I ended up ending my FRC adventures a year early and leaving my old team (and I don’t plan on joining a new team), but I was curious if there are any cool engineering projects or things I can learn outside of FRC as a student which might be a similar vibe which I can do. I have a bunch of ideas, but I’m curious about anything I missed that I could dive into.
I have some experience with FRC design/CAD and logistics, but I’m mostly looking to learn a lot and work on something interesting—preferably not another competition. (I’ve looked into a bunch of competitive STEM stuff, and it’s not for me.)
Any ideas on cool projects? I’m interested in startups and product development and have some hobbies in education/learning optimization.
I’m based in Washington and am a Senior for reference.
Look into insect weight combat robotics. The PNW has historically been home to several well known teams and events. The 3D printed ant weight (1 lb weight limit) class is especially accessible.
Empirically speaking, almost half of my combat robotics club at the university is former FRC students; there’s apparently some sort of draw, there…
West Coast is big in Aviation, Washington especially ( My cousin is a mechanic out there). I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t hobby flying clubs in the area for RC and also real planes. RC flying gets to combine RC fun with learning about aeronautics engineering which we never really get to touch in FRC. Make your own plane designs, custom accessories, or work in automatic flying with microcontrollers, it’s good practice designing in small scale but strong frames. Also would give you a community to connect with which always makes a new hobby easier to stick with.
Home robot kits I’ve bought for fun and hacking:
Duckietown (Jetson nano based self driving robot car with AprilTag road signs)
Romi (frc compatible mini bot)
Jetcar (similar to duckie town)
Robot Arm servo kits (5 servos, a generic claw and Arduino with servo driver hat)
S.c.u.t.t.l.e. (mobile robot with decent payload and size)
Buy a power wheels car or vehicle on Craigslist and convert it to Arduino controlled for fun
Build your own Roomba, this is actually really tough due to the challenge of building a vacuum system. You can buy existing Roomba chassis’s online and then add your own controls, but that’s not as fun.
Sometimes looking at maker types on YouTube gives you an idea. Mark Rober, Peter Sripol, William Osman/Michael Reeves (sometimes), James Bruton all post robotic, engineering based content that has gotten me working in stuff they tried to see if I could too.
Find a local Rube Goldberg group/competition/design thing.
That said I’d also suggest looking into R/C aircraft. (As was suspected: There’s no fewer than 17 flying sitesthat have intro pilots within 200 miles of Seattle… and that’s about a quarter of the total within that range.)
I would suggest model railroading, but that might be a bit far from the “design” sort of thing for your taste.
If you’re looking to learn a lot, the biggest benefit of competitions is that they often provide structure for mentorship that’s hard for teenagers to find organically. If you’re open to a competition that’s very different from FRC, I’m a big fan of Project Invent (more science-fair style - you meet with someone in your community that faces a problem, design and build a physical technology product that addresses their problem, and present at a regional showcase).
Another possible way to learn a lot from an expert mentor could be to get a job, if you have the skills to get something interesting. I’ve had FRC students get jobs as machinists, CAD technicians, and 3D-printer-operators at engineering companies before; if you did similar things on your team and parted with your old team on good terms, a mentor or sponsor might be able to hook you up with something.
If you’re interested in startups and product development, you might pick up some useful insights from working at a start-up, even doing something mundane like manning the phones. Alternatively, if you have a little seed money, you could buy a serviceable 3D-printer, cricut, or similar for <$300 and start making trinkets to sell on Etsy or to your peers - again, even if you don’t want to be in the pokemon-keychain-business long-term, running a side hustle like that would be valuable experience toward understanding how businesses work if you want to someday start your own company. I’ve also had a student start up a moderately successful side hustle designing websites during his senior year of high school, so that could be an option if you’re into coding and graphic design.
And since you’re interested in education, a tutoring gig could give you valuable experience, either to apply towards a future career or to figure out that you actually don’t want a career in education.
If you’re just looking for cool project ideas that you can do on your own without a mentor or a competition structure, Instructables is a great resource. They have user-submitted tutorials for making just about anything; I built a set of bookshelves from a tutorial I found on Instructables, and they have tutorials for all kinds of cool electronics, programming, and other STEM-type projects too, as well as cooking, art, knitting, cosplay costumes, and other crafty-type stuff.
