What to do after this season ends?

[dtengineering]

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

[aldowyn]

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!

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

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...

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

Our website is www.eaglesrobotics.org

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ksafin

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

Our website is www.eaglesrobotics.org

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.

[kstl99]

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.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by ksafin

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.

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.

[Ariful]

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...

[DjScribbles]

Originally Posted by Suitster

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

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 )

[ksafin]

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.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ksafin

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.

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.

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by EricH

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.

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.

[Ariful]

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

[Clark Pappas]

Originally Posted by Ariful

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

Originally Posted by ksafin

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.

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.

[Grim Tuesday]

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.

[tim-tim]

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!