Off season projects

[josmee443]

Hey guys, so recently i've noticed that my team (Team 1758) has a huge lack of off-season events to attend and activities to participate in. I think its very beneficial to the team as a whole and to the members individually if there are a lot of things to do during the off-season, whether it be community outreach activities related to FIRST or robotics activities. Do you guys have any ideas for what teams can do during the off-season?

[Boe]

heres a list of plans my team is doing

-design and build a new pit
-hold robot demos
-possibly design and build a sheetmetal nonadrive
-hold CAD/code classes for team members

[josmee443]

Originally Posted by Boe

heres a list of plans my team is doing

-design and build a new pit
-hold robot demos
-possibly design and build a sheetmetal nonadrive
-hold CAD/code classes for team members

What exactly do you mean by robot demos?

[Boe]

Originally Posted by josmee443

What exactly do you mean by robot demos?

our team demos our robot(s) during the offseason to spread stem, some of the orginizations we are looking into this year are demos for local girl scout troops, 4h groups, science musuem summer camps, and state fair events. we also are planning on doing a number of demos for sponsors/potential sponsors.

some of the things we do at these demos are show the robot capibilities, discuss FIRST and what it is, allow the kids to drve the robot and various other stuff

[Pault]

Ah, the offseason. So many things that you can do. I am going to divide this list into 2 parts: robot and team.

Robot

• Prototype new drivetrains
• Prototype new building methods
• Train students to use tools
• Train students to use Cad/code/wire
• Build things that your team will find useful. My team has built a cart, wire rack, and battery charging station.
• Build an outreach bot (T-shirt cannon?)
• Perfect your competition robot from the previous year.
• Hold a competition to see who can CAD the best ___________. (I would fill that blank with either cart or chassis, but you can use your imagination)

Team

• Attend offseason events
• Fundraise
• Recruit new members
• Demo your robot to sponsors
• Demo your robot to your school administration
• Demo your robot to your school's students
• Let students who aren't in robotics drive the robot
• Start up and help new FIRST teams (jrFLL, FLL, FTC, or FRC)
• Create new tutorials for other teams to use (see Simbot app or Miss Daisy's Team in a Box)
• Hold team bonding events. My team has done bowling, paintball, and a video game party.

I'm sure there are about ten thousand ideas that I have had that aren't on this list, but This is what I could think of off the top of my head. Most of it is pretty basic stuff.

[Tmaxxrox97]

My team will normally prototype a drivetrain, demonstrate our robots at various community events, and sometimes we will hold summer camps for elementary school kids in our area.

Originally Posted by Boe

heres a list of plans my team is doing

-design and build a new pit
-hold robot demos
-possibly design and build a sheetmetal nonadrive
-hold CAD/code classes for team members

Not to derail this thread but what is a nonadrive?

[Boe]

Originally Posted by Tmaxxrox97

Not to derail this thread but what is a nonadrive?

It is basically your teams octocanum but with omnis and a center strafe wheel

[team4384]

Here are few things Team 4384 does...

http://team4384.org/about-us/community/

This time around we will be taking our 2013 robot, but shoot frisbees outside at lower speed due to safety concern. After summer break we will get started with workshops and in fabrication.

[cadandcookies]

One of the best ways to generate offseason event sis to ask your team, as a whole, "What do we need to improve?", and then, "How can we improve that?"

Example: This year, my team was highly unsatisfied with our robot performance and build schedule/technique. So, in order to improve, we're setting up training sessions in CAD and robot strategy and design process. We're still in brainstorming and organization phases for this (it'll speed up after MSHSL, AP tests, and leadership selection), but already it's quite clear that this is the direction that we, as a team, want to go.

Last year we focused on improving our outreach and relationships with teams in our area-- so we hosted a robot basketball tournament for one our sponsors' employees., in addition to helping a team in southern Minnesota (3018, Nordic Storm) host an offseason event, River Rendezvous, and attending many of the offseason training events in our area.

Ultimately, the best way to spend your time offseason is to ask your students and your mentors "what do we want to do," and then try to make that happen. At least, that's been my experience with offseason events.

[connor.worley]

If your team members want to participate in a competition during the fall, take a look at VEX.

[Lokietek]

Hi,
So now when the off - season starts to kick in our team is planning on starting some engineering projects. What projects your team is doing? What suggestions you have on the kinds of projects we should do and are useful?

[Mike Marandola]

This off season we are most likely going to work on team skill building. Things like programming, tool use, 6 wheel drive, etc. One project that we did a few years ago was a farming robot. It would drive around, dig a small trench, dispense seeds, and cover it back up with dirt. We live in a pretty rural area and there is an annual county fair which we displayed it at.

Also, you can look here for ideas:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/se...=4969910&pp=25
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=116681
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ght=off+season

[CENTURION]

We're planning to get more into iterative design, CAD, and CNC, with a focus on overall build quality (Up to now, our robots frequently end up looking like topheavy 80/20 bowls full of electronic spaghetti)

We've been wanting to build a promo bot for a few years, so that will likey be the major project we're tackling, and in the process, there's been talk of starting on a swerve drive. (The two of those could be combined, swerve is the ideal drive for showing off )

[avanboekel]

-We're rebuilding our 2012 bot as our designated 'demo bot'. Frisbees don't do well in close quarters We're taking this opportunity to teach our programmers C++ as we'll be reprogramming the bot as well to make it easier to control for anyone who want to drive it around.

-Besides that, we've talked about trying swerve again, a tshirt launcher, sheet metal drives, new robot cart, redoing our pits, redoing our driver station, and a few more things... We're meeting next week to talk about this season, and prioritize what we need to accomplish before next January.

[Rishabhgadi]

My team and I are going to build an attachment for our robot that is basically a tshirt launcher but with pneumatics and are other robot parts to help promote our team sponsorship and membership in a cool and fun way!