4276: The Surf City Vikings | 2024 Build Blog | Open Alliance

Zook · October 19, 2023, 5:42pm

Hello! Thank you for stopping by the Surf City Vikings Build Thread.
4276CARFLAGsmall

Who We Are
We are a team based out of Marina High School in Huntington Beach, CA. Our team is currently still recruiting, but we’ll likely have 25 active members throughout the build and competition season. Of these students, most are 10th and 11th graders, so we should have a lot of experience building going forward.

Team History
Since this is our first OA year, a short introduction might be in order (TBA link). Our rookie year was 2012, and we’ve been growing ever since. Our team has had its ups and downs, earning spots at Champs four times (plus one waitlist ), and making it into the elimination rounds at most events. (still need that “alliance captain → winner” feather in our caps)

Our Goals For 2024
We have a new Robotics course at Marina and we’re going to incorporate a lot of the documentation required for OA into the class. We hope to provide a truly open book view into our workings (for better or worse). We want to use feedback from this thread to improve both our robot and our team as a whole. And I (the OP, Mr Zook) hope that the rest of these posts will be made by the students!

Links:
CAD: coming soon (Onshape) [but here’s 2023’s unhinged CAD… it’ll be better this year!]
IG: Surf City Vikings 4276 (@frc4276) • Instagram photos and videos
Website: www.vikings4276.com (it should be updated soon!)

Zook · December 9, 2023, 4:24am

Old robot CAD ported to Onshape back to 2015.
2015 - 2020 document mates don’t work… (imported from Solidworks) so don’t try to move anything!

2015 - Viking IV - CAD
2016 - Berserker! - CAD
2017 - Forseti - CAD
2018 - Jotun - CAD
2019 - Skoll - CAD
2020 - Beetle?** - CAD
2022 - Dimber - CAD
2023 - Cubert/Cubert McDuck - CAD

**We named the Fall 2022 version of our 2020 robot Beetle and ran it at Beach Blitz '22. Cannot remember what the 2020 comp robot was named.

Kuttappi · December 15, 2023, 7:35am

Hey!
Glad to see another Cali team join Open Alliance this year! I can’t wait to see your summaries as you work throughout Build Season. Can’t wait to see y’all at Ventura this year, good luck in Crescendo 2024!

Zook · January 7, 2024, 5:20pm

Our empty 2024 CAD: Onshape Link

Team 4276 will be posting updates on Sundays. We meet Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and “all day” Saturdays. Today is a quick kickoff update.

There is a lot of info in this post. But, no designs yet. We had a lot of students out for kickoff, so we do not want to finalize anything until they have the chance to contribute.

KICKOFF!

First, I think everyone on the team is AMPED (get it?!) for Crescendo. It looks like a really fun game, with a good balance of simple and complex challenges. The added strategy of the coopertition and amplification bonuses are cool.

You know it’s a good game when as soon as the video ends students are all on their devices reading the rules and coming up with good ideas for mechanisms (even though they weren’t supposed to yet!).

After a healthy 20-30min of chatter we got down to itemizing game DOs and DON’Ts. What can you do to score? What can you do to get penalized? How easy is it to gift a free ENSEMBLE w/ 2 tech fouls??? We checked out the Onshape field CAD to get a feel for spacing and shooting angles. and moved on to scoring analysis.

Scoring Analysis
We’ll do scoring rates (points per second) once we get a feel for how much time it might take to complete objectives. For now we just looked at perceived difficulty. Noting where an objective required another to be completed first, or some special robot feature:

The team felt that on a 1-5 scale Harmony was going to be a 6. We’ll see how that shakes out, but two robots trying to climb the same chain may be easier with well-practiced teams. Some of these other difficulty scores are reflective of seeing the Kitbot do them with relative ease.

Need/Want/Wish List
After some more discussion in groups we went through the ability/skill list below. What can a robot do? This included both scoring and non-scoring actions. We started by putting all the abilities down. Then we marked as “need” any skill that the Kitbot had. The rest were then marked based on what the team felt was necessary for our team ability level.

With the needs shown above, and a lot of practice, we feel we can be very competitive. However, we’ll need to design a robot that allows for flexible mechanism placement. That way we can attempt to add the wants to the design if prototypes show they are a valuable addition.

Of course, all the students wanted to talk about was floor pickups and how to score the trap.

Robot Archetypes
It’s been a couple of years since we did a robot archetype breakdown. Reading this thread got me thinking about it again. So, we did some basic looks: Kitbot, various Kitbot++, Mid-tiers. We didn’t do the “high performer” because we figured it was just “do everything well”. We looked at what the robot should do during Auto, Teleop Cycles, and Endgame.

Robot:	Kitbot
Auto:	Speaker auto, leave.
Cycle:	Cross field, source note, cross field, speaker shot
Endgame:	Park, or keep scoring

Then the three ways we could easily improve on Kitbot:

Robot:	Kitbot ++ (add Amp scoring)
Auto:	Speaker auto, leave.
Cycle:	Cross field, source note, cross field, speaker/amp shot
Endgame:	Park, or keep scoring

Robot:	Kitbot ++ (add Climb)
Auto:	Speaker auto, leave.
Cycle:	Cross field, source note, cross field, speaker shot
Endgame:	Park, or keep scoring, or Climb

Robot:	Kitbot ++ (add ground intake)
Auto:	Speaker auto, leave, pick up
Cycle:	Source note or get from floor, speaker shot
Endgame:	Park, or keep scoring

Looking at these we realized that our Needs list was essentially a merging of the first two Kitbot++ ideas:

Robot:	Mid-tier, Kitbot + Amp and Climb
Auto:	Speaker or Amp score, leave
Cycle:	Cross field, source note, cross field, speaker/amp shot
Endgame:	Climb, or keep scoring

We decided that this was our primary goal for Crescendo.

Next Steps
We will do some more discussion on Monday, the begin Kitbot. We have an old KoP chassis and our off-season swerve to play with, and test the Kitbot scoring mechanism on. We will be building a new MaxSwerve chassis once we have our design finalized.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share your ideas and opinions below.

Zook · January 12, 2024, 3:54pm

Mid-Week Update
Most of the kids are working on various parts of the Kitbot currently. Others are testing wheels for note-shooters and ground intakes. While a floor intake was on our “wants” list, we looked back at several games and realized that we regularly did this: put floor intake as a “want” and then it becomes our primary method of intaking game pieces. In fact, in 2017 we got gears from floor without any ability to get them from the slot

With that in mind I couldn’t help myself and threw together a KrayonCad of a static angle shooter, with floor intake. In the interest of minimizing rotation, I used the linear slide.

Turns out the kids were already thinking of something like that. But they didn’t like the “deflector” I put on the front. “What is that…?” they asked. I said, “It’s a deflector to change the angle of the shot. You know, so we can shoot from up close and just ramp the shot into the speaker.” They had didn’t look to happy, and said it would be easier to just have a teeter-totter. So, we tested the deflector idea:

Not promising.
So they cadded up a teeter totter that had a linear rack intake. And, it looks pretty clean.

Should have more testing videos to post at the end of the week. But the top/bottom intake wheels are working good. And the left/right shooter setup is, too.

A big thanks to all the other Open Alliance and Ri3D teams who have posted their findings. The kids are moving much faster this year as a result!

Zook · January 14, 2024, 9:24pm

Week 2
We’ve already posted a mid-week update, so this will be brief. Have a lot of students out sick and studying for finals. Wish I could say we had a full robot with multi-piece autos… but we’re not quite there. Or anywhere near. BUT we’re making progress.

Students were assembling the kitbot parts cut during the week and noticed a lot of the holes weren’t lining up for the motor places and brackets. Since the CNC router we own but can’t use (long story that hopefully has a happen end very soon), we’ve been prototyping by GLUING printouts of parts onto materials, then cutting/drilling by hand. PMC: Paper Manually Controlled.

However, if you print out a 1:1 cad drawing for a part, you need to make sure the printer settings are set to “actual size”, not “shrink to fit printable area”! Everything was about 95% the correct size… and needs to be recut.

I missed uploading some of the initial testing of wheels. So here are some YouTube links.

First shot:

Varying Speed:

Deflector Test:

Human Amp Shot Miss… gotta have a little fun:

And the long distance shot makes it:

The Trap
At kickoff we labeled the TRAP as a “wish” and almost as a “don’t even think about it”. After students came up with their informal CAD concept for the robot, it seems there is a chance it can score a trap shot!

…IF it can have an 18" travel on the climber, that is directly in line with the center of mass, and the chain isn’t swinging.
Maybe.

Zook · January 21, 2024, 10:00pm

Week 2

It was a pretty productive week…

KitBot
After finishing building our from-scratch Kitbot shooter, we did some testing and found it was unable to make a shot into the speaker. After some motor swaps, and a lot of fiddling we realized we just weren’t getting enough height. Then we realized our from-scratch spacers for the upper polycarbonate sheet weren’t long enough. Increasing those reduced some friction on the note. BUT, shots still weren’t going in.

We checked the REV Hardware software and saw the Sparks had a 40A limit set. Which should be fine. But when we changed that to 60A, the shots when in just fine.

The plan for the Kitbot is to keep it on our 2023 off-season chassis, and test Apriltag code using the Limelight. We did not use Apriltags at all last season, so we need some practice. And, worst case (maybe not actual “worst case”), we use move it to a new chassis and take it to competition.

Stage Build
We built the team element stage. And it holds a 75lb freshman!

We actually had two kids sitting on the chain at one point, but decided to not test three.

AND the kitbot can shoot the trap… at least here.

Prototyping
Didn’t get a lot of prototyping finished. Students are still making parts by hand since we don’t have our new shop space (or the 240v to power the CNC router we bought… long story). But they’r emoving along. Have the lower assembly of the intake built, and will be setting up power on Monday.

Final exams are next week, so how much we get accomplished is up in the air. But I’d say we’re doing pretty well compared to past years!

Zook · January 28, 2024, 4:45pm

Week 3!
Slow-ish week, with some big changes.
It was our school’s first semester final exams week. So fair number of kids at the Monday meeting and far fewer on Wednesday.

Monday:
I expressed my concern to the students that we were going all-in on a design that was achievable, but on an extended timeline.

We tried a large arm last year (initially with two joints) and found it a challenge. We ended up with a single joint with position setpoints. It worked, but it was finicky. The above design would be a single pivot, but with a much heavier assembly… with a linear slide popping in and out. Did we really think we could make this, test it, and “perfect” it before competition? I also saw the Mechanical Advantage build thread where they had a very similar design that they shelved because it was “insane.” This prompted my big question:
How are some teams already testing multi-piece auto videos? …and we’re still trying to figure out a design?

The answer: They’re doing things they already know how to do. (For the most part… there’s also access to rapid prototyping tools, big brains, etc.)

I tasked the students to discuss other ideas we had early on, look at the REV Starter Bot and WCP CC, and think about what we could achieve quickly. I left them in the room to work things out without me influencing their discussion, either actively or passively, and came back 5 minutes later.

Their decision: let’s try making a four-bar work.

We’ve done a four bar before recently, and the REV bot used one, so it seemed more approachable. Two groups then set out to figure out geometry, one in CAD, the other with wood sticks with lots of holes. They ended up with something that looked like it would work. They then tested it on an old prototype side panel for the original intake/shooter:

Wednesday & Saturday:
Everybody had to leave early on Monday to study up for finals, so we broke until Wednesday. The next task was to ditch the cardboard and redo it with plywood and do intake tests:

Realized this was not the correct height off of the ground so they elevated it, and then put covers on the intake to make sure notes would actually follow the path we want:

Happy with the results (students and me!) they set about getting the CAD updated.

Still a ways to go. But I think they’re on a good path with the redesign.

Old Design:

Ground and source intake
Speaker scorer from multiple angles
Amp scoring via spitting out from the intake
May exceed size restriction if software/sensors have issues

New Design:

Floor intake only (currently)
Speaker scorer from multiple angles
NO amp scorer, yet.
Won’t exceed size restriction unless something goes VERY wrong… and it’s crazy low to the ground.

Wrap Up
I think we’re in a better place in terms of achievable design. And there is plenty of space to add a dedicated amp mechanism (which I have some ideas for…).

Oh, and one more thing…
We finally have our CNC router (Axiom AR8 V5). Now it’s just time to figure out how to use it and get some of that precision manufacturing so many other teams have!

davepowers · January 28, 2024, 5:52pm

Good pivot y’all, new design looks simple and plays to your strengths! Awesome work!

Zook · February 3, 2024, 4:53am

Mid-week-ish update.

Router working. Time to work the router.

Zook · February 4, 2024, 3:42pm

Week 4
I wish there were tons of videos and photos to share, but it’s been a slower week in terms of physical robot parts. But we did do some good work on team dynamics… I hope! I know most people read these OA build blogs for insights on top/bottom shooters, or how the notes fare after 500 cycles, but I think sharing this can be helpful.

Monday was a day off for the kids (staff development for us), and not a lot of kids showed up in the afternoon. So we did what we could, but didn’t make much progress on parts.

Wednesday was different.
I decided it was going to start off with a “Shape up or ship out” discussion. About half of our team of 20ish (I should really have an exact count in my head, shouldn’t I?) are new to robotics. And a lot of them are attending meetings at a lower rate than the returning members, or leaving early to catch their rides, and not attending on Saturdays. I knew a lot of the 3rd year kids (bulk of experienced kids are 3rd year, some 2nd year) were a little fed up with this, as was I. Being blunt when I need to be, I laid it out like this:

As a small team we need committed members
Gaining valuable experiences should be a higher priority than logging hours
Low attendance hours means less contextual understanding
Low contextual understanding means less engagement during meetings

I asked the students (almost everyone was in my room at this point), if they had issues they wanted to discuss. Predictably, no one volunteered . So I told the students I would go in the hall and allow them to do two things:

Less engaged members share what they need to be more engaged
More engaged members to share any frustrations they felt

I ended up stuck in the hall for almost an hour. They wouldn’t let me back in.

Some students shared that they felt their was a lack of communication on the team that made them feel excluded. Others felt that tasks were too large-scale and wanted smaller, more approachable tasks (i.e. “get measurements for part X from CAD”, rather than “cut the intake panel”) because they felt overwhelmed. Others missed so much they didn’t even know what the current robot design was!

The students then created a more granular task list, broke themselves into teams, and assigned tasks. Perfect.

I had started the meeting saying something along the lines of “It’s hard to plan jobs and tasks for people when you don’t know they’re going to show up.” It’s also really hard to hand a partially completed job off to someone just so they can have something to do. Hopefully these lessons stick, and kids show up on time and often.

Saturday
We had just about every student attending (or at least contacting members or myself to say they couldn’t make it). It was so busy we actually ran out of build tasks and had to cycle students through cleaning/organizing and practicing microphone throws (spoiler: everyone sucks).

We still have a LOT of work to do. CAD needs a lot of tidying up and dimensioning. Belts and pulleys, gear reductions, and a bunch of other stuff are still unresolved. Fingers crossed we get that wrapped up before the end of week 5!

Ventura is a little over 4 weeks away…

BryceHanson · February 4, 2024, 3:56pm

Thank you so much for sharing this! I think team dynamics stuff like this often flies under the radar, and it’s important to talk about it. Sounds like y’all got to a better place by the end of Wednesday.

Everett33 · February 4, 2024, 6:44pm

If you are planning to build the linkage in the Gif and you are planning to power both link arms with a chain drive off the same motor, there will need to be a gear ratio if you do not already have one between the front chain and rear chain. The two link arms do not rotate 1:1 when going through their range of motion.

Zook · February 4, 2024, 7:40pm

Good eye!
Yes, I’ve already spoken about the students about that. First time doing a 4 bar with a motor drive, so lots to learn. There’s some other mechanically impossible Easter eggs in there that are getting fixed.

Andrew_L · February 4, 2024, 7:42pm

I love getting these updates about one of my favorite teams. So excited to see your robot this year, Tom!

miller_77 · February 5, 2024, 5:52am

Team 4322 is also building our first 4 bar this year but we are only planning on driving one of the arms and letting the other one follow. What advantage is there to powering both of the linkage arms?

Zook · February 5, 2024, 3:17pm

I think they were just pointing out that in the original image the front and rear arms where powered, both on one side, and that if that was our plan, we’d need to gear the motors differently. Don’t think they were endorsing it.

The students moved to powering both front arms individually (don’t mind the lack of reduction just yet! Lots still to be done)

I’m nudging (pushing?) for a modified REV Starter Bot system that uses one motor with reduction to drive a shaft that moves both front arms, and the rear arms follow. (image from Starter Bot DRIVE TOWER cad)

Zook · February 6, 2024, 3:50am

So… the kids rigged up a real top/bottom launcher today.*
Even with the inconsistencies, its top end smoked our side-to-side launcher.

Each tile square is 1 foot

Looks like the kids will be CADing up a new launcher.

Now I know what @anon91718515 was talking about…

*NEO 1:1 to each roller, 4" blue banebot wheels in the middle, and 4" colsons on the edges of each roller.

waialua359 · February 6, 2024, 9:46am

What is your compression that you are running? We got our best results at 1/4" with 4" wheels.

Zook · February 6, 2024, 3:33pm

To be honest, I have no idea! But it wasn’t extreme compression, so 1/4" is probably about right.
And if that’s what the Hawaiian Kids found works, we’ll be sure to test it next.

…along with the 3" REV ION Grip wheels (Hard) I bought (from their BOM). But they’re really hard, and need cleaning to be at all grippy on the notes.