry pi.

Hopefully: Learning lisp.))))

[plnyyanks]

Hopefully: Learning lisp.))))

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lisp_cycles.png (http://xkcd.com/297/)

For me, I'm sure TBA needs a thing or two I can do

[FlamingSpork]

My team is planning on a Maize Craze off-season event, so I've started coding a Field Management System for it

It's much easier than coding one for any modern game because it won't involve any communication with the robots.

[Koko Ed]

My team is planning on a Maize Craze off-season event, so I've started coding a Field Management System for it

It's much easier than coding one for any modern game because it won't involve any communication with the robots.

It would be cool if we could bring our original robot to the event to do that but sadly FIRST has the robot and they aint givin' it back.

[GeeTwo]

My team is planning on a Maize Craze off-season event, so I've started coding a Field Management System for it

It's much easier than coding one for any modern game because it won't involve any communication with the robots.

A cornball served on a flaming spork - I wonder if you can get that at the Foundry?

[Peyton Yeung]

Our underclassmen are building a new recycle rush robot out of our practice bot for CAGE match.

[Sperkowsky]

It would be cool if we could bring our original robot to the event to do that but sadly FIRST has the robot and they aint givin' it back.
Why does first still have your robot.

[Richard Wallace]

Why does first still have your robot.
As an artifact of early FIRST history, it is on permanent display at The FIRST Place. Can someone who has visited more recently recall a few of the other robots on display there?

[DrewMatic]

We were thinking about making a robot for the new people from the 2014-15 season. We are thinking about making a robot that shoots footballs. That's just one idea though.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Why does first still have your robot.

Might have something to do with page 8, item 15 (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1702). Despite this, some photos on CD show teams with their 1992 robots. I wasn't born yet, so I don't know how this came to be. Is there anyone who can shed some light on this?

[GeeTwo]

Might have something to do with page 8, item 15 (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1702). Despite this, some photos on CD show teams with their 1992 robots. I wasn't born yet, so I don't know how this came to be. Is there anyone who can shed some light on this?

I'm guessing that some teams successfully made "arrangements .. for release of the machines for display and educational purposes", and others did not. Not necessarily through persistence or lack thereof.

I'm glad FIRST realized that the greatest inspiration would come from a robot being in possession of the team that built it. It's a shame that they didn't back-date that decision.

[AdamHeard]

Students and leaders.

[GeeTwo]

Students and leaders.

Would you please be a bit more specific?:rolleyes: (methods, not names!)

[hardcopi]

Our now graduated seniors are teaching new programmers. We lost all of them.

We are also putting together a kiwi drive robot because we have always wanted one but didn't want to play with it during build season.

[Koko Ed]

Why does first still have your robot.

I wasn't on the team back then (we only have one mentor left from our original year) but I think FIRST kept our robot because we won the original Chairman's award. Honestly I don't know why they didn't keep Gael Force's robot since it won the World Championship that year. I think FIRST should keep every world championship robot after the season is said and done. That's part of it's history and they should be preserved.

[Sperkowsky]

I wasn't on the team back then (we only have one mentor left from our original year) but I think FIRST kept our robot because we won the original Chairman's award. Honestly I don't know why they didn't keep Gael Force's robot since it won the World Championship that year. I think FIRST should keep every world championship robot after the season is said and done. That's part of it's history and they should be preserved.

I feel kinda bad for the team though. Now they cant go to offseason events with their world champion bot. Granted they probably have a practice bot but its not the same.

[tindleroot]

I feel kinda bad for the team though. Now they cant go to offseason events with their world champion bot. Granted they probably have a practice bot but its not the same.

Well, if the robot is still together they could give it to FIRST the next year - I have a feeling all of the previous world champion robots of non-defunct teams are still sitting in a shop somewhere (even the ones from 1992). I know we have all 18 of our robots in our shop.

[Gdeaver]

Our team has always used Labview. Labview has served us well. Things are changing. With the FTC switch to Android and Java, we are looking at changing FRC to Java. There is student push to do this. Some students have already had intro courses to computing that used Java. The big reason is that many students will be taking the AP computer course and that's Java. Our FTC team has begun to build a test base. When the FTC hardware and software becomes available the goal is to have a functioning chassis with a manipulator and some sensors all programmed and functioning. FRC has already begun to port our swerve Labview code to java. The FTC motor controllers have been intelligent with commands passed over I2C and the controller handling the encoders. With the change to FRC Java we are also looking to switch to CAN Talons to follow the FTC model of intelligent motion controllers. If we go to CAN Talons our current 5 volt analog absolute rotary position sensors will not work with out adapter boards. We will evaluate some of the Austria Micro Systems 3.3 volt sensors. AS5600.
Yesterday, We had the first class on Solid Works. The goal is to have the students solidworks certified by end of summer. Busy summer.

[Billfred]

As an artifact of early FIRST history, it is on permanent display at The FIRST Place. Can someone who has visited more recently recall a few of the other robots on display there?

I know WildStang's from 1997 has long been on display, though the inner tubes were replaced with Rack 'N Roll keepers circa 2007. I recall Frank mentioned on the blog that 254 sent a replica of their 2014 robot.

-------------------

As for us, we'll be doing the Columbia Mini Maker Faire this Saturday--showing off Sandstorm II, collecting info for potential new members, and piloting an outreach program for when we just can't run an FRC robot. We did a lot last offseason and it was tough to keep newbies engaged and veterans from getting burned out. We may yet prototype some items or do something crazier, but we'll see. :)

[carpedav000]

Me and a teammate are familiarizing ourselves with many FRC designs by making functional models out of our MindStorms kits. So far we have done 6 wheel tank drive and a double 4-bar lift.

[carpedav000]

As an artifact of early FIRST history, it is on permanent display at The FIRST Place. Can someone who has visited more recently recall a few of the other robots on display there?

I think I've seen pictures of 254's 2005 'bot on display. Correct me if I'm wrong

[IndySam]

Tote bot for demos and converting this years practice robot to H-drive for testing.

[mrnoble]

Last year we made a lounge chair mecanum bot, which will be rebuilt and upgraded in the fall with the new control system. We'll also be building a chain-in-tube WCD base. We plan to attend Cow Town Throwdown, and we also will have our incoming Freshmen competing in BEST Robotics around the same time.

[halowaffle47]

Our teams is completely overhauling the scouting program. No more words needed.

[MichaelBick]

Team culture

[I_AM_Clayton]

The Robolions will be attempting to build a T-shirt shooter for football and basketball games, we also will be doing a rookie only built prototype (with help) for recycle rush. We are also planning on messing around with some mecanums and a swerve prototype.

[Philip Arola]

I have several project ideas lined up:
1) Custom Controls for the Driver Station. Hopefully we didn't misplace our TI Launchpad (why did they phase out PSoC support?)
2) Code Bootcamp. Teaching the kids Git, Java, and vision code.
3) Kinect. Try and get a nice framework built for autonomous (the DS doesn't support it directly anymore as far as I can tell).
4) Consolidate ALL the data

[JohnSmooth42]

All these people making spline generators and such...I'm working on making a collection of programming resources as well as teaching the newer programmers how to use things like Git and what control loops are. On the topic of control loops, I’m trying to find a solution to how hard it is to tune control loops for someone who doesn't really know much about them. (read as the simplest control loop possible while maintaining the same functionality as PID)

[GeeTwo]

This was the topic of last night's meeting. About half the team worked on planning business-side developments, half technical. I led the technical discussion. Our projects will be to

update our air cannon with better wheels, a new control system, "aiming", and a confetti cannon or calliope
complete our "Infinite Possibilities" pit display
Design and build a robot (or two) to play a game I'm writing

Skills we'll be developing along the way are:

better strategizing the rules
more intentional design process
using CAD in the design
using Talon SRXs
using the 2015 pneumatic system
PID controls
active intakes (almost certainly)
vision processing and targeting
experimenting with different construction techniques
making better checklists

[Cel Skeggs]

Our software team will be working on upgrading the CCRE (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130813) further!

We have plans that involve version 3.0.0 sometime this summer, which will involve a lot of redoing our APIs to reflect the lessons that we've learned over the past two years.

Also, major things like a control rebinding subsystem for the Joysticks, a continuous-integration setup (probably on Travis), more unit tests for the core framework, binary releases in addition to source releases, and Eclipse plugins for easy installation and updating. Not sure whether we'll get that all done, but hopefully a significant chunk of it!

[floogulinc]

I'm very interested in ToastAPI (https://github.com/Open-RIO/ToastAPI) and will be experimenting with it.

I am also working on starting a new FRC documentation project, to improve and write new documentation for FRC programming (and more).

[Abhishek R]

We've been working on modifying our 2015 robot for consistency among other things before we head into the offseason.

We've also got a project to monitor the health of our batteries, and possibly view the data online if we need to.

[teslalab2]

Finalizing ArduRIO,implement safety protocols, finish can jaguar library. Maybe implement can talon if I can get my hands on one.

[CoachC]

Ways to raise money for our program. Our state grants are expiring and despite numerous hours put into sponsorship and grant proposals to corporations that support other teams or STEM education in general, we have garnered only rejection letters. Efforts to raise money locally are difficult at best as we have a population of 2,361 (2013) and an estimated per capita income in $17,964 (2012).

Our "build tools" are nothing more than a few hand tools and a sawzall. We still use the original 2go pc from our rookie year (2014) and I've learned it doesn't perform well with a bot mounted camera for real time imaging. Procuring better tools and a more powerful laptop is high on our priority list.

I am not an educator. I work a full time job (while raising two kids of my own), I am the only adult in the program and Recycle Rush was my rookie season. I'd like to expand my teams knowledge to include use of sensors (distance and vision) and develop a solid autonomous programming base. Can anyone recommend a fun and inexpensive project list we can retrofit our bot with to build proficiency with sensors?

My personal offseason objective is to build a better knowledge base in engineering and programming. We use Labview. Can anyone recommend resources to further that objective? A crash course for a rookie coach/mentor?

Thanks for your help

[GeeTwo]

I'd like to expand my teams knowledge to include use of sensors (distance and vision) and develop a solid autonomous programming base. Can anyone recommend a fun and inexpensive project list we can retrofit our bot with to build proficiency with sensors?

Our intramural game (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137409)for this summer is also specifically designed to build proficiency with sensors and autonomous coding. We're planning to make two robots, but you could reduce it to a "half court" design and let two teams take turns playing their software on the same robot. You will probably have to make some adjustments to your field for available materials, as I used US stock materials.

[CoachC]

Thanks Gus. OUr field will be limited to the basketball court but I like the idea of 2 teams with competing codes!

[Arhowk]

I was planning on submitting a Siemens research document about an idea I had called Universal Scripting Syntax (or uss for short), based upon a trileveling system with intraexchangeable grammar off of a ANTLR4 core, but the lack of motivation I've had recently is a killer.

(Using the first person here since our team has had two programmers in the past six years ::ouch:: )

If I end up messing with something past work than I'll do a miniature version of said system specifically for auton

[TheBoulderite]

We've been working on modifying our 2015 robot for consistency among other things before we head into the offseason.

And you guys have done an incredible job of it. Congrats on the win at TRI and we'll see you at IRI!