Team Big Bad Bob is excited to return for the Open Alliance for the 2024 season!
This thread will contain all information concerning team 319 Big Bad Bob 's:
Design Thoughts
CAD Model
Prototypes
Code
Build Progress
Strategy
Event Schedule
Other information
Background
Team 319 - Big Bad Bob is from Prospect Mountain High School in Alton, NH. This team started in 1999 through the efforts of Brian Hikel in Alton Central School. The team transitioned to Prospect Mountain High School in 2005 uniting students from Alton and Barnstead.
Team Website
We will be competing at the Bridgewater State University, and Western New England University district events weeks 2 and 4 this year. We are very excited to be trying out swerve this year as well.
Along with the excitement from the upcoming holidays everyone is also super excited for kickoff and that we will be able to experience it with 1831 the Gilford screaming eagles, 4925 the resistance, and 7674 raiderbots! This year we will be hosting a kickoff premiere at the home of BOB 319! So we wish everyone a very happy holiday and also a happy kickoff.
319 met at 11 am to discuss any last minute game predictions and get set up for the Kickoff live stream. Together with 1831 Screaming Eagles, 4925 The Resistance, and 7674 Raiderbots, 319 gathered in our school’s auditorium for the live stream at noon.
After the live stream ended we all discussed the game elements and mechanics to understand the game better before we started building or figuring out the strategy of the game.
The two charts below are the charts we constructed to help our team understand the scoring of the game Point Breakdown Chart, and the strategy we are going to use going forward as we start to design our robot Strategy . After the live stream ended we all discussed the game elements and mechanics to understand the game better before we would even start building or figuring out the strategy of the game.
Point Breakdown
Action
Auto Value
Tele Value
Amplified Value
Spotlight value
Description
ex:scoring cone on level 3
5
6
N/A
release cone on tier 3
Shoot note into speaker
5
2
5
Note scored into the speaker
Leave start zone
2
NA
NA
Robot completely leaves the starting zone
note into Amp
2
1
NA
Note scored into the amp
park
NA
1
NA
Some portion of bumpers within stage perimeter
on stage
NA
3
NA
4
Directly or transitively supported by chain
Place note in trap
NA
5
NA
Note scored into trap on stage
Strategy
Auto
Things BOB could do AUTO
BOB Importance Ranking
score into speaker
1
Drive
2
floor collect note
3
score into amp
4
Tele-op
Things BOB could do TELE
BOB Importance Ranking
drive
1
collect notes from floor over bumper
2
score into amp
3
score into speaker
4
get on stage
5
drive under stage
6
place note in trap
7
score in speaker from podium
8
score in speaker from amp
9
collect notes from source
10
Get off chain
11
Buddy climb
12
level on chain
13
Light functionality
14
blocking note scoring
15
floor collect from within frame
16
move on chain
17
This year, like most years, is going to heavily rely on how fast a robot is able to complete cycles to and from the source. Our robot’s design will be heavily influenced by this fact. When doing our point breakdown, we also noticed how important it is to amplify the speaker, meaning that not only do we need to complete cycles extremely fast, we need to be smart about where we score the notes. We then broke down what we wanted our robot to do in Auto and Tele-op, based on what we felt was the most to least important.
Important Info!
319 will now be posting two times a week for the build season, on Monday and Friday.
When I try to open the OnShape link I get this error: “Failed to load document for workspace. Resource does not exist, or you do not have permission to access it.”
Looking forward to the OA content this year from 319, thanks for sharing!
was mainly a complexity thing, BOB has a history of doing over the bumper collectors pretty well and we did not see a huge benefit in trying to jam one under everything else. The other part of it was we really want to make sure that we can fit under the stage and we were worried that an under the bumper collector would raise the other mechanisms. This does not mean we wont have it, it just means at the moment it is not a priority
For the prototyping process, we are working on a shooter where we can test different speeds, angles, compactness, and feeding speed (if we even need feeder wheels to begin with). The idea behind this is that we can try many different things without making more than one prototype. Then we can see what works the best and the fastest, so we can figure out the design that we would like to go off of and start the building process while we continue to ponder things such as a possible elevator and how to shoot in the trap. The goal of the team, like always, is to be able to produce a fast and versatile robot so we can bring lots to the table for our alliance.
Field elements
While some of us are working on prototyping and others are doing strategy, we have mentors and students alike working hard and fast to get the field elements done so that this weekend we can get the prototyped shooter done. We can, then, practice shooting in the amp and the speaker. The speaker is nearly done while the amp is already completely constructed, and we have lumber for the walls of the field and what is necessary for the amp and speaker for the other alliance.
CAD
This year, BOB is aiming to put more focus than years past on shooter prototypes and building a high fidelity prototype that allows us to test in multiple different configurations.
Shooter variables
Compression
Shooter speed
Feeder speed
Shooter angle
We would love to hear what others are finding success with, and we will hopefully have video and documentation of ours in the post after the weekend.
Code
Code is currently working on downloading and updating our code computer with all of the new libraries. The code team is organizing the code and getting ready for this weekend, where we plan to set up a shoot command and pathing.
Strategy
Auto
Points
Time
Shoot
5
2
Move
2
1
Collect
0
1
Move
0
1
Shoot
5
2
Move
0
3
Collect
0
1
Shoot
5
2
The strategy team started to break down how much time we have in auto. We are working on what we can do to make the time increase and what we can do in that short amount of time. Our goal coming into our first event is that we can at least get a three-piece autonomous.
Plans for this weekend
319 is going to finish our shooter prototype and get it running with our swerve chassis, Buster. We also have our field elements in progress, so we will finish those over the weekend. Lastly, we plan to have a trip to our practice space for students to see the space for the first time.
Yep! It does load in, but it must be linking to a tab that doesn’t exist in that document anymore. It has the error saying “Can’t open tab. The tab does not exist in this document workspace.”, but it does still provide access. Thanks!
our inspiration for doing the trap is heavily influenced by the design in this thread. The idea being to have two sets of hooks, one on the elevator and one stationary latching set somewhere else. It is unknown at the moment if we will have this capability for our first event but we do have options for doing it eventually
Big post incoming. 319 was able to make a lot of progress on the prototype side of things and are very happy with our findings. As always if you have any questions or comments please share!
Prototypes
Shooter:
Once 319 understood the game and basic mechanics our robot could do, we started to look into teams manipulating game pieces and found a good idea for our shooter (Cranberry’s shooter design). We took Cranberry’s design, melded it to our liking, and created a shooter prototype that shot notes efficiently through trial and error. Our first shooter prototype used andymark 4 inch compliant wheels with 5 inches of compression. There were signs of promise in consistency but not what we had hoped for and also the shooter has a very large footprint.
Our latest prototype was inspired by both 111 and 4481 shooter prototypes. It utilized two horizontal rollers with 4 inch compliant wheels at 0.5 inches of compression on the note.
After seeing the success of others and this prototype, it’s looking like 319 will be pursuing a shooter of this type for our first competitive design.
Collector:
Although we didn’t start on prototyping the collector at first, we made good progress once we had a consistent shooter. 319 had multiple ideas for our collector through CAD and was inspired by Cranberry’s collector. Once we had a rough idea of how we were going about prototyping our collector, we went into action. We experimented with the compression of the note, the approach to the note, and different materials for collecting. We discovered an effective way to collect and own game pieces after playing with the variables.
We found the 2.25 inch compliant wheels to have the best grip on the note material, and we are playing with around 0.5 inches of compression.
CAD/Design
After deconstructing the game and looking at potential strategies, 319 was able to start thinking about what the robot will actually look like. Some very crude CAD (319 2024 CAD) was thrown together from some white board and napkin drawings.
Our current idea is to go with an over the bumper collector and transfer the notes to our adjustable shooter on an elevator via a tunnel of sorts. Our frame currently sits at 27.5” x 27.5” and could potentially get smaller. An elevator will be used for scoring in the amp and eventually the trap.
Current Subsystems:
Swerve Drive:
L3 gearing 27.5” x 27.5”
Collector:
Over the bumper full width touch it own it on a 4 bar
The Tunnel:
Elevator:
Used for climbing and allows for scoring in the amp and the trap
Shooter:
After our latest round of prototyping we are most likely going to be running a horizontal wheeled shooter
Code
The code team has started to implement pid values for the shooter mechanism of our robot. We have also started pathing and creating simple paths to test our robot and path planner as we are new to it this year. Along with making autos on path planner, we have started simulating those paths with the WPILib simulation tool with Advantage Scope.
Over the weekend, we were also able to work on some preliminary swerve paths using our offseason drive train. More information to come on our set up and progress
Plans for this week
Continue to prototype and test our horizontal style shooter to fully understand its capabilities. The goal is to utilize our practice space this week to get some auto paths mapped out and try to get a better understanding of what we want to do in the first 15 seconds.
Another Mega Post is incoming. 319 has been very busy working on our robot and has made lots of progress. As always if you have any questions or comments please share!
CAD
The CAD team is in a place of waiting for more assemblies to be built and machined, so code can be tested and the CAD can be modified.
Tunnel
The tunnel needs to be finalized, however, that is dependent on how well the collector performs which will hopefully be finalized this week. After we see how the collector performs after it is made we will decide how we want the tunnel to work. After that, it will be put into the CAD and we will start immediately machining parts and assembling
Hooks
The hooks will need to be tested to see if we will need to modify them at all.
Limelights
We will be using 2 limelights on the robot
Mechanical
Mechanical has been working hard to make parts that we know will be on the robot and we are working to make the parts for the subsystems that have been slowly confirmed and finalized. We have almost all elevator tubes and pieces completed and we are also working on the collector and shooter at the same time as individual pieces are finalized. We have also been 3-D printing many parts and broaching them as needed.
Chassis
The chassis now has swerve modules and all the tubes. We now need the belly pan so that we can mount the electronics and get the competition bot working and driving so that drivers can practice and get a feel for swerve drive. We’ve been having difficulty finding where to get a steel belly pan made so we are open to suggestions.
Elevator
We have had some difficulties with our bearing blocks for the elevator because CAM has been hard and we have not gotten the CAM correct, the bearing blocks take a lot of machining and most of it requires CAM on the mill. But once we get that done all the elevator pieces will be done. We had a hiccup where parts were machined incorrectly due to some parts of the CAD model. But we quickly found that and have been working on fixing it.
Organization!
We have been cataloging all parts that have been made so that there is no confusion and so we can keep track of our progress. We’ve been separating all the parts as they’ve been made and putting them into their specific assembly boxes. This has been helping a lot and it is easier to progress than it was last year.
Code
Path Planning
The code team has become focused on PathPlanner this year, along with the strategy team they’ve made autonomous routines that will be used in the competition season. The focus has been to find the limitations of PathPlanner and see how much more can be done with it. We are working on finding what autos will work best for us. So far we are thinking of getting most of our pieces from the middle to leave the rest open for our alliance. Our hope for week one is to have at least a 3-piece auto if not a 4-piece auto from all sides. (Ex. Amp side, source side, center). Our end goal is to have a high-end pathing capability like 7 pieces or something higher like that.
April Tags
The code team has started to implement April Tags into the code, looking at old code for reference after the mechanical team put two limelights on Buster, the code team’s chassis. They have gotten it to the point where the robot knows exactly where it is with the two limelights. We are going to use them for odometry correction mainly but we also hope to use our Limelight for note collection as well. We’ve been able to do a 5 piece auto in around 12 seconds. Assuming it doesn’t take too long to collect and shoot as we haven’t been able to test that yet.
Limelight
We’d like to give a shoutout to Limelight for their contribution to our team. They have been hugely supportive in helping us to achieve our goals with Pathing. We ran into some issues and their support team helped us out a lot with fixing the problem. We could not have done it without you.
Practice space
We have had sponsors from LaValley building supplies and they have helped us build the field which is now completed and has had lots of use from the code team.
Build Team
We are very thankful to everyone who helped build this practice space for us. We are getting much of our use out of this space, using it almost every weekend.
Code Team
The practice field has put the code team in a very good spot this year, we feel way ahead because they’ve been able to test the limelights and our paths.
Drive Team
Team 319 is very excited for our drivers to get up to this space when we have our robot built, it will help our new drivers get very used to our robot and find the best way to win matches.
Scouting
We first attempted to adapt the app that we used last year, but it was giving us trouble with generating a QR code once the names of the categories were changed.
Are having trouble with the app and may be using someone else’s scouting data for our use during our scouting meeting and other general use
May use this app, as shown in a Chief Delphi post by Ty Tremblay: QR Scout
