Pre Season

[ABreyen]

Hey!
I was wondering what other teams do during their pre-season. We meet as a team from mid October to Kickoff (Sometime in december-january). We have to do the obvious paperwork, bla bla bla, but we never have any huge things for the pre-season.

This year, we are going to be creating a "BoxBot", basically a robot, fully programmable, etc., with the wheels, pneumatics etc. in a box that can be programmed. This would teach the new students how it works, and the programmers can actually program something.

We also are planning on taking apart our old robot, but then putting it back together. We wouldnt be going to any competitions with it, but just the learning aspect.

What do other teams do in pre-season?

[orangemoore]

Preseasons is the best time to learn new skills. For example if you haven't used CAD (cough cough my team) to design your robot, the fall is a great time to learn CAD so that you can use it for the season. Learning something during the season is going to be a bad idea. Think of things that would be skills you wish you had last season and learn those before next season.

Other things you could do would be to have a mock Week 1. Basically take an old game and pretend it is kickoff and go through the design process. The more experience you have with the design process the better you will be at it.

There are tons of other things I think you could do that other teams do.



(1500th Post)

[Munchskull]

This year my team is running a FTC team to train the new members. Also random stuff like building automation for theatre.

[MikLast]

Even though we have never had a vex team, we seem to have around 15ish sets of either the claw or box bot, easy enough to start them out with those and build up from there.

[asid61]

Learn CAD if you haven't already, train new members, and research new things, such as how to use Talon PID loops.
Fundraise and get yourself a mill and a lathe, or find a community college that will let you use theirs.

[Chak]

Team 4159 has a couple of things going on. New members are being trained by old members and mentors. The new members are also dividing into small groups and each building a FTC-size FRC-style robot to compete with each other in a FRC-style game. The initial cost for that is huge, but we anticipate that we can reuse many of the parts during the season. The goal is to get new students some experience and skill before build season comes.
Meanwhile, the returning members have also divided into groups to work on several projects: fixing up our old bots, organizing the shop, making an adjustable drivetrain out of 80/20, building practice tables for local FLL teams, trying out swerve, and making a T-shirt cannon for school rallies. On the side, our coach is working with the school district to get us a mill.

Originally Posted by ABreyen

This year, we are going to be creating a "BoxBot", basically a robot, fully programmable, etc., with the wheels, pneumatics etc. in a box that can be programmed. This would teach the new students how it works, and the programmers can actually program something.

Why a box? Why not Chairbot?

[EricH]

We've got an offseason this coming weekend, some workshops, and somewhere along the line we'll be finishing up our summer project: 3 robots to play a simple game.

And then some fundraising somewheres along the line.

[logank013]

I know this fall, we will go to some off season events. We will be hosting an all girls competition (IndyRAGE). Then, we will be going to CAGE Match which is another competition. Then, we also plan on going to the Purdue Forums where we learn about some of the technology and other thing robotics related (That's to my knowledge from what I've heard. I wasn't able to go last year.) I'm not sure what we'll being doing shop wise in our shop. We just had our first new member meeting on Monday and we have to build a 234b robot for Indy RAGE in 2 weeks. So that will last us a short time. Last year in the fall, we beta tested the new RoboRio and the new Power Distribution Board. Most of what we do this fall will probably be practice manufacturing, electronics, cad modeling, PR things, and Programming for the new members especially. Mostly prep for the build season.

[Jon Stratis]

For the past month or so we've been working on some major upgrades/redesign of last year's robot, and will be taking it to the Minnesota Regional Invitational in Roseville next month.

The whole point of the fall program is learning - learning new skills, learning about the team, learning about FIRST. It's the time for students to grow and get ready, because during the build season, we don't have time for all of that. As an example, at our meeting on Monday, there were 5 freshmen, 3 sophomores, and 1 junior working on the robot. No seniors, and the rookies outnumbered the returning students!. It gave them great practical experience in working on a robot that will definitely come in handy during the build season!

The fall (and summer!) is also when you should be doing all of that non-robot stuff. Hold out reach events (our next one is schedule for this Saturday!), recruit new members, work on your team handbook and business plan, update your website, start on your chairman's submission... All great stuff to do before the season starts!

[Alicia V]

This year, team 2046 is taking apart our 2012 robot. We are going to rewire with the new system, redesign a few things, powercoat, and put in a more powerful compressor.
We have a history of never completing off-season projects but I think that this will end up to be a good undertaking.
The students that already have skills are going to be teaching new members on the robot.

[GeeTwo]

Over the summer, we rebuilt our air cannon.
This fall, in addition to a few short classes about safety, high-level robot design, and an overview of everything on the robot for everyone, and some longer classes in building, wiring, and programming for the specialists in those things, we'll be building a simple robot with an active ball pickup as build training, and we'll go through one or two "game reaveal weekend" practices to design a robot to play an old FRC game. And organizing parts into our new build space.

[Chief Hedgehog]

FRC 4607 is as busy as ever. During the summer months we ran our annual RoboCamp for kids in grades 3-8 (two separate camps - 3-5 and 6-8). The team built two tee shirt cannons - both short range and long range models for indoor and outdoor respectively. We have been working on two different drive trains (one we started on last summer and didn't need for 2015) and a newer drive train.

We have two HUGE undertakings right now.

We realized we needed new blood that was ready to roll when they come into FRC. So we threw everything we had at creating feeder programs for FRC. Becker now has three new FLL and three new FTC teams that we just got under way. This was big for us as we had none at either level prior to this.

We also saw that teams in out state Minnesota needed a training day prior to kick-off to bring teams up to speed. We are also working with St Cloud State University to host a training day in December. We have great partners in Bison Robotics (NDSU's robotics club) and the Central Minnesota Manufacturers Association. The newly formed Central Minnesota Robotics Hub (including teams 3276, 3023, 4607, and 5542) is also working on this project.

Most of this can be found at our new website http://beckerrobotics.com/jumpstart/
If you have suggestions, please pm me and let me know.