What to do after this season ends?
 

Hi,

We're rookie team 3992 and our season just came to an end after the South Florida Regional (aka, we didn't qualify for St.Louis, and we aren't participating in any more regionals).

I know there is a lot of work to be done before next years build season, but can anyone put me on a track or path of how to get started right now?

I feel like after this regional everything feels a bit empty; I'm finding myself rewatching videos and looking at pictures to fill the void, so I'm eager to start working towards next year.

Thanks,
Kirill.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Offseason competitions. Especially tune in to IRI. (IRI: Indiana Robotics Invitational, AKA The REAL Championship. Biggest and best field of any offseason.) I believe Tempest 'N Tampa is in your area.

Build a promo-bot.

Do demos with your competition robot.

Find more sponsors of all types.

Recruit.

But before you do any of that, sit down and evaluate the season. What went well? What went wrong? Good ideas, bad ideas--and be honest with yourself. How can you improve for next year?

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

You guys should definitely try to take your robot to an off-season event. I am not sure what there is in your area but I am sure there is something. They are fun and relatively inexpensive. Between 100 and 500 dollars. You can test out your drive team for next year and try and optimize your robot in any way that you would have if you were attending the championship.

I also recommend making some plans for an off-season project. Making a mechanism like a lift or an arm or a really solid drive train in the off-season and understanding all the little details of the mechanism can put you in great shape for 2013.

Best of luck in the off-season to you, robotics never really has an off-season if you organize it that way.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I've seen these signs before. Your first year, and during the "relax" time, you feel strange. You find it odd when you have free time, sleeping in sounds weird to you, as does going to bed before midnight. You will continue to have memories and talk about the competition months after it's gone....

Your diagnosis: You're hooked on FIRST.

Great to hear, because as your first "offseason" starts, your work has barely begun! It's now time to do many things, especially as a rookie, and the number one thing you need to do is work on your team organization. Get the team leaders and mentors together, and talk about what was good, what was bad, and what needed to change based on how you did things in the build season and the competition. Write it all down. Think of how you can be more efficient, how much time to allot to things you never thought of alloting time to.

SEARCH FOR SPONSORS. You just completed your rookie season. You know what FIRST is, and that FIRST works. You've seen the metamorphosis amongst the students on the team, and how they are affected by being on the team. SHOW THAT TO YOUR POTENTIAL SPONSORS. I cannot stress that enough. You've developed a strong mechanical base, now you need to build on the business side of the team. Money is huge in FIRST. Though it doesn't mean everything, it is always useful to have.

Prepare for offseason events! Look around your local area for offseason events your team can attend in the fall. Not only is it a great way to start the team again for the new school year, but it also lets the new students get a little taste as to what the competition is about. It helps get them excited. It's also a great way to train your drivers/see who is the best at driving. If you are financially able to, attend more than one offseason. They help tremendously.

Talk to local successful teams! Ask what they did to be successful, and build around what they do to work for your team. It's rare to find a 100% original idea in engineering. Much of engineering is taken and reused over and over. We don't reinvent the wheel each year, but we improve on it. See what works, then change it.

Go team member recruiting! You have a robot in hand, and that's the coolest thing most high schoolers are going to see! Show it off, talk about the exciting competition! There's even an award for teams who Inspire the most Engineering in the world. (can you guess what it is?)

And most of all: Have fun! Go outside, see your families! Remind your neighbors you still live next to them. Go swimming, take a hike, see your house in the daylight. The season is over, and even people like me need to take a break from FIRST. Don't worry, you'll know when you need to come back. ;)

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

A few things you could do...

1. Go to some off-season competitions. In Florida, Tempest 'n' Tampa has taken place the past few years in the fall. There are also off-seasons in Georgia (GRITS), South Carolina (SCRIW), and many others depending on how far you can/will travel. Keep an eye on the Off-Season Events subforum for announcements and updates about these events.
2. Get out in your community! As a rookie, you might not be so well-known by the local people. If your town/surrounding area has any sort of fair/festival/carnival/whatever, see if there is any way you can get involved. In the past, my team has done robot demonstrations at our town's Heritage Day and marched in the Memorial Day Parade. It's great publicity for the team. This year's robot is especially exciting for these events because crowds love to see balls flying everywhere.
3. Fundraise! While you're not busy with the stress of build season, this is a great time to organize and hold fundraisers for the upcoming season.
4. Prototyping. Lots of teams use this time to play around with design ideas. You can spend the off-season working on a new drive train, coming up with cool ideas to implement on future robots, working with new sensors, etc. without having to worry about any sort of deadlines. Just be sure you read up on the rules about using anything you design/build in next year's robot. Typically, you can design/prototype anything you want, so long as it is not the final product that you use on the actual robot.
5. Relax! Take a few weeks off, regroup, pull up those grades that were likely slipping during build/competition season. Our team usually likes to have a barbecue at the end of the season at our mentor's or a member's house. A completely robotics-free day of volleyball, hamburgers, and relaxation.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

We recommend exactly what Eric said. We also use this time to work on our robot carts.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/6672194...n/photostream/

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

One of the things that I love to do right after the regionals, but while im still resting and dont want to start an entirely new project, is to go back and document what the team has done over the course of the 6 weeks and competitions. Doing a build season log is hard for some teams to finish during build season, but you can always go back and fill in the gaps to create a nice document describing your robot. As you mentioned, you're looking at pictures, and this is something i find myself dong all the time. It would be awesome if you wanted to make a team scrapbook to help save all those memories. Also, many teams like to make highlight reels of their robot to show parents and sponsors.

I'm trying to stick to nontechnical things that you can do by yourself, because I've noticed that oftentimes, people need a short break right after the competition is over to catch up on schoolwork and sleep. Even if you may be excited to keep working, your mentors and teammates may want a short rest.

Perhaps later in the year, you can begin to work on improving you rebound rumble robot. Regardless of if you're competing in an offseason event in the fall, rebuilding aspects of the robot provides a good opportunity for reflection about your design. Furthermore, you can incorporate what you've learned from other teams. Once you've built a feature once, or at least thought about it, you can easily recycle a design and do something similar in future years. Working on an existing robot also can help you save some money since you already have a testbed for whatever features you may want to add or refine.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Well this has been on the to do list for 3309 far too long. We should have done this a long time ago: build a reliable 2-speed tank drive.

We have done mecanums two years in a row. They are fun to drive but we have grown weary of their traction and pushing force compromises. We would have done tank this year if we were not stretch so thin in terms of CAD resources. We cut a corner and did a drivetrain we did last year so we could devote more resources to our shooter.

What we should have done was work on a really good tank drive in fall. There are so many ways one can go about this.

It could be team 1114 kitbot on steroids: http://www.simbotics.org/files/pdf/1...structions.pdf

Or: upgrade it to have a two speed gearbox.

or: we have been looking at team 33's and 973's CAD models of west coast drive.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2515
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2567

What I hope achieve is that is allows my students to have practice at CAD, expands our knowledge bade, gives us a platform to test with and finally gives us a proven design solution that we could us for next years game.

Our hope is that our final product will allow us to test gyro code for steering, autonomous dead reckoning and various PID controls.

I hope this gives you some ideas for the summer.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I would form a list of things that you did not include in your robot this year because you are a rookie team (pneumatics, vision targeting, autonomous, encoders, different drive systems (mecanum wheels seem to be on sale after the build season), and learn to use them for next year.

That's what we are planning on doing after St. Louis

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

If you choose to go to an off-season competition (which you should), you should definitely go over a design review. I believe a quick search on CD Media will lead you a presentation template Cyber Blue 234 uses for their design review. You can always take the option of applying lessons learned over the season into improvements for this year's robot if you go to an offseason competition, or just take concepts you learned and apply them for prepartaion for 2013.

Seriously though, go to offseason events. We always go to one, and we want to make it back to Duel on the Delaware, go to Beantown Blitz, and check out IRI in addition to R3. We wre spoiled in the northeast with offseason events but it's a great thing to do. It's a relaxed atmosphere and a chance to talk to other teams without any stress involved. Definitely a different pace for the drive team and leadership.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I always like a nice long discussion with my team about what worked, what didn't work, what we want to work on, and cool robot mechanisms/designs/strategies that we saw. It's a nice decompression and sparks interest in the upcoming season.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Well, I guess I can start by beating a dead horse; find an off-season event(s) in your area, and plan on going. These are great for new and old students alike. Not much more to say on this, everyone else had this pretty well covered.

Another thing you should do is immediately is a season and regional "Critique". Go over everything that went right and wrong. Strengthen your Pros, and fix your Deltas. Did a certain part of your design always break down? Did you lack tool organization? Is there a tool, material, or machine that you found yourself constantly needing but never had access to? Did your drivers not have enough information on the other teams going into matches? These are just a few things to start looking at.

The next step, I would say, would be to clean up, take inventory, and restock. Get your workspace spick and span, with everything properly stored and organized. Take a look at all the materials you have left; bolts, electrical connectors, spare electronics, and so on. Is there something that needs to be restocked? (For us, it's long 1/4-20 Bolts). Also, take a look back at any electrical connector, any fastener or adhesive, ect. that you needed during season, but didn't have. (For us, it would be 45 amp APP crimps)

Then, I would get on starting fundraising, public outreach, and recruitment. Demonstrate your bot at your highschool(s). Go demonstrate it to the incoming 8th graders at your local middle school. Work your way into events, rallies, parades, ect. in an effort to get the word out about your team. And then start hunting for money. Apply for grants, hosts fundraisers like an E-Waste or "robotics night" at a restaurant where you could get a percent of the profits.

The last step for an off-season is projects and preparation to help make your next build season the best it can be. Here are a few ideas:

• Prototype Drive Base
  This can be costly, but if there is ever a time to move to a new drive system, it's your off-season. Decide on a budget, drive and frame type, ect, and have all team members help design it. Personally, I would have "teams" of students make something in CAD or on paper, and then combine all of the teams Ideas together on one final design, and would build that. Be weary of the complication on the design; don't go beyond what your team can manage building during season
• Improve the previous year's robot
  Go back and improve what you can. Fix faulty design areas, automate things by adding sensors, tamper with hybrid mode, try out a new drive gearbox, and so on.
• Battery "Cart"
  Build some sort of "System" for keeping batteries charged, organized, and cared for. When I was on 973, we had more of a shelve than a cart; two people would carry it by the handles on it's side, and it kept the batteries well organized and kept the cable mess in check. Some people like to build theirs onto a literal cart to easily transport their batteries, too.
• Pit Items
  Build or obtain things improve pit organization and safety. This can range from shelves to tables to carts

Just my $0.02 on the matter. There are a great deal of things that can be done; it all boils down to two things though, and that's to improve and prepare.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Offseason events and fundraisers are always good options. Robot exhibitions are also fun.

Team 23 began participating in FIRST in 1995, and took a 12 year hiatus from FIRST to focus on BattleBots. Now returning to FIRST, Plymouth North and Plymouth South High Schools plan on competing in offseason competitions, holding robot showcases, and hosting+competing in BattleBot events.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

We typically have not done a whole lot in the off-season. Last year we built a prototype drive-train, and I designed a robot for every year past of FRC. This year we had our best season to date, and built our best robot to date.

A few thins I might do
Build a drive-train
Build a 500 series motor gearbox using the FP gears.
Work on driver software with this years robot.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I know that your team is young and may not have the resources yet, but our team is planning to start some intensive student training in the coming weeks. Basically, we've got a mentor for each category (CAD, machining, electrical, leadership/organization, strategy/design, etc.), and he/she shall take a group of our members and treat it like a class. There'll even be projects and assignments for us during these segments. Then, once we've learned all we need in that subject, we'll move onto the next. This way, we keep our members interested, and they'll come back next year with a comprehensive and flexible way of thinking. :) We're also starting a VEX team for the newer members, so that they can gain some first-hand experience in building and designing. Maybe your team could try something similar?
Over summer, we'll also be hosting seminars for other local teams around our community, as we have been approached by several of them over the past few days. Try getting in contact with other teams — see if there's something that they can help teach you, or if you can help them! Forming strong bonds with other teams is an advantageous and rewarding experience. :D

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

There are so many things to do!

Next year you will be elegible to compete for the Chairman's Award. Find out what other Chairman's Award winning teams have done... try doing a few of those things, and documenting them. Photos, video, thank you letters, media clippings... start building a scrapbook for your team. Maybe you could put it all on your....

Web Site. How's your team website looking? You can start competing for your regional website award now. It would be especially great if you had some...

CAD drawings. Did you use CAD much this year... it took us a few years to get good enough at Inventor that we could throw together designs faster and more reliably in CAD than we could using mockups, but once we got there... there was no looking back. A great way to challenge yourself would be to model a...

Demo robot. You don't actually need to take this year's FRC robot apart (in fact I had a team rule that we always had to have one robot in perfect running condition in case a visitor dropped by and needed a demo) so look out for some of the alternative controllers and build around one of them. A VEX controller (not even the VEX pro... just a plain old VEX unit... even a second-hand PIC based one) has more than enough power to run a demo robot.

Hope those ideas help...

Jason

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

As a second year team, here's some of what I'm wanting our team to do to prepare for next year (since we didn't quite make it to finals this year...)

1: Analyze what we did right and what we did wrong, so we can learn from it. For example, our robot was mostly limited by our unreliable autonomous for most of the season and our lack of a rangefinder for the targets - both caused by not having a full practice field and not giving programmers enough time to work.

2: Recruit at our school, doing as many presentations as possible - hopefully one in an all-school assembly. (Hey, they do pep rallies for sports, can't we have some time too?)

3: Do presentations at the middle schools (for sure) and elementaries if we can, and get some Jr./FLL teams started (maybe an FTC at the 9th grade center...)

4: Sponsorships. Email tons of people, show up at a few likely candidates in person and try to get an appointment, things like that.

5: After season events in the fall. There's usually one or two in the area you can find.

6: Talk to new recruits about how the process works and going over the robot, explaining what the challenges were and how we solved them.

7: Have someone practice CAD programs. We get them for free, and we've gone completely without one for two years now.


Hmm, that's it for now. I'm sure I'll think of more. Hope this helps! :)

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

We weren't able to compete for the website award as a rookie?

Our website is www.eaglesrobotics.org

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

You were, don't worry about that. One of the website awards--the Website Excellence--goes out after Championship, IIRC. If you submitted your site and got over 80%, you'll get a tag for your site.

However, what Jason was saying was that you now have a full year to build your site to be the best it can be. This means that you have a full year to start going after next year's award.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

A few years ago I started a similar thread. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=85495

Turns out that it has been hard on our team to get much interest in off-season stuff because we put so much into the season. This year we plan on making some small Vex robots to bring to a local chidren's hospital,among ither things.

Thanks for starting this thread. I will be suggesting some of these ideas.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

That empty feeling is very normal. FRC can provide some of the highest highs, immediately followed by a plummet. You have focused for so long on this and all of a sudden that maybe next step (Championship) is not an option. Everyone is physically and emotionally spent. This is especially true for the seniors.

The pits can be a very sad place on late Sat. afternoon.

It may take a couple of weeks, but it will start feeling better, and then as a team, you can figure out what the next step is. What you could be planning for the immediate future is some little celebration for the team. Not work, but fun to acknowledge what you were able to accomplish.

There is already lots of great advice here. I will also suggest that one of the adults on the team join NEMO www.firstnemo.org if they haven't already.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

One thing I want our team to do is to get better at scouting. We were seeded 11th of 55, but we were not picked in in the quarterfinals. For the whole two regionals we have been, we were the robot that was left at the end to wait for backups...

It was really sad, I was hoping for a robot to break, just to get a chance at playing the quarter finals..

We will definitely be doing a design review...

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

This ^ is exactly my plan for the off-season. We wound up using our vision targeting minimally (in favor of drivers eyeballing it, which works quite well). Going to put some encoders on the wheels, maybe put a few light sensors on the bot, use the kinect, etc.

During the off-season, you know what your goal was, and you know what you didn't get done because you didn't have time or know how. Now's your opportunity to learn, so next year is easy (I'm 100% sure that is how it works ;) )

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

We actually did use
1) pneumatics ( a lot, actually )
2) Kinect ( for our entire autonomous, every game )
3) Vision Targeting ( for our shooter, we actually built two robots )
4) Encoders

So i guess we should definitely work on drivetrains; the reason we didn't use our shooter is because it was pretty much inable to move on stop build day.

For those of you who are saying I'm hooked on FIRST, I gotta admit, I am. From the end of FTC in December to the FRC Kickoff in January, I was feeling similarly empty.. the difference was that the wait was only 20 days. Now I have to wait months!

Oh well.. I'll find something to do. But I can't sit around and do nothing. The off-season has begun officially, but I've never really started; I don't think I ever will. I think I don't have an off-season. I'll just be working on the website, making promo videos, planning, organizing, contacting.. everything I can possibly do to keep my mind off of the absence of build season and the spirit of competition.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

4-time National/World Champion mentor Bill Beatty (FRC71) defines the three most important subsystems of a robot as:

1) Drivetrain
2) Drivetrain
3) Drivetrain

Yep, I see some drivetrain work in your future.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Do you think you can link me to a thread(s) about drivetrains, different designs, etc?

I've looked far and wide, but a lot of threads seem to just say "kitbotonsteroids kitbotonsteroids kitbotonsteroids".

Kit bot on steroids is good and all, but I find it more exciting to make a completely new drive train every year. Even more often than that, really.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I want to look into Octanum drive...with pneumatic wheels..

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I would take things one step at a time, and not push beyond what resources you have and try to take everything at once (unless, of course, you have resources). I would like for my team to do a 6 wheel WCD, but I would only try if we pick up some more funding, and if we build a simple drive train/frame with some COTS parts in tangent with it; And even then, I would only attempt it because I'm a 973 alumni and can get help from Adam.

And if you do decide to embark on any sort of frame or drive-train customization, do it during your off-season, and not during season. I've learned first hand that even the simplest changes to a drive train during season can cause a huge mess.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

When making a drivetrain consider a few things:

1.) Is it good for this years game? Sure, 10" pneumatic tyres are cool, but they weren't very useful for the flat field last year.

2.) Do you know how to make it? If you're designing a new system from the ground up, can you find the necessary resources that you need to make it? Our team tried a swerve drive once, and because we had no idea how to do it had an almost nonfunctional robot.

3.) Can you make in 6 weeks? Probably the most important one. Sure it's great and all, but if it isn't working by stop build day, it won't be much use. Don't underestimate the advantage of having a driving base for your robot by week 2 or 3.


Ideally, find a drive system that your team is comfortable with and stick with it and refine it every year. Our team is very comfortable with tank treads. Others are comfortable with 6WD. Whatever works for you guys and the game.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Our season (836), typically ends at our Awards Banquet. This year, our Awards Banquet is the week before Championships, so we will have a bit of an overlap.

Our season ends, and then 10 seconds later the next one starts. Somethings to start with are lessons learned, the good and the bad from the previous year, realistic 1 year and 5 year goals, promo-bots, training sessions, outreach, etc.

This is one of the best ways to improve your team. It is also important to do "fun" things as a team, not just robotics. We started bowling on Fridays, team dinners, etc. You need to build an environment that fosters fun and learning!

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

How would a tank-tread drive work? Can you post a picture or link to your robot or website?

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

But why? We've been using (roughly) the same drive train every year since 2003 and it's worked out pretty well for us.

It's one less thing to worry about when build season starts because you have that part at least figured out and can get a working base going really quickly. Then we can focus more on the manipulator for that year. Also, our drivers become very good at driving with that sort of base. I don't know if we'd be as successful if our driver had to get used to something different each year (typically they start driving the spring of their freshman year at off-seasons and get practice during spring and fall then become our official driver for the next 3 years).

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

I have to agree with Alexa. 254, 968, and 60 (and several other teams) have been using the West Coast Drive for several years.

You want a working drivetrain, a reliable drivetrain, and a versatile drivetrain, all in your arsenal of possible designs. The offseason will be a great time to build some prototypes. Try the West Coast if you think you have the resources--6WD drop center using live axles and usually a 2-speed transmission. Or, just a standard 6WD. Or maybe a swerve. Pick one and learn it, learn it, learn it.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

When I was on 766, we would do versions of the kit of parts with our own welded frame. Even on 3309, with access to a sheet metal shop, I want to make sure we have a very good kit of parts based chassis in our back pocket. You never know what can happen. What if our sponsor's laser went down for a few days. It may not seem much but they have a business to run, their customers come first, we understand that. They worked very hard to achieve a good reputation.

Also, I kinda want to have a practice robot that would represent a typical opponent. It came up this year that it would be nice to have one so we could had another robot to practice with balancing. Also its good to practice defensive moves and ways to repel defense.

Re: What to do after this season ends?
 

Some say you should make sure your drive train is ready in six weeks... I'd shoot for two. Remember your drive train is also a drive BASE. Your whole robot is based on the success or failure of moving on the field. Never forget that. We had a great minibot and good arm/elevator last year, but our drivetrain was... sorry. We are a strange team and we have would massive success in 4 wheel skid drives, with high friction in the back and omnis in the front. Our drivers have always liked it.

I have encouraged the team to build a few new drivetrains in the offseason before I go, but we will see. Probably go for a true WCD to test the handling and octocanum to test the concept.

We resolved to not take breaks anymore. I'd say there are 3 major breaks: after our events, but before the following meeting, after the end of the year party to the next meeting (where the old officers and new officers are still meeting) and winter break. Any other day is a good day for robots.