6423 Iron Patriots | 2024 Offseason Thread

Hey everyone, welcome to the 6423 Iron Patriots 2024 Offseason thread! After our team had the best performance since we were founded in 2016 during the FRC Crescendo season, we are devoting a substantial amount of time this offseason to preparing our new and returning members for the 2025 FRC Reefscape season.

We intend to post somewhat regular updates of our projects, training efforts, and outreach events.

9 Likes

One of my favorite teams, best of luck!

1 Like

Thank you! We can’t wait to see 9016’s amazing success this season!

1 Like

September 27th | Update One

Weeks of 9/9, 9/16, 9/23

First Weeks

Over the past few weeks, we’ve dedicated most of our time and effort into recruiting new members to our team. Our efforts proved to be successful, with us having about 20 new members of the team come to all of our past 3 meetings. For our first meeting, we focused on getting everyone accustomed to FIRST, FRC, and our team. Starting with our second meeting, we split into subteams, so that each member could explore the subteam(s) they’re interested in and learn more about what they would do in such subteams. Each subteam has prioritized teaching new members all the skills they need for the rest of the offseason, and later, during the season.

Subteams

Build Team
During our second meeting, build team did a safety presentation demonstrating all the necessary precautions that need to be taken while in our manufacturing shop. The week after, for our third meeting, build team split into two groups. The first group consisted of returning members, with the second group being brand new members. The returning member group worked on replacing the tire treads on our 2024 robot, Decibel, while the new member group utilized the manufacturing skills they learned in the first few weeks to make spacers.


The manufacturing process of spacers is explained

A demonstration of how the spacers should be manufactured is given

Electrical Team
Electrical team spent our third meeting stripping our 2023 robot for parts, while explaining the wiring and electrical parts and aspects during the process, so that members got a basic introduction on FRC electronics.


Members learn about electronics

Software Team
Our software team spent the past two meetings teaching our new members the basics of Java, and other software aspects that they’ll be using, such as WIPlib.


Java is explained

Media Team
Media team got together and has been brainstorming ideas for pin designs for the Reefscape season, along with planning and organizing more outreach events for our team to hold.


Pin designs are sketched

Outreach

In addition to preparing and training our new members, we’ve been emphasizing our push for outreach this year. On August 20th, we hosted a STEM challenge at our local library, Emma S. Clark, for kids K-6 where we tasked them with constructing a device to prevent a water balloon from popping.

Right after, on August 21st, we held our second annual Sponsor Night event, where we invited both former and potential new sponsors, along with parents and administration of our school, to come learn more about our team and robot.

A little while later, on September 10th, our team got together to set up over 50 flags outside of our high school, Ward Melville, in memory of the September 11th attacks.

On September 15th, we held a beach cleanup in collaboration with a local nonprofit organization, Shore Solutions, and collected over 20 pounds of trash from Port Jefferson Centennial Beach.

Other

Read our September Newsletter.
Watch our newest YouTube upload, Legacy.

Thanks for reading!


Photos taken by Connor M. & Ben M.

4 Likes

October 11th Update Two

Weeks of 9/30, 10/7

Familiarizing With Robotics

Now that we’re over a month into our robotics meetings, we’ve switched focus from introducing our new members to the team, to now focusing on training and improving their skills through hands-on experience.

Subteams

Electrical
For the past two weeks, electrical team has continued taking apart the 2023 parts and getting hands on experience with various electrical components.


Electrical components are explained

Software
Software team has continued working on learning Java basics, along with starting to program our retired T-Shirt cannon, with hopes of getting it up and running prior to our school’s annual Christmas Volleyball tournament, so we can utilize it during the event.


Programming team learns about the mechanisms on the T-Shirt cannon

Build
Build team has continued to teach new members manufacturing skills, encouraging common safety practices while in the workshop, and certifying members on the machines. During our fourth meeting, some of our build members worked on organizing some of our mechanical part storage boxes, as some of them got very unorganized throughout the Crescendo season.


Members continue learning about machines prior to certification


Supply boxes are organized

Over the past two weeks, build was also able to finish working on the treads, meaning that we could finally start…

Drive Practice

During our fifth meeting, we were finally able to start drive practice in preparation for the Kenneth R. Vessey Jr. Robotics/Half Hollow Hills Invitational off-season competition, hosted by team 3624. Since both our team’s driver and drive coach were seniors last year, we moved our operator to driver, leaving the operator and drive coach roles open for tryouts. This year, we plan on having a second drive team to allow for us to practice defensive scenarios.



The robot’s battery and bumpers are setup prior to starting drive tryouts

Sheet Metal

Earlier this week, one of our sponsors, Sigma Aerospace Metals, generously dropped off tons of extra sheet metal for our team to use, which we expect to last well into the 2025-2026 season. We are incredibly grateful for their support and donation.

WCP Cadathon

Our Design team has been hard at work on the West Coast Products CADathon, implementing strategic design and brainstorming processes that we plan to use at the start of the Reefscape season.



Intake mechanism for the CADathon

Outreach

In the past few weeks, we’ve continued our outreach events and community service. On September 28th, we hosted a stand at our high school, Ward Melville’s annual homecoming carnival, where visitors were tasked with guiding a robot through an obstacle course.

On October 5th, we held another STEM challenge at Emma Clark Library, where this time, kids K-6 were tasked with creating boats, out of craft supplies, with the goal of floating in water, and then holding a cargo load of lollipops.

Thanks for reading!


Photos taken by Connor M., Ben M., Jinxu Z., & Ayush M.

2 Likes

October 28th Update Three

Weeks of 10/14, 10/21

Comp Prep

With our members getting accustomed to the team over the past couple of weeks, we were finally able to start preparing for our off-season competition, the Half Hollow Hills Invitational. Going into the competition, we made sure that each and every one of our team members had a role at the competition, knew how to fulfill that role, and most importantly, have fun.

Scouting
With us consistently being a top 8 alliance for the first time after qualification matches last season, we realized we had a need for data on other teams, and therefore expanded our scouting efforts past just writing down information on pieces of paper, which is why we started using team 8033’s scouting app, Lovat. We plan on continuing to use Lovat in the 2025 Reefscape season, so we also utilized it for this competition.

As a large majority of our scouting team is composed of new members, our first goal was making sure that they understood the game. We started off by explaining the general structure of an FRC competition, explaining alliances, qualifications, alliance selections, playoffs, and more. After that, we showed them our condensed game recap, which you can view here, then we dove a lot deeper into the game details, pieces, and field elements while simultaneously showing them the corresponding buttons on Lovat Collection App so that they understood the correlation.



Scouting is taught

Drive Team
At our final meeting before Half Hollow Hills, we wrapped up operator tryouts and chose a set person to be our operator for the season. We spent the rest of the meeting practicing more drive scenarios so that our brand new operator could gain some more experience before the competition.



Drive team practices

Our driver is hit by a note thrown by a member, impairing his driver ability (jk)

Pit Crew
We used drive tryouts and practice as an opportunity to have pit-crew work on replacing the robot bumpers and battery in between tryout and practice runs, to help simulate the actual work that would be done in between our matches at the competition.


Pit crew replaces the battery and bumper on the robot

The robot is fixed up in a simulated systems check

WCP Cadathon Submission

Besides our time spent preparing for Half Hollow Hills, our design team was able to finish our submission for the West Coast Products Cadathon. You can view our submission of our robot, Point Guard, here.

Thanks for reading!


Photos taken by Connor M., Ben M., Jinxu Z., & Nolan J.

Not sure if you have mentioned this previously, but how do you recruit new members? Good luck with the rest of your off-season!

We mainly recruit new members through school posters, loudspeaker announcements, and word of mouth. Our team’s mentors promote the team in their tech and mechanical design classes to hopefully spark interest in robotics, which is helped considering our school has a pretty decently sized stem program. Current members also encourage their friends, often bringing in new students who join with their own friends too, which boosts our recruitment. Team culture is also a pretty big role; our team makes sure to be incredibly welcoming towards new members, which helps them grow accustomed to the team and more likely to join and stay.

1 Like

November 3rd | Update Four

Week of 10/27

Half Hollow Hills

Last Sunday, we participated in the annual off-season competition, the Half Hollow Hills Invitational, hosted by Team 3624. As always, our goal with the HHH Invitational is to provide the team with key competition experience and knowledge prior to the season starting, which we believe we were incredibly successful at this year.


Unloading at HHH

Our robot at HHH

Qualifications

Scouting
As mentioned in our previous update, we wanted to start training members to scout matches as early as possible. Between our last meeting before the competition and the competition itself, we assigned the scouters “scouting tests”, in which they’d all be assigned a match and robot (the same for everyone), and they would be required to screen record their scouting on Lovat collection app and upload the video to google classroom, then fill out some additional questions regarding their respective robot regarding strategy and team cohesion to better expand their examining of robot strategy and decision making. We found this to work incredibly well, as it allowed our team to examine each scouter’s scouting individually and point out any mistakes or misconceptions they might have, and this led to our scouting data being incredibly accurate during the actual competition, along with leading to many of our new members being interested in learning more about robot design and match strategy.

While having good scouting data and Lovat is sufficient for teams, we wanted to easily visualize all our data in one place, so we spent a ton of time designing a spreadsheet where we can easily input scouting data from each match and have additional calculated statistics and metrics for each team.


Our team strategizes using data from our spreadsheet

Challenges
In between our matches, our pit crew was hard at work making sure that our robot was ready to go long before the next match. Prior to every match, we would go down a pit checklist, ensuring that every part of the robot was ready to go for when we went on the field. From replacing batteries, changing the bumpers, and even replacing the chain on our intake when it fell off after a match, we were always ready for the next.

Even with our brand-new drive team, we were still able to play incredibly well during our matches. At least, for the most part, as we had mechanical issues throughout the competition and unfortunately, our time spent actually driving during tele-op was cut short.


Drive team controlling the robot during tele-op


Robot on the field

Network Switch Issues
Throughout the entire competition, our network switch connection between our roboRIO and radio was faulty and unreliable which we believe led to issues with our robot losing and regaining connection at some points throughout a majority of our matches causing us to be partially or fully disabled.


Our robot in the pit


Software team analyzes issues

Alliance Selection

Despite the mechanical issues we had, we were able to pull through in our last qualification match and ended quals as the 12th ranked team. We ended up being the 1st pick of the 2nd alliance, and used our scouting data spreadsheet to choose a 2nd pick for. Our alliance was 810, us, 4458, and 3624’s extra robot acting as a backup when necessary.


Alliance selections

Playoffs

Unfortunately, our issues with our network switch continued into playoffs, leading us to be immobile for a majority of our time in tele-op. Additionally, in our 2nd play-off match, another robot had a high-speed collision with us, and accidentally drove on top of our swerve, destroying our 3d printed swerve cover. Despite this, we continued on, but unfortunately our network switch issues led to us being disabled once again, and we were fully eliminated.


Our broken swerve covers

Lessons Learned

While we were unable to actively compete for a majority of the competition, all members of our team were able to gain crucial experience, even if they weren’t necessarily a new member. From scouting, to pit crew, to drive team, every single person was able to gain knowledge about what it’s like to compete in these competitions.


Our team loading the robot on the field

Cake

While we were disappointed that our robot did not function for a majority of the competition, it was saved when we were presented a cake from team 9016 as part of a gift exchange between us and them! We gave team 9016 over 50 custom pins, and had an awesome time meeting some of their members.


Cake from 9016

Outreach

On October 30th, we held a stand at our school’s annual Trick or Treat Street event. This year, we had a miniature robot obstacle course, along with having a robot ring toss, allowing visitors to change the angle of intake mechanism on our Crescendo competition robot, Decibel, in intervals and then shoot our a note, with the goal of scoring it on one of three cones.



Kids are tasked with guiding a robot in an obstacle course

Thanks for reading!


Photos taken by Aditya K., Connor M., Ben M., & Nolan J.

3 Likes