Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Dear First Community,

We would like to thank everyone for a great robotics season. We had a great time competing at the Los Angeles Regional, the Las Vegas Regional, and on the Galileo field at the Championships in St Louis.

Since our entire team is exclusively seniors, our one shot at FIRST was not only extremely enjoyable, but educational as well.

Before we disassembled our practice field we made a short video that demonstrates some of the capabilities of our robot, as well as a short video that contains some highlights from our season. This uncut video includes a swerve drive slalom, a close up video from the perspective of a wheel module, a shot demonstration, and a series of catches from our human player.

We hope you enjoy the videos and thank you for making it an awesome season.

Thanks Again,

Team 1717: The D'Penguineers

The Team 1717 Uncut Video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFrJJ-n_oe0

The Team 1717 Highlight Video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llFDN3H_OXg

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

May i ask what you guys were geared at for your swerve drive?
One of the best robots i see every year.
I loved your 2012 robot and this years robot so much.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

One of my favourite robots from the 2014 year. You guys had a great season!

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

One of my favorite teams and robots from year to year. I definitely enjoy your videos.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Great videos! That was quite the throw/catch from the human player.

I too am interested as to what gear ratios you used on your main drive reduction. How often did you use low or high gears on the field?

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Sweet! I saw some 4276ers in there!
Good videos, guys.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

+1. I would like to know the gearing too.
Man, your driver is incredible! Those slaloms.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Easily one of the best, if not the best, robots in our division. Really enjoyed working with you in our last qualifier, our team really likes the way you guys approach matches.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

It was great competing with/against you at the championship again this year. The two trips we've made to St. Louis we've been privileged to compete in the same divisions as you. Hopefully that will continue next season.

+2 would love to compare your gearing to 368's

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Our low gear was geared for 5 feet per second, and high gear was around 15/16 feet per second.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Are those numbers "free speed" or adjusted somehow?

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

I didn't realize how well 1717's robot was able to suck in a ball that was thrown in, even if it's substantially off center. It's an odd looking intake, but it certainly works.

I love the wheel view video. It made me want to do a swerve drive, but then I smacked myself.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

My whole team absolutely loved your robot, and my drivers really liked your approach to pre-match strategy.

Now everyone on my team wants to build a shifting swerve drive next year...

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

I heard a rumour that 1717 cut all their own gears to save time or money. If so, are they still standard sizes and tooth counts, or is everything freeformed? What I mean is, did you have to make your own, or could you have just acquired them (without changing your CAD model). Did your team also design and fabricate your own pulleys? Sorry for all the questions... your drive train reminds me of this.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

After watching the wheel view portion a few times, I noticed that the shaft and wheel appeared to be extremely sloppy, shifting back and forth laterally about 1/4" or more. Was this intentional?

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

I spoke with a member of your team in the airport after champs who was very worried about your teams future. He mentioned that you were loosing Amir and another key mentor due to the growth of the Dos Pueblos engineering program into other areas. He hinted that we may not see a swerve drive from 1717 next year and he had a very bleek prediction of 1717's success in the future.

I have not heard/seen anything similar before or since this conversation. 1717 inspires me every year since we faced each other in the semifinals of Galileo in 2008 and was one of my favorite teams to work with during qualification matches at champs this year.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

What.....
This cant be true. If that were to happen i'm not sure what to think any more i always thought of 1717 as one of the most stable teams in first. It would be very sad if 1717 were to fade away.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Nobody should panic yet. The future of 1717's FRC program is in capable hands. The kids every year on 1717 are some of the hardest working in FIRST. They have a motivated core of mentors beyond their team leaders. It's a mistake to count them out any year and nobody should count them out now.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Looking at the 2012 uncut thread, it looked like you guys were dissatisfied with the performance of the gyro with the drifting and whatnot.
How did you improve upon this system since then, if you've managed to do so?

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Those are what we calculated as the theoretical speed, we didn't do any extensive testing to get an exact measurement.

We did manufacture all our pulleys and gears out of solid billets of aluminum. This allowed us to make custom sizes to fit any restraints we had, but we tried to stick to more standardized sizes for simplicities sake, especially with pulleys and belt spacing.

The angle on the GoPro we used actually makes the whole module a lot larger than it is, so what may have seemed to be 1/4" is actually a lot less. We were running about .010" to .015" of slop in the bottom axle of the wheel box.

In 2012, we used just one gyro on our robot. This year we had two gyros, one being mounted upside down in relation to the other, that way we could use code to negate the drift. Having driven both the 2012 and 2014 robot, the second gyro makes a huge difference. There weren't really instances where I had to worry about re-zeroing during matches.

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Would you be willing to post the code that you used to fuse the two gyro measurements?

Thanks,

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Could someone elaborate?

Re: Team 1717: Uncut & Highlight Video
 

Their strategy mentor and a few teammates approached us before we left the pits the day before our match. We sat down in an empty area of the pit and just talked about the match and how we should handle it for probably about an hour and a half. After developing the strategy we went back to the hotel, and the next day we met with them immediately on the practice field where they practiced 2 matches with us, and personally showed me how to feed into their robot. They let me try it a couple times, and even though I ended up not having to ever feed into them for our match I still really appreciated that they thought to teach me that.

I'm sure they don't do all of that for /every/ match because of time constraints, and it was only probably because it was a very vital match for them, but it still shows that they exercise professionalism in strategy.