3749 Team Optix | 2024 Build Thread

[Team3749]

Welcome to the Team Optix 3749 2024 Build Thread!

Founded in 2010, we are a 70+ membered team headquartered at Del Norte High School in San Diego. Through our no-application joining process, we focus on building an open environment where anyone who is interested in robotics can gain valuable experience.

We have 1 mentor and about 18 leadership positions! Each of our members work within one of the four departments on our team:

• Build (Design & Fabrication)
• Technology (Software & Electrical)
• Business (Public Relations, Finance & Fundraising)
• Outreach (Game Strategy, Outreach, & Awards)

This will be our second year as part of the Open Alliance where we hope to give back to this community with the insights we’d gain throughout the season. We will do our best to provide you with weekly updates involving pictures, videos, and concise recaps.

We are excited to enter the 2024 season: CRESCENDO with you all!

Links

• 2024 CAD (Onshape) | 2024 Robot Code
• Website | Instagram | YouTube
• 2023 Build Thread

[rohinsood]

3749 Offseason Bot: Victor

Onshape | Cool Video

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Goals:

• Gain experience with multi-stage elevators
• Gain experience 3D printing new parts
• Give opportunities to newer members to learn
• Reduce cost by reusing as many materials as possible
• Learn how to use OnShape

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Design

• 8177 “inspired” angled elevator + wrist
• First 3749 bot in OnShape!

Drivetrain & Bumpers:

• Our 2022 seasons 's WCD w/Faclon 500-driven Flipped WCP SS Gearboxes & VersaBlock drop-center
• 26"x26" frame perimeter
• 1678 inspired bumper mounts

Elevator:

• 8177 inspired, TTB cascade 2-stage elevator
• 3847 inspire slotted elevator mounting
• 60 degree angle
• 22" extension
• 15:1 (MP) : 15:1 (MP) = 225:1 reduction

Wrist:

• Pocketed gearbox plate
• 3:1 (MP) : 56:45 (Gearbox) : 24:12 (sprocket:sprocket) = 6.13:1 reduction

Intake:

• 6672 inspired, cube-pinching intake. Like what we did this year
• 8177 “inspired” 3DP Hub Mounting
• 2.5" compression
• 1/4" Acetal (Delrin)

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Fabrication & Assembly

Drivetrain & Bumpers:

• Made sure to take apart and clean the gearboxes & replace the chain from 2022
• Only made 1 set of bumpers due to time constraints

Elevator + Wrist:

• Had to hand fabricate all the holes on the elevator and it was a pain, learned a lot about how to do so with precision
• The bottom of the elevator is a bit smaller than 12”, so the holes mounted on the crossbeam at the top were oversized so the bolt could to keep it in line.
• The bearing blocks on the carriage were slightly mis-aligned so when mounted, they were pushed up against the 1st stage and weren’t able to freely spin. Still worked in the long run
• We lost one of the cable tensioners (lmao) so we had to drill a hole through a hex shaft and put a shaft collar at the top instead. This worked out as well

Wrist:

• Laser cut an acrylic plate that goes on the bottom of the wrist for tensioning a day before comp

Intake:

• First time laser cutting acetal (Delrin)
• Forgot to buy the belts so we just switched to chain with an idler
• Initially had flex seal on some pvc, but we realized that it was horrible at picking up cubes. Switched to using cut down 4” compliant wheels the day before comp

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Overall Takeaways

• Last year, I was our software lead and wanted to learn more about the design and fabrication process behind FRC robots. So I spent the summer teaching myself these skills and led our team to design and fabricate this project. It was a great learning experience, especially since it was my first ever bot. Huge shout out to the people in david’s design server for all the feedback I was given during the design process!
• We will use pre drilled tubing, and 3DP drill Jigs to reduce fabrication time in the future

[Team3749]

3749 2023 Battle At the Border Recap!

Team Optix came back to attend our second off-season competition ever with Battle at the Border 2023! Here’s a quick recap of that event!

Goals:

• Give competition experience to new members

• Give pit experience to members

• Test our offseason robot in a competition setting

• Give game experience to practicing drive members

Outcomes:

• Newer members were able to engage with the competition and enjoy the thrill while also seeing multiple aspects of FRC

• Members were able to understand and engage with it, assisting with both robot checklists and fixes.

• Our off-season robot performed well, or as expected we should say, competing on par with our main robot, and achieving a peak rank of 19th.

• Victor had 0 electrical and elevator issues during the competition.

• Completely new drivers were given experience with both swerve and tank drives

• Viper had no major issues

• Viper ended in 19th, selected to be part of the 8th alliance with 1266, beat out the 4th & 3rd alliance, lost in our fourth match in the lower bracket

Takeaways:

• This event was great for both new and returning members, giving some their first experience for competition.

• We are excited to go into 2024 with this new experience in mechanisms like swerve drives, elevators, and double-jointed arms!

• Huge thank you to The Holy Cows 1538, W.A.R Lords 2485, and Pacific Steel 5025 for organizing such an amazing event!

• Another huge thank you to our amazing alliance partners The Devil Duckies 1266 and the Hammer Heads 1572!

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Contributors:
Broden Golich @BrodenG

Photos:
Various Sources

More to come in a few minutes…

[Team3749]

Crescendo Kickoff!

Team Optix 3749 has been gearing up for kickoff all year long. From building our first-ever offseason bot to training through the Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, we came into the 2024 season hungry and prepared.

Before the Broadcast

This year our school threw us a bit of a scheduling curveball–kickoff would take place during winter break! That meant we lost the 1 week we usually had before kickoff to debrief. To ensure that all our members, especially the rookies, understood the day’s schedule, our club got together in a discord stage for a quick presentation before the broadcast began.

Understanding the Game

Very quickly our team realized that this is an FRC game unlike any other, a sort of hybrid between placing and shooting that would require a lot of strategic analysis and careful choice of design. To make sure that we knew what we were getting into, we began the day with time to read the game manual, a game overview presentation, and the 1678 Rules Quiz.

Robot Criteria

An Optix tradition every kickoff is to have a team-wide discussion about our robot, asking what we want it to accomplish and some criteria to build around. No designs allowed! Only goals and criteria for the bot for the year. See our “need, want, wish” list here.

Subsystem Concepting

Once we knew what kind of robot we wanted, it was time to get to work. We split into four groups, one per necessary subsystem, each containing a mix of CAD, manufacturing, electrical, and software members. The goal is to come up with completed designs by this coming Tuesday, our 2nd official build season meeting.

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Contributors:
Noah Simon @tubularturtle8

Photos:
Thien-nam Huynh

[Team3749]

Build Week 1 & 2 Recap!

Our Build team has been hard at work coming up with designs and prototypes! Here’s a recap of the progress we have made!

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Week 1

Right as kickoff started, our build members split into field elements and subsystems, and started their respective projects.

Subsystems

Subsystem leads worked to guide their groups through researching past games and designs in order to start initial designing. Starting with looking at the 2013 game, subsystems guided their members through searching from previous robots, and also through looking at RI3D teams, like Cranberry Alarm and the Unqualified Quokkas. Subsystems used the design principles they found in order to create robot sketches and Krayon CADs to visualize and model ideas they had based on proven concepts. Many people cadded their ideas for both full robots as well as individual designs.

-Broden Golich

Climb

Climb started off by researching multiple climb designs from similar games. We looked at climbs from 2013 and 2022, and then began coming up with designs. Two designs that we CADded a concept of were an angled elevator and a combination of shooter and elevator. We also looked at Ri3D designs such as Penn State’s “sliding” design. After discussing each design, we began to rate them in order to decide which would be most beneficial to prototype. Our next step will be to elaborate on the angled elevator design, with Penn State’s sliding design as a separate idea.

-Rudra Jani

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Shooter

Shooter followed a similar process to Climb. We split up into a few groups and then began researching designs for this year’s shooter, and then created our own with some being drawn out on paper and others being CADded. Some designs discussed were a four-bar intake and shooter, elevator-based shooter, and an intake to a U-shaped indexer to a shooter. Over the next week, we plan to prototype some designs and choose what is best for us, and start a final CAD.

-Rudra Jani

Intake

Intake started researching various designs to find the most optimal one for our robot. Initially, intake decided what they wanted the intake to do, which was to score into the amp and pass through to the shooter. After this, intake started to CAD some of their ideas. Once all of the ideas were gathered, all intake members had a discussion and discussed the pros and cons of each intake. The next steps will be to prototype some of the better intakes, to decide which design is ultimately the best.

-Tanav

Drivetrain

Our drivetrain design was cadded and all of our Mk4 Modules have been assembled. Fabrication for our drive base will begin shortly, we are planning on a flipped electrical board, and we are still designing that.

These 3847 inspired 3DP DT corners are meant to help add space to MK4is, but for us, they extend the frame perimeter by 1/8" and allow for tolerance in using fasteners.

Victor Bumper Mounts 2.0: 3847/1678 inspired bumper mounts for 1/4-20 bolts. A bolt will protrude from the bumper, you slide it into the slot in the plate, you place it inside the outer plate, then you secure it with a nut. 1 on each side, so 4 in total.

Full Drivetrain CAD:

-Broden Golich

Field Elements

Field elements started with looking at the team version of the field elements, and worked to create inventory lists while simplifying them further. Field elements started fabrication and assembly halfway through the week, and have been piecing together their elements with the wood already available to them from preseason and previous season. Final Field Elements parts ordering will happen on Saturday and final assembly should be done by next week.

-Aryan Shrimali

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Week 2:

On our first meeting of this week, we finalized our robot design to be a single jointed arm with a four bar intake that also acts as the shooter, similar to the RI3D team, Unqualified Quokkas. Throughout the full week, our design lead, @Rohinsood , finalized our initial robot design without electrical.

Shooter/Intake:

After finalizing the design, Yosha led intake and shooter began CADding the 4 bar and figuring out geometry for it, such as launch angle and positions. Intake experimented with compression distances during prototyping, also looking at intake speeds. Shooter also began prototyping, testing which compression distance would optimize shooting distance. They also looked at spin and how that would affect shooting, and with a basic prototype practiced shooting into the Amp and Speaker. As the next week comes, CAD will be finalized and parts will be sent to be manufactured, and assembly will start.

-Rudra Jani

Arm

In our design, we have a pivot that will carry the 4 bar shooter and intake, and so it is essential that we design a robust yet strong arm. After finalizing the design, the arm team, led by Rudra, began to look at design principles for a robust arm, mainly consulting this document. After learning the principles, Arm began to CAD, with a basic CAD complete. The next steps are to calculate the gear ratios we will use, send gussets to be manufactured, order necessary parts, and begin assembling.

-Rudra Jani

Drivetrain

Drivetrain design has had some good progress, with more electrical components being placed in accurate locations, and a much more completed design than last week.

Field Elements

Field elements finished the final assembly of the Amp design given in the game manual. Construction of the speaker and source assemblies also started this week. The final source assembly is near completion with the remaining beams included in our order. The speaker assembly began halfway through the week utilizing Keshav and I’s cad designs for a more simplified speaker. The base of the speaker was completed on Tuesday and the hood is still in construction. The parts necessary to start the construction of the Stage and complete the 2 assemblies in progress have been ordered and are expected to arrive by next week.

-Aryan Shrimali

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Week 1-2 Recap

Overall, our first two weeks have been an amazing start with us, with multiple prototypes testing multiple designs, cadding and developing numerous ideas, finishing two field elements, and already having a first iteration of our full robot cadded. Our build members are hard at work, and I am looking forward to seeing one of our best build seasons to date unfolding.

-Broden Golich

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Contributors:
Broden Golich @brodeng
Rudra Jani @rjani
Tanav Kambhampati
Aryan Shrimali

Images:
Thien-nam Huynh
Noah Simon @tubularturtle8
Rohin Sood @rohinsood

[Team3749]

Technology Week 1 & 2 Recap!

Our Technology Department has been working extremely hard these past two weeks! From vision to organization, here’s a recap of the past two weeks for Software and Electrical!

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Software

Our Software team has been ahead of the curve these past two weeks, here’s a little look into what they’ve been up to!

Swerve Drive and Autonomous Pathing

During the offseason, our team developed experience in both simulation and 6328’s Advantage Scope by creating simulated swerve code. Building upon offseason progress, we have made it one of our goals to have a fully simulated robot before our manufacturing team finishes the robot’s structure. The biggest change was an idea our pilot had, which is to have the right joystick represent the robot’s rotational position rather than control its rotational velocity. In other words, left on the right joystick means the robot will face 90 degrees

The base swerve code finished its 2024 tune-ups only two days into build season, at which point the development team changed their focus to autonomous. In 2023, our team utilized the 3rd party software PathPlanner to create our autos. The program has since gotten a huge update for 2024, making path creation easier as well as introducing path finding algorithms that avoid field obstacles on the stage; our team jumped onto the latter right away. Now, given the robot’s pose, a desired pose, and path constraints, our methods are able to generate a trajectory from wherever we are to anywhere else on the field. We plan to use this code to automate some processes in teleop as well as provide some dynamic pathing during the autonomous period.

-Noah Simon

Path Finding to a Pose

Simulating Apriltag Detection Through Advantage Scope and PhotonVision

During the 2023 season, we discovered that we were quite lacking in the simulations of our robot, something we believe is quite essential to developing the best robot possible. One of the simulations that we have been working on is a vision sim using advantage scope & photon vision. So far, during the first week of the 2024 season, we have successfully integrated advantage scope & photon vision with a working 2d and 3d april tag detection.

-Jadon Lee

3D April Tag Detection

2D April Tag Detection

Setting Up PhotonVision with AdvantageScope

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Electrical

This week, we as electrical partnered up with the various subsystem design groups to help design the robot. Some of us focused on full robot designs, while others modeled individual subsystems in detail. The idea was to give newer and returning electrical members experience with basic robot and subsystem design, while also having people to give electrical input to design members on the viability of a particular design from a wiring and component standpoint. Past designing, our electrical team has continued to do organization, preparing for when we start to wire this new robot. We also spent time disassembling our 2023 robots, and scrapping electrical components we can use for this year.

-Chinmay Ramamurthy

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Contributors:
Jadon Lee @Pleiades
Noah Simon @tubularturtle8
Chinmay Ramamurthy @Chinmayr

Photos:
Thien-Nam Huynh
Various Sources

More to come next week!

[rjani]

Hey there! I’m Rudra (or RJ), and I’m a Co-Director of Fabrication on Team Optix. Here’s our build recap for the week!

Build Season: Week 3 - Build Recap

We’re already halfway through build season! Here’s a recap of what we did over the past week. The fabrication and assembly grind is real.

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Drivetrain

Drivetrain began fabricating everything for this year. Last Saturday, we cut our beams, and once our bumper mounts and carrying hooks were manufactured by our manufacturing sponsor Clint Precision, we riveted those to the beams. We 3D printed our 3847-inspired corners and began assembly. Additionally, we fabricated acrylic covers to put on the swerve modules and drilled mounting holes into our modules for the churros that hold the cover up. We sent our bellypan to Clint as well. The goal is to have a completed drivetrain by the end of today so that software can begin testing.

Arm

Arm finalized our CAD and then sent the many custom plates we have to Clint Precision. Our MAXspline and necessary beams have arrived, so when we get the plates and tensioning block, it’ll be go time. Until then, the plan is to start building with wood plates to test proof of concept, especially with the hooks on the end of the arm.

Here’s all the plates we’ve sent to manufacture:

Shooter/Intake

Shooter and intake continued prototyping. We tested various compressions, different wheel types, and both horizontal and vertical shooters. Videos of different prototypes are included below. In CAD, we found out that vertical shooters are much more difficult to package effectively than horizontal shooters. However, it appears as if they’re more accurate, so we’ll make a decision on that in the next week. For intake, we tested polycarb live axle rollers and various compression wheels. After deciding the optimal design for this, we’ll get building. We also created a proof of concept for our 40° mechanical hard stop on the 4-bar.

Our current vertical colson wheel shooter prototype:

Videos:
Team Optix 3749 - AndyMark Stealth Wheel General Test - YouTube
Team Optix 3749 - Colson Wheel Vertical Shooter Test - YouTube
Team Optix 3749 - 4 Bar Shooter Test on Speaker Height - YouTube

Proof of Concept for our 4-bar intake and shooter:

Field Elements

In week 3, Field Elements completed our speaker! We took FIRST’s simplified CAD and simplified it even more, leading to this beauty:

Currently, we’re waiting on our materials for the stage to arrive. Since we’ve moved so fast and only have one field element to build, we split up our field elements team into Stage and Kitbot. Kitbot people got to work right away. Hopefully, we can use it as a practice defense bot when we get to driver training.

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Contributors:
Rudra Jani @rjani

Photos:
Various Sources

[Varalu]

Software: AdvantageKit, Current Budgeting, and Choreo

Over many of the past years, we had found a major issue of our robot having been browning out or overusing voltage from our battery, leading to strain on our batteries. We are currently using AdvantageKit in order to create more robust logs of our current and voltage usages, keeping us aware of any point where we may fail. We are still continuing to develop AdvantageKit and implement it onto our robot drivetrain.

We have also been beginning to develop a system-wide current limit, to prevent our batteries from being damaged by too much current draw. Through research into proper battery-to-motor usage, we are working to find limits that we should be keeping our system under. We then plan to develop a system wide current limiter to allow us to optimize speeds during competition, while ensuring the health of our motors and batteries.

We have also implemented Choreo into our code, which we are using to better optimize our swerve drive pathing, to better our autonomous paths.

Software: Intake Simulations and Lots of Calculations

Our Intake group worked hard and finished their simulation code for our intake. (as our four bars are going to actuate in and out). They have been working on tuning it and refining it so that it is able to reach its proper angle without much error.

Our arm team isn’t really working on code, more that they are finding out how we can shoot. They are currently calculating a “shooting radius” that our robot can reasonably shoot from. And after calculating that set point, they are currently trying to find the exact position and orientation of our arm in order to shoot accurately into the speaker. The following desmos graph to find out whether we can hit the speaker given a certain point. It also lets us know if certain angle-distance-velocity pairs are impossible, as the graph would be going down at that point. We found a 2D graph was easier to use in our case.

Electrical: Getting our Mock Board Done

Over the past week, we have gotten to complete a mock wooden board so that programming would be able to start testing our swerve drive code and even start some autonomous planning. Our mock board certainly wasn’t the cleanest, but it was quick and functional, so our software department can finally have the chance to start working on our autonomous and swerve drivetrain code. We also know that we’re going to start implementing

We also got started working on our everybot, as since our field elements group split, we’re starting to plan out designs for our everybot, and beginning planning. We are planning to use some of our bulk in this bot, so we are finally dusting off our ancient Talon and Victor motor controllers (whichever one we do not know) along with the wall of CIMs we have accumulated over the years to use on our robot.

Lastly, we’d like to welcome a new member to our team! Two new additions to our amazing DeWalt T-Stack: A clipboard and another toolbox. We are filled with happiness and pride as these two join our already massive DeWalt T-Stack.

Word from the VP:

Hey everyone! I’m Varaprasad (Varalu) Nibhanupudi, VP of our Technology Dept. for Team Optix. As fabrication begins, our job as tech is to start preliminary testing and to begin really getting stuff moving in terms of electrical. Next week is what I consider crunch week, where Tech really has to start running around and get wiring to wiring and testing in a short amount of time. But I have confidence we’ll be able to get through it, especially with how effective our electrical system was last year. Our programming team will also finally get the chance to play with the new tools they have developed over the past weeks. They’ve been developing at lightning speeds and I’m ecstatic to see them (especially our freshmen coders) start testing their first code segments of the ‘24 season.

Also, Walter my beloved:

Contributors:
Varaprasad Nibhanupudi @Varalu

Images and screenshots provided by:
Varaprasad Nibhanupudi
Jonathan Liu
Indraneel Adem

[Team3749]

Technology Week 4 Recap!

Sorry we’re so late, but here’s a recap of everything that happened in week 4!

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Software: Business as Usual

Software is really working on the normal. We have a hyper-efficient software team, so they’re basically just waiting on the build and electrical parts of the robot to be completed before we actually get to fully stress-testing our code. Our teams are easily one to two weeks ahead of schedule. However, even if we are just waiting, that doesn’t mean we have any less to show for it. Our auto team has started fully using Choreo to get auto paths planned out. Our intake team has fully completed code and is ready to test, spending some time to work on how they are going to implement photoelectric sensors, and send received information towards LEDs on our robot. These auto tests and preparation for feedback will greatly increase the reliability of our intake retention, following our mantra towards game pieces: “touch it, own it”.

On the reliability end, our arm team is also working on refining their math towards our shooting radius. They noticed a couple of errors on it with math when they last checked, so we’re working towards getting that fully finished. Here’s the link to the video.

But biggest of all: our app development team! They’ve been working hard to improve our Optix Scouting App, primarily by refining our transfer method between our web application and our app. Our app should always aim to be offline, to abide with first constraints, so they have done some work getting data to better transfer and store. Last year, we could only send our regional to “Rocket City”, and being a San Diego-based team we certainly are not at Rocket City. So fixing up our web application makes our data more usable. We’ve also updated the UI to make it more user friendly, and make it such that any member of our team (or other teams) can use it.

-Varalu Nibhanupudi

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Electrical: Charging Up…

As we wrap up this OA Post, we’re getting ready to wire our robot as its manufacturing is almost done. This week we mainly focused on getting ready for that. We restocked on crimps and wiring, organizing all our resources. We’ve also been preparing whatever wiring and components that we can. This includes the swerve encoders, which we’ve crimped this year with Anderson PowerPoles to make them easy to remove in case we have to detach an MK4 Module. We’ve also planned the placement and wiring of our photoelectric sensors on our intake/shooter mechanism. The wiring there was tricky because not only does the wiring have to come down the moving 4-bar and arm systems, but also split to connect to the VRM and RoboRIO. Along with that, as our team made a last-minute change to the shooter, we had to figure out how to place spark maxes on the system again.

We’ve also given some of our newer members wiring practice before the main event using our kit bot. They’ve gotten practice crimping 12 and 18 AWG wiring, soldering CAN, placing components, and securing batteries and the wiring that goes along with them. We also worked with the Build Department to cut out and attach the belly pan for our electrical board, as well as finish up the drivetrain structure of our kitbot.

-Chinmay Ramamurthy

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Word from the VP

It is certainly crunch time here at Team Optix! We are currently about a week behind, which means electrical is going to have to finish in 3-4 days to ensure no further delays occur. We are really at the starting line, and we must get off to a roaring start!

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Contributors:
Varaprasad Nibhanupudi @Varalu
Chinmay Ramamurthy @Chinmayr

Photos:
Jonathan Liu
Rohin Sood @rohinsood
Alexander Zhang @alexzhang3749

[rjani]

Hey everyone! Thanks for coming back after a prolonged period of no posts. Here’s a recap of what we did from Week 4 to our first competition: the Ventura County Regional.

Build Season Week 4 to Competition Week 2: Build Recap

And just like that, we’re at competition. Time flew by so fast! Our last post was when the robot was 3 subsystems, but it isn’t like that anymore! It’s now fully integrated, turned into what we like to call Voyager. A huge thanks to @Spyder1622 and Clint Precision for helping us fabricate our parts.

Drivetrain

Drivetrain was finished pretty quickly in week 4, but once the bellypan arrived, we ran into some issues. It was about 40 pounds, putting the robot at ~124 pounds without limelights and other electrical components mounted. That wouldn’t work, so we needed to find a solution. Luckily, Team Spyder came to the rescue and waterjetted us a new bellypan made of ⅜” aluminum. Now, we have weight to spare.

We also added churro and ¼” acrylic covers to our MK4 swerve modules, but the 4 bar would hit the acrylic and crack it. We tried to use thinner acrylic in the front to fix the problem, but it persisted. So, we’re keeping the covers on the back (and putting limelights on them with 3DP mounts) but not keeping them on the front.

We also changed the 3DP corners to only be in between the 2x1s rather than connect them, thus keeping us within the bumper rules. On the topic of bumpers, we started bumper construction and are nearing completion. We’re trying out something new with slotted plywood to eliminate the need for L-brackets and also going with a new mounting system.

Arm

Clint Precision got us our arm gussets with the bellypan, meaning we could finally assemble. Putting the gussets on the beams was simple enough (although we did mess up rivets a few times), and then we assembled the deadaxle setup.

First came a MAXspline collar, then the 2x1 MAXpattern tubing, then an acetal spacer, then a 25 chain 64t sprocket, then another MAXspline collar. We bolted it all together, and replicated it for the other side of the arm. We put that on the MAXspline, then tightened the collars, and finally, put the bronze bushings on the MAXspline. After sliding the deadaxle in, we put the system into the two tensioning blocks on the superstructure. We added the motors at the bottom and their sprockets, and finally connected everything with 25 chain. The last step was to tension everything with the tensioning blocks. We noticed that the MAXspline deformed one of the bronze bushings, making the setup not rotate freely on the deadaxle. To fix this, we used 600 grit sandpaper in order to remove a layer off of the deadaxle, allowing the setup to move once again.

In order to make sure the 2x1 beams were appropriately spaced throughout, we cut churros down and put them in between the beams.

In spending so much time on this, we didn’t take pictures. I know, pretty sad. To make up for it, here’s a video of our arm working (and some software success as well!) Team Optix 3749 - Arm Demonstration 2024
The arm is also what we use to climb, using hooks at the end of the beams to latch onto the chain. Below is an image of a climbed bot (and a completed stage!).

Intake & Shooter

Intake and shooter is also finally done! We figured out packaging for our 4 bar intake with vertical wheels, as seen in this CAD:

We got our 4-bar plates waterjetted by Team Spyder and then assembled. Plates for mounting this also came in that day, and we put everything together with axles and hubs and whatnot. Our thunderhex axles started to bend because of the load that was on them, so we bought steel ones from the Industrial Metal Supply, which worked out great.

It ground intakes and shoots too! Team Optix 3749 - Ground Intake and Shooting Speedrun

Field Elements

Field elements got Stage done on the final Saturday meeting that we had. They did a great job with everything. It was leaning a bit, so we fixed the triangles at the bottom in order to solve the issue. We also took our carpet and put tape on it to mark certain locations on the field. We don’t have an area big enough to have a permanent field, so this is a solid alternative.

Kitbot

Last (and kind of least), the kitbot. We started building the drivetrain in week 3, and then finished it soon after. Due to a massive skill issue on our part, we couldn’t find shooter materials until our president’s week break, so it remains incomplete. Here’s a video of the working drivetrain: Team Optix 3749 - Working KitBot Drivetrain

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Contributors:

Rudra Jani @rjani

Photos:
Noah Simon @tubularturtle8
Rohin Sood @rohinsood
Jonathan Liu @spooketti

[Rezq]

Amazing robot! Really looking forward to seeing it compete.

[Varalu]

Software: Test! Test! Test!

In these past weeks, software has finally gotten the chance to test all the code they need to do. Starting off with arm testing, we finally got our ground intake and shooting to work, along with getting the swerve drive fully working. We’ve also finally gotten our climb mechanism to work, however there are some issues with our climb with our bumpers. Our arm can move to any set point degree, with an error of less than one degree. We’ve also gotten our shooter and intake positions to be right on the money. This week has really been oriented towards testing our code, and making sure everything works.

During week five, we did run into some issues with our spark maxes, which we detail below. We also have finally fleshed out and tuned our limelights. We still need to finish up our LEDs, but right now that is on the backburner.

Updates after week 6: We’ve done a lot of code testing! We’ve even made a cubic regression model in order to deal with gravity affecting our four bars. Below is a 3D representation of this model

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Electrical: Power ON!

Electrical has finally gone through the tough task of getting all our electrical components onto our robot. These past weeks we’ve run into some really weird electrical issues as programming and electrical work in tandem. For example, while running firmware updates, we interrupted the process somehow which caused all our spark maxes except for one to go dark. We spend about 30 minutes to an hour panicking and rerouting our budget from outreach to electrical, just in case we actually somehow had a power surge which shorted every spark max on our belly pan. However, after some research we found that the controllers had actually gotten into recovery mode, and as a result we were able to follow this guide to solve the issue.

We were finally able to get all our components on, but our robot quickly ran into weight issues, meaning electrical has had to work side-by-side with build in order to ensure we could get into the weight. As opposed to our steel belly pan, we decided to fully remanufacture it in aluminum instead. As a result, electrical staff over our ski week have had to detach the components on our main board (which are secured to be easily removable by using velcro), in order to replace it. On this year’s board, we are using a lot of mesh wrapping on our wires. The wrapping makes it very easy to keep our wires taut and hold shape, making management easy. We’ve also spent over 3 hours(!) on just getting our wires to be managed perfectly, with easy lines running through beams. We are also preparing our new kids for ventura, which is all but two weeks away (which is really once, since we have finals between now and ventura). So we are in the final stages of our robot, and we are ensuring that software and our drivers have as much time to train as possible.

We still need to squeeze in some last minute electrical fixes to ensure our system is reliable. We have a couple of sparks which got detached because they broke. In addition, removing the sparks messed up some of the wiring. While fixing that, we also need to replace some of our anderson powerpole connectors with soldering, especially for CAN and other 22 AWG connections near our swerve encoders. This is because we used crimps meant for 18 AWG on 22 AWG wire, and we didn’t anticipate the connection to be so loose. After that, the wirelets began sliding out of the crimps, leading to a lot of CAN errors.ace some of our anderson powerpole connectors with soldering, especially for CAN and other 22 AWG connections near our swerve encoders. This is because we used crimps meant for 18 AWG on 22 AWG wire, and we didn’t anticipate the connection to be so loose. After that, the wirelets began sliding out of the crimps, leading to a lot of CAN errors.

Word from the VP

As we head into competition season, we do have a lot of fix-ups to do. Some of the risks we took, such as the belly pan and the numerous side boards paid off, but some, like the CAN wire crimps, didn’t. It’s really important that we get these done ASAP to ensure that we are ready for our first regional at Ventura.

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Contributors
Varaprasad Nibhanupudi @Varalu
Chinmay Ramamurthy @Chinmayr

Photos:
Varaprasad Nibhanupudi @Varalu
Jadon Lee @Pleiades
Chinmay Ramamurthy @Chinmayr

[Team3749]

Very Late Post

Team Optix at the Ventura County Regional!

Team Optix competed in the Ventura County regional, posting a team-high record of 11-3, placing us at the 4th seed overall. This ties our team’s record for our highest placement of our robot, and only in our first competition! At VCR, we had the honor of being alliance captain, selecting team 687 Nerd Herd and team 399 Eagle Robotics. Although we didn’t end up qualifying for Houston, this was one of, if not the, greatest competition in Team Optix history, in both performance and consistency.

Build

Build did pretty well at Ventura! We did face a few challenges, but these did not restrict us from doing well in the competition. There wasn’t a point at the competition where we were still working on the robot in the queue.

At inspection, we realized that there was a minor issue with our 4 bar: while actuating it, it extends past the 12 inch extension limit. We decided that it would be better to prioritize practice matches and fix the issue mechanically back in San Diego. Until then, software placed restrictions on the height of the arm, allowing us to compete. While at inspection we were also notified that our bumper material was too thin and might rip during competition.

The issue we faced most often was displacement of our 4 bar plates after almost each match. Through getting hit in matches, our plates would shift either to the left or to the right, and we would have to loosen collars in order to reposition the plates. In order to ensure this does not happen again and again we cut up pvc and used them as spacers on the bot. This allowed us to save time and complete our build checklists before matches rather than focusing a large portion of our time on reshifting the plates. Other than that, we had a match where our intake motor’s input stage broke, but luckily it was just the outer plating of the stage. We replaced it and didn’t encounter any issue similar to that for the rest of the weekend. After a match, one of our 4 bar axles fell out due to a poorly tightened collar, but we had enough time to replace it. Our final issue was when we overtightened a standoff on the swerve module, and this prevented our function from turning, however we were able to fix it before going onto the field.

All in all, pretty minor issues, considering many issues were only a one time fix. Overall our performance as a build department was the best it has been.

Software

At Ventura, Software had our work cut out for us. By the time of the competition, we didn’t have vision or a consistently tested autonomous. This is because it’s the first time we’ve done a week two competition, meaning software had gotten an incredibly short timeframe to work on. As a result, we had to create an autonomous route throughout our competition.

Additionally, we also had to deal with issues with inspection. As mentioned before, we did not account for the arc of our intake throughout competition. This arc resulted in an extension limit of 13.5 inches as opposed to 12. Thus our intake method had to be changed, to where the arm was brought up, the four-bar moved, and the arm put down once again. While this did slow down the time it took for the intake, we still found it super effective throughout competition and the software fix enabled the success we found over the weekend.

Though we did not have a multi note autonomous routine, through good alliance selection, team strategy, and effective driving we were able to enter most playoff matches tied or even up after auto. Teleop further equalized the playing field as our subsystems were very well tuned leading us to consistent 8-9 note teleop matches ,

Electrical

Electrical went amazing for us at Ventura! We had 0 overall electrical issues through 14 official matches which has been incredible for our team.

Prior to Ventura, we finished updating our checklists and contingency plan. With our new state-of-the-art Dewalt TSTAK Clipboard, we were able to consistently keep track and organize our checklists for each match. We also completed our CBA testing, which we do prior to any of our competitions now. We test each battery through the “Discharge” test under a consistent load of 7.5 Amps until the battery reaches the cutoff voltage of 10.5V, as specified under Team 1640’s documentation of how to CBA test batteries. Through the data we’ve collected from our 9 batteries, we deemed 6 batteries as “competition usable” as those batteries had a capacity of over 12 AmpHrs, while 3 of our batteries were downgraded to “Pit Use Only” Batteries as they had a capacity less than the competition expected.

Match, Time: Practice Match 4, 0:00 into Auto, Remainder of the Match
Issue: Battery Brownout for Battery #1
Cause: Battery Charge was too low
Pre-Match Factors: The battery may not have been properly checked, voltage reading may have been checked too soon after being unplugged from the charger.
Solution: We are unsure specifically why Battery #1 Browned out, as it was fully charged as confirmed on the Battery Beak and Charger before the match, and met battery capacity requirements as per our CBA Testing. We downgraded Battery #1 to “pit-use only” until further testing could be done after the competition and put a higher emphasis on our electrical pit team to let the battery “cool” before measuring with the battery beak after taking it off the charger.

Awards

Our awards process went extremely well this year! We as a team created a brag sheet and outreach posters to ensure that we were effectively communicating with other teams and judges about our accomplishments as a team. At Ventura, we interviewed for the FIRST Impact Award, which although we did not receive, we had an amazing experience talking to judges and other teams about Team Optix Culture!

Scouting

Scouting went great for us at Ventura! We successfully scouted the majority of practice matches and all qualification matches (excluding our own), which has proven to be a massive positive for our team.

Prior to Ventura, we successfully finished the Optix Scouting App with the help of our software team. We then followed up on this with approximately 5 days of testing and making sure everyone on our scouting lead team of 3 people knew the game inside and out.

One challenge we did have was the constant lack of scouters. Ventura is an away competition for our team, meaning that we had limited people present at the event, and those who did show up often had to leave due to being called up to the pits.

We solved this by creating a schedule the night before for every single member present at the competition, which we would then send out in the morning to all our members. This reduced quite a bit of confusion as to how we would get 6 scouters to successfully scout all of our matches.

We also attempted to schedule people in blocks so they would only have one larger shift that they would have to scout for the entire weekend, making it a lot easier to balance scouting shifts given out to people: one person won’t have to scout more than someone else.

Overall, VCR has been an amazing experience for Team Optix, and we couldn’t wait to see everyone at SDR!

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Team Optix at the San Diego Regional!

Performance

While not matching the level of performance we had at Ventura, our overall performance as a team was still extremely solid. In qualifications, we went 5-4, placing 15th overall out of 51 teams. We were selected as the second pick on the 7th seeded alliance along with Alliance Captain Team 8119 TigerBotics and Team 1622 Team Spyder, both of whom we’d like to give our sincere thanks to for the playoff run. In the playoffs, we lost our initial match to Alliance 2, but then beat Alliance 3 in a close, but very unfortunate Match 6 where Team 9084 Octobots tipped over at the beginning of Teleop. We were unfortunately eliminated after advancing to Round 3, Match 9 in a tough match against the 5th seeded alliance. Overall, we ended SDR with an overall record of 6-6 throughout the regional, ending tied for 5th in playoffs, and had a blast ending off our season!

Build

Believe it or not, Build went even better at San Diego than at Ventura. On the practice day, the intake motor was oscillating and the acetal was giving out. We figured that issue out and got it fixed pretty quickly and sailed smoothly ever since. Saturday came with no mechanical issues, as did Sunday. We were able to run checklists and not have to run around, even having time to help other teams since we didn’t have to help ourselves. It’s been quite different from the years past, which I am very happy about. Hopefully we can continue this trend into water game!

Also we won the Excellence in Engineering award!

Software

Coming out of VCR, we had two big priorities:

1. Have a 4 note auto
2. Have auto-aim, and have that shoot from a distance

Both of these features had already had the bulk of their work completed prior to VCR and were just lacking the time needed for small debugging and fine-tuning. As a result, we accomplished both of these targets with great success.

Throughout the weekend, there were not one, but two stretches of 5 matches in a row where we did not miss a single shot in the speaker. And no, that’s no subwoofer shots, but shots from anywhere closer than the podium. Thanks to field-pose estimation from our two limelights and our brand new pigeon 2.0 gyroscope, we were able to not only calculate the proper angle of our arm for shooting but also to auto-align the robot to shoot from the correct orientation. These two features enabled around a 95% accuracy from anywhere within the green ellipse drawn below:

Additionally, our autonomous led to great success on the field. Though in qualifications it was often interrupted by some colliding teammates or alliance partners who wished to start in the same location, a well selected playoff alliance enabled it’s prowess to shine through, scoring dozens of points in our 3 match playoff run. Watch a closeup video of our auto on the practice field with the link below!
2024-Auto.MOV

Electrical

We faced very few electrical issues during the San Diego regional and mostly had good performance. A few issues we faced were as follows. We had a broken JST connector for one of the SparkMaxes on our drivetrain, and had to crimp the JSTs again. We also had a disconnected CAN connection for one of our motor controllers, that we just had to reconnect. Our biggest issue started with our intake motor controller(the one which turns the polycarb rollers) whose status light didn’t turn on and was unresponsive. We tried putting it in recovery mode but nothing about the situation changed. Assuming it was an issue due to the SparkMax, we switched out the Spark and sent the bot off to our final quals match as the light turned on when we tested. However, during the match, the intake didn’t move, and upon inspection at the end of the match it looked like the status light for the new spark didn’t turn on as well. Testing the old spark, we knew that it was broken, but it was clear that something external broke the spark. We connected a different motor’s spark to the same APP connection, and it worked fine, so we knew the issue came from the motor side and not the PDH. Thus, with help from Joe, a CSA at SDR, we were given a suggestion to switch both the spark and motor, and it worked from there. Playoffs went without a hitch, with the exception of having to switch out a 20A Fuse for a 10A Fuse for our VRM due to a rule violation R617, which specifies that any device powering the Radio must be protected by a 10A fuse. This issue had gone unnoticed until that point, as our team and many others were still in the mindset of the VRM being powered by a 20A Fuse as it is on the PDP. We made the respective changes and did not see any further issues.

Match, Time: Qualification Match 76, 0:04 into Auto, Remainder of the Match
Issue: Intake Motor (REV NEO 1.1) Not Working
Cause: SPARK MAX Internal Issue, NEO 1.1 Internal Issue
Pre-Match Factors: Motor and SPARK MAX were not properly inspected, motors and controllers not inspected prior to competition.
Solution: We switched out both the NEO 1.1 & SPARK MAX for new ones, which resolved the issue. Much of this issue was unavoidable due to it being an internal issue within the NEO 1.1 & SPARK MAX, however we are taking steps to do spare Motor and Motor Controller inspection prior to Competition.

Awards

At the San Diego Regional Competition we refined our impact presentation process with our new poster design. We were additionally much better prepared for talking to judges in pits, with our pit crew having a more in depth understanding of competitions following their second regional competition, eventually leading us to winning the Excellence in Engineering Award. Finally for the first time in Team Optix history, our Team President Noah Simon won the Dean’s List Finalist Award.

Scouting

Scouting at SDR went smoothly for us, building upon the lessons learned at Ventura. We once again effectively scouted the majority of practice matches and all qualification matches.

Following our success at Ventura, we once again utilized the Optix Scouting App, which we had successfully completed prior to Ventura with the assistance of our software team. Additionally, we conducted thorough testing on the Optix Scouting app to ensure that everything was still working and functional.

SDR being our home competition also allowed for a surplus of scouters at all times, which was thanks to our great member turnout at SDR. This removed the added stress of trying to ensure we had enough scouters during crucial moments, especially when we were swapping scouters because their shifts had just ended.

Another adjustment we made was to address the calendar flaws we encountered at Ventura due to people being unable to show up for their scouting shifts. To mitigate this issue, we set up alternate scouters whom we could call upon in case someone couldn’t make it.

Overall, the lessons learned from Ventura were instrumental in optimizing our scouting efforts at SDR, contributing to our team’s scouting success once again.

Team Optix is so thankful to end the season off with a great alliance and looking forward to the next season!

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Contributors
Thien-Nam Huynh
Rudra Jani @rjani
Varalu Nibhanupudi @Varalu
Chinmay Ramamurthy @Chinmayr
Noah Simon @tubularturtle8
Sharanya Tripathi
Alexander Zhang @alexzhang3749

Photos
Mateo Adeppa
Katherine Chen
Alexander Zhang @alexzhang3749

Offseason Comp Recaps Coming Soon