What Does Your Off Season Look Like?

[messer5740]

Hello teams
Here are a couple questions to get this thread rolling. I want to understand how your offseason works so that our team can be successful in years to come when it comes to training new members and testing designs.
What I want to know is:
When does your off season start? What do you do in the off season? How do you train new members so they are ready for kickoff? How does your team test designs, but keep costs low? How much do you usually spend on off season projects?

Thanks. Any feedback is highly appreciated.

[TheBoulderite]

Our offseason starts about a month after Champs. During our offseason, we train our new members by giving them an education in Solidworks and programming. To help them get in the competition mindset, we also go to CowTown Throwdown in October.

[dirtbikerxz]

We are a extremely small team (7-11 students, with only 3-4 doing most of the work). Due to this, we don't do too much off-season. We always go to one hometown off-season in September, where we hopefully bring new students who might be interested to experience a portion of a regional. We also sometimes go to an off-season in the summer, but that is mainly just to have fun.

Last year we built a t-shirt bot between September and January. It mainly helped increase everyone's cad skills. We don't get too much off-season participation from the few members (or even build season participation for that matter) because our school is a very sports oriented school, and except for the 3-4 students, the others just can't possibly imagine not doing a sport and doing robotics (mainly track, cross country, baseball, and swimming).

Because of this, us 4 "main" students just work on individual projects here and there, working with our mentor and each other, just honing any skills we might find lacking. For example, last off season I honed and sped up my cading skills by cading up our 2013 bot (our team didn't cad before 2015).

I just shared what we do in our situation. Obviously this process will be completely different for your team, depending on size, participation, and resources. Good Luck!

[Fusion_Clint]

We are a extremely small team (7-11 students, with only 3-4 doing most of the work). Due to this, we don't do too much off-season.


Come on over to Gulfport in July: hopefully learn a new skill, get some driving practice, and meet new folks. It should be a great time!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148468

[dirtbikerxz]

Come on over to Gulfport in July: hopefully learn a new skill, get some driving practice, and meet new folks. It should be a great time!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148468

We were definitely discussing this just last week. While the decision might change in the near future, right now we have decided to go to TRI. We simply don't have the resources (internal school administration issues) to go to three off seasons, and we must do Redstick Rumble. Another reason we decided TRI and not Beach Bot Battle Invitational (can I call it BBBI?) was because I (the driver) and a fellow student (the drive coach) won't be in town those days.

I really hope you guys continue this next year, and I hope we come meet you guys there next year. Thank you for the offer, and we will definitely let you guys know if some change is made in the next few days.

[Phoenix Spud]

We start meeting the week after we return from Championships. And meet 1-2 times a week. Off season activities range from outreach projects, our off-season competition, technical projects, team building, recruitment, etc. Last year our major technical project was to build an entirely new robot to play Ultimate Ascent in China.

[staplemonx]

Advocacy

MD Federal representatives June 19-22
* Part of FRC Team 27 National Advocacy Conference
Mo Co county – July 18th
* County Board
* County Executive
* County School Board
* County Dept. of Health & Human Services
* County Dept. of Economic Development
Mo Co State representative – August 8th
MD Dept. of education – August 15th
MD Governor – August 15th



Off seasons


Battle O’Baltimore – Sept ?? 2016, Baltimore, MD.
Girl power – Oct ?? 2016, Flourtown, PA.
Rumble in the roads – Nov 5 2016, Newport News, VA


Out reach

Saturday June 4, 2016 DC STEM FAIR 2016
Friday June 10, 2016 Astronomy Festival on the National Mall
Wednesday June 15, 2016 Science on the Run: Engineering the National Mall
Wednesday June 22, 2016 STEM Council Meeting - Session 13
Saturday July 16, 2016 Meet a Nobel Laureate: Einstein Memorial Pop-up
Tuesday October 4, 2016 2016 Million Women Mentors Summit & Gala
Wednesday November 9, 2016 STEM Higher Education Council National Leaders summit


Robot

Build SWERVE drive
Repair Maelstrom turret
Add vision to Maelstrom
Add climber to Maelstrom

[messer5740]

Do you use swerve drive COTs or do you design your own?

[SenorZ]

We're lucky to live in an area with a large number of FRC teams, some of them amazing teams.

Right now we're planning on summer projects:

working on vision programming
making a simple swerve module
making a turret shooter?
improve our totebot


Plan for the fall:

Develop new totebot race https://youtu.be/ma-68cYoQ-o
Coordinate with other teams on Fall Workshops and off-season events (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=148514)
Fall training sessions for team


And then there is sponsors sponsors sponsors!

[messer5740]

We're lucky to live in an area with a large number of FRC teams, some of them amazing teams.

Right now we're planning on summer projects:

working on vision programming
making a simple swerve module
making a turret shooter?
improve our totebot


Plan for the fall:

Develop new totebot race https://youtu.be/ma-68cYoQ-o
Coordinate with other teams on Fall Workshops and off-season events (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=148514)
Fall training sessions for team


And then there is sponsors sponsors sponsors!

Is the totebot the thing that andymark sells?

[SenorZ]

Is the totebot the thing that andymark sells?

No. They sell a PG/mecanum thing. This is FRC legal parts built into a small robot, and crammed into a tote.

We did CIM to 2:1 bevel boxes driving rear wheels. Caused some brown-outs!
3309 did a tank drive using their custom gearbox, I think.

We were going for SPEED!

[GeeTwo]

The last couple of years we tried to do our own game (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137409) and develop a pair of robots to play it. We had an average of about four students on each team, which wasn't really enough to create the experience we wanted, so this summer we have a similar number of sessions dedicated to beefing up our Stronghold robot to play in Red Stick Rumble.

We also have a bunch of demos and service projects planned.

[staplemonx]

Do you use swerve drive COTs or do you design your own?

We are going to make our own.

[MailmanDelivers]

We go to off-season events, run fundraising events, information nights, and continue practicing and designing to help improve our engineering skills.
Right now we are mainly focused on our upcoming Information Night that tells rising freshmen or people interested in the team what we do, and we also run activities such as lego towers, 3D Printing and other fun activities.

[John Weissman]

Our offseason is busy, we just did a mini match at the King of Prussia mall playing 25+ matches thanks to Team 708. We are at Midknight Mayhem, IRI, Duel on the Delaware , and Ramp Riot for offseason. We are now training new drivers and operators. We are also thinking of the 26 hours at West Virginia. Busy offseason!

[Toatekua]

Sleep and rest.

This year we are working on planning a summer program just to use and practice our skills, though I haven't heard anything on that in a while.