Team 2656 is excited to return for our 3rd season with the Open Alliance! We plan to have meeting updates, CAD links, GitHub links, photos, and more in 2024.
About Quasics:
Quasics = QUAntum phySICS, and is often mispronounced
We are your second-favorite team from Pittsburgh, PA (we see you 3504!)
2024 will be our 17th season
Greater Pittsburgh Regional Winners in 2023 (thank you 930 and 1591!!)
We have two Woodie Flowers Finalist Award winning Coaches on our staff
We played in 3 off-season tournaments this summer
We are a “one Regional” team and will be playing at Greater Pittsburgh in Week 1
We have been a Girl Scouts Western PA Program Partner since 2019. To date we have helped local Girl Scouts earn 695 STEM badges at 51 free events!
We might be the lowest-resource Open Alliance team, so if you want to learn how to do things cheap, watch 2656
2024 Kickoff weekend
Monroeville and Murrysville, PA
Quasics assembled to check out the Crescendo reveal on January 6 in our high school’s LGI. After the reveal we ate lunch then read through the rule manual as a group. We then moved the students into small groups to work through the Kickoff worksheet provided by FIRST HQ (and originally created by 2791). This took us to the end of our first day!
On Sunday we traveled just up the highway for our annual “day after Kickoff” meeting with Team 4150, FRobotics. We’ve been getting together on the Sunday after Kickoff since 2016! We go over the game rules together, and then create small groups made up of students from both teams. The groups discuss what robot features they’d like to have and then make some sketches / suggestions on how they might be implemented. This annual tradition introduces our students to our neighboring FRC team and helps us see the new games from a different angle!
We have subteam summaries! Read on to hear about our work last night:
Floor pickup
From subteam Lead Salma: “For our first day at work, we started by doing a lot of market research. We looked at numerous videos of Ri3D projects already designed for Crescendo to get some inspiration and base dimensions. We also looked into the intake CAD for Cranberry Alarm’s robot. We also looked at intakes from Ultimate Ascent and Steamworks as these game pieces are similar to the Notes. We found lots of dual roller intakes and found common compression points of 1.5 and 1.75 inches apart for the edges of the wheels. We plan on making a basic prototype testing these compressions using 2 inch wheels.”
Amp scoring
This subteam began a CAD design used to grab Notes and deposit them into the Amp. We started to prototype the CAD design and we reached the 25% mark. The design has a 14" width, and a 1.75" in compression.
Climbing
Climbing Lead Ayanna had the following to say: "Emma, Sarima, and I are working on planning out an idea for the climbers. We decided to have two in the center to prevent the amount of swinging the robot has when it climbs on the chain. We also designed our ideas of what we wanted for the robot and we agreed on using hooks and a telescope design for the robot. We also wanted to do harmony for the stage. We just have to figure out dimensions and what hooks we want to use for the climber. We also watched different videos of old competitions where they used climbers.
Coding
Coders downloaded 2024 tools (WPILIB, NI, Notepad++, Git, TortoiseGit) onto all team laptops. They also wrote up instructions for a potential computer lab software deployment, and wrapped up with discussing potential autonomous paths.
Scouting / Strategy
Isabelle worked began a list of data points that our Scouting team will collect. She also considered how that data would be collected, in the terms of the question type for each point in a Google Form.
As noted above, our Fabrication team also finished the Amp and most of the Source! Bumper wood and then parts of the Stage are to follow.
Quasics continues to work towards the Greater Pittsburgh Regional!
We had just 7 students in the workshop last night, but were able to get two intake prototypes working under drill power! Both are twin roller intakes, quite similar to what we used on our Regioanl-winning 2023 robot.
The Coding team built and tested two of the XRP kits (from SparkFun). Electrical installed new battery cables/connectors on a few batteries. And Fabrication worked on a demonstration of finger joints for bumper corners.
We are hoping to close in on a frame size tonight so we can begin drive base construction, robot electrical work, and the red bumpers.
Our Climber team had the following to share after last night’s meeting: “Today, we looked at the climbers we made from Rapid React 2021 and to learn more about how they worked from that game. We decided to go for a similar design with the climbers. We also made an Onshape design of the telescoping system and the hooks we wanted for the robot’s climber to be a little different. Also we prototyped the hooks out of cardboard and then finalized it with wood to give us a rough idea of what the hooks will look like.”
Our floor pickup provided this recap and Onshape screenshot:
We spent a lot of our time deciding on how we want to handle handing off/scoring with the scoring subteam. We decided on moving forward with a pivoting intake. This would trap about 1/3 of the ring then pivot back to what shooting angle we choose, then feed into the scoring mechanism using rollers or belts attached to that. Currently, we are planning geometry for our side plates and pivot point. As of now, the lowest roller will be 1/2 inch off of the ground.
Finished Creating An Implementation of the Intake Deployment Subsystem (Subject To Change)
Finished Creating An Implementation of the Shooter Subsystem (Subject To Change)
Autonomous
Finished Creating List of Autonomous Commands
Pitched Idea to Team and Received Feedback
Updated List will have (to start):
Do Nothing
Get Out Commands
1 Piece Autos
2 Piece Autos
3 Piece Autos
Arcing Autos (Avoid Interfering with 4 or 5 game piece Autos)
Drafted Ideas on how these autos will be selected
Miscellaneous
Updated Majority of SparkMaxes
Reimaged RoboRio
Finished Laptop Updates/Setup
Ported Over DemoBot Code to 2024 Tools
Created a TODO list
Climbing
We tested our prototype model and it broke. We also didn’t like the placement of where the part would catch the chain. We made an Onshape design of the new model and redesigned the whole thing and changed the placement of where the chain would catch on the hook. By doing this the weight of the robot shouldn’t lean too much forward or too far backwards. We also started working on the drive base so that we can know where the placement of the climbers will be on the robot and what our overall dimensions will be.
Intake
We spent most of our meeting doing a 2d sketch of our intake, comparing the dimensions with Cranberry Alarm. We turned our sketch into a 3d model and imported it into the Kitbot model to see how it would fit on our robot. It didn’t line up how we had originally planned so we went back to edit our 2d drawings.
Quasics is back with updates from January 18 and 20!
First let’s hear from our Coding and Climber teams:
Coding - January 18
Finished Coding a Preliminary Arcade Drive
Tested Preliminary Tank Drive (Successful)
Finished Updating all Smark Maxes
Began Setting Robot Spark Maxes to a Lead/Follower
Updated All Pigeons
Continued Working On Porting Demo Bot Code
Began Drawing Autonomous Pathways in Pathweaver
Coding - January 20
Finished porting over and testing demobot code for Mae
Updated Raspberry Pi Image for Vision on Sally
Still need to complete configuration (including updating it to boot read-only by default)
Sketched out initial vision subsystem design requirements
Successfully tested drive base code on Margaret
Populated drivebase hierarchy with methods needed to support trajectory-following:
Motor data getter methods
Odometry manipulation/getter methods
Gyro data getter methods
Created and populated files necessary for utilizing Pathweaver
Began creating PathWeaver trajectory data for auto mode operations
Finished initial software configuration of the Beelink for Margaret
PhotonVision is installed, and initial AprilTags pipeline is in place
Device has been configured to boot as read-only by default
Draft instructions for configuring the Beelink have been written up in the wiki
Note: Electrical/mechanical “hardening” of the Beelink still needs to be done, as does calibration (once Margaret’s cameras have been selected)
Climber team notes from January 20:
“We worked on figuring out the placement of where we are going to put our climbers and whether we might change the design of them due to space on the robot. We decided on keeping them the same overall. We also tested the hooks on the chain once again and labeled how much space the robots would have theoretically in order to do Harmony. All still need to figure out overall the dimensions of everything that we want which we started mapping out, but haven’t finished.”
Our Ground Pickup, Note scoring, and Fabrication teams have been busy as well! In the third and fourth photos below you can see the finished AM14U5 with temporary electrical board. These photo also show the wooden version of the intake! Prior to that is an Onshape screenshot showing the two intake pieces as well as some temporary Note scoring geometry, based on the Kitbot.
Our Climber team began cutting and assembling the AndyMark “Climber in a Box” kits. “We measured and cut the three pieces of metal for the two climbers at 10” inches after figuring out the dimensions. Then, we built the hooks for the climbers so we can test run them until we actually build our custom made hooks out of Lexan. We still have drilling to do on the climbers, but we are making good progress.”
Our intake team finished their CAD by adding tolerances for the CNC work to be done by our neighbors on Teams 1708 and 4150. Then they assembled the Ultraplanetary gearbox from REV Robotics that will drive our 2" wheel rollers. 0.5" snap-on hex spacers were printed today.
Fabrication finished the wood for the first set of bumpers, and Coach Meg cut out the bumper numbers on the Cricut, to be ironed onto the fabric.
Note Scoring “started to make the shooter superstructure our of metal, cutting and measuring 1x1 metal. We have most the the frame ready to be assembled but there are are few holes that we have to remeasure and redrill.”
Climber team got after things on Saturday! “We finished assembling the AndyMark climber in a box and started testing. (We still have to cnc our custom hooks) We also cut some 2”x1” bars to mount the climbers. Most of our subteam then moved on to work on the electrical board or help other subteams. We are proud we have the climbers done and that we just need to make the custom hooks next!”
We also got our Kitbot-inspired shooter superstructure assembled for testing, but ran into an issue we should have seen coming… the Note squishes into the NEO motors before it can make contact with the shooter wheels
In better news, our Ground Pickup team pivoted over to work on bumpers with Coach Meg. Both red halves are done, and the blue pieces are about 90% complete. From here we need to add mounting brackets and then they’re ready for competition!
Parts are in from CNC for the ground pickup! BIG thanks to local FRC Teams 4150 (FRobotics) for machining the end plates, and 1708 (Amp’d Robotics) for doing the pivot plates! No way we’re anywhere near this far on Margaret without your help!
With that work done, we were able to assemble the main intake mechanism including the dual rollers, churros, and NEO 550. We are using an infinity polycord to run both rollers with one motor. We then got it mounted on the frame Wednesday night. Wiring and testing are next!
2656 has made a ton of progress since our last update from January 3. The intake was narrowed 0.25" to make room for additional hex hub on the non-motor side. Intake extend/retract was tested and has plenty of torque in the 60:1 MAX Planetary. We had to replace the NEO 550 that was driving the intake rollers. It may have some internal damage, but we’ll have to test after the Regional. The intake team also had to move one of the churros to stop the Note at a different position.
The Climber team has the AndyMark climbers done, and their new hooks are being picked up tonight from CNC at Team 4150! Those students branched out to help other subteams on Saturday: “Sarima worked on helping the shooter team for the majority of the meeting. Emma also made CAD of the electrical board and was planning on getting started on it this week. James and Ayanna worked on buttons the whole meeting and we had help from other people within the team to help us cut the templates, make the buttons, and put the back pieces of metal together. Overall by the end of the meeting we made around 200 and in total we have 651 buttons including the ones from the past three days.”
All of the shooter parts are in and assembly will continue this week after the shooter uprights get mounted on Tuesday and checked for Stage clearance. We did have successful test shots on February 1! Once again big thanks to team 1708 for the CNC work on our new shooter motor mounting plates!
On the Awards side, we got three major awards submitted last night! Dean’s List Semifinalists, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award, and the Impact Award have all been turned in!
Margaret is coming together! Last night we attached the shooter structure to the robot while keeping the 55º angle the same. We then started working on attaching the linear actuators, but unfortunately we broke a mounting bracket. We also installed the Lexan ramp, allowing Notes to feed up into the shooter!
Our ground pickup Lead had the following to say about their work last night: “We cut angled 2x1s to act as hard stops since our intake needs to be set with a 1/2 inch gap from the wheels to the floor. We allowed for room for cushion, so that aspect is still being worked on. We also tested if the Note will properly stay inside of the intake with churros to stop it. This is not completely working as it does slip past when run for a certain time. We plan on adding thin Lexan to help hold the Note. The handoff geometry was also tested with the shooter frame, and looks good so far!”
Our Climber team continued to spread out and work in other areas last night: “Emma worked on Electrical and finished putting together the cut the vertical e-boards and test fit them. She also worked out the battery holder and power switch mount. For button making, I finished making 759 buttons! Sarima helped the shooter team work on drilling mounting holes, and Bhav worked on the sponsor graphics in Cricut Design Space.”
I missed an openalliance team that we will be competing with at Greater Pittsburgh. Team 1787 - The Flying Circuits also have a 2024 build thread. We’ll see this accomplished team and their awesome robot at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in just 3 weeks!
A lot of our Crescendo robot came together since our last update! First let me thank Team 3504, Girls of Steel, for hosting the local practice field. We had to move our 2/10/24 meeting there, and they were accommodating (as always!) with their space and tools.
In the first few hours at the field we got both climbers mounted, and then we locked them closed to perform a hang-height test. This photo was taking with us fully on the right ‘half’ of one of the chains, leaving room for a robot to hang next to us. The robot did not slip down the chain, due to the notches that the climber team added to the hooks.
After this we were able to test driving and shooting from the center and sides of the subwoofer. This all seems to work well with our 55º shooting angle. We also tested our ground pickup, which needs some precision, but I think the driver will get the hang of it with practice and a camera view.
As you can see in the above photo, the red bumpers are done but still need brackets. We also noted a loose belt on the intake pivot, which we’ll cover in a subsequent post.
Overall, Margaret is coming together! We’re playing Week One at Greater Pittsburgh. Load-in for the Regional is just 15 days away!
Quasics has some videos for you! The first one is our Amp scoring method, which we’re very excited to share! Margaret is only about 27" tall, to fit under the stage. This created an issue for us to score into the Amp, which is something we had on our priority list. We came up with the idea to get the Note to sit between the top of the robot and the inside wall of the Amp, and then raise a bar up from below the Note to tip it into the Amp. I’m proud to say that it works (slowly). This was our 5th time in a row doing it!
These last two are scores in the Speaker from the front and left of the Subwoofer:
Let’s talk about the belt driving the intake pivot…
Each end is a 30T 15mm double-flanged pulley. The belt is 15mm 70T. The center-to-center distance in the CAD is 3.937", which we chose by using the West Coast Products Belt Calculator.
Once we installed everything, we saw the motor was skipping teeth when starting to move the intake from either the fully open or fully closed position. The students looked at the belt and noted it looked “loose” to them:
There appears to be slack on the top, which you can compress down over 1/2" with your fingers. This slack moves around from the top to the bottom to evenly distributed throughout the motion of the intake pivot.
Our current plan is to install two 1.125" 3/8" OD standoffs, with a lid, to force the belt into a shape that resembles an infinity symbol (). We hope this will tension the belt well enough to keep the teeth engaged. We also ordered a new 70T belt in case this one is just slightly out of spec.
Are we missing anything? Is this normal? Our drive and shooter belts don’t do this and seem to be properly tight. We followed the math, but ended up with a mechanism with some slop in it.
). We hope this will tension the belt well enough to keep the teeth engaged. We also ordered a new 70T belt in case this one is just slightly out of spec.