This year, my team will try to implement a more effective service group in competition that we are calling Service Angels. We would like to create a separate pit cart that can be mobile, to go to any team’s pit area where it is needed, and carry the types of supplies and tools that are most commonly used. I’m wondering if anyone on 1678 can provide me with information about the Citrus Service Cart and supplies that would help us in our design process. Thank you!
Mr. N
I know that @adhersh is involved with 254’s similar program, Chezy Care, which operated effectively as one unit with Citrus Service at SVR (and I would assume SAC, but I wasn’t there so I can’t comment). He might have some insight.
DM me on Saturday so I don’t forget. I can get you a bunch of pictures and run through our inventory with you.
I think I speak for many people, when I say there are others that would like to see the photos and inventory as well.
@BordomBeThyName is just safeguarding us from the awesome power that is the citrus service cart. 
Can do, I didn’t realize there would be that much interest. Someone should remind me anyways, I’ll definitely forget otherwise.
@Teddy stop spilling our secrets.
If you mean by a ping on CD, did you know you can do self reminders? Tap the bookmark!
Ok HI! I am not Citrus, but 694 runs our own Service team called PulseCrew! From reading back through our help request logs from 2023 regional events, here’s what I think you’ll need most often, other than the classics (wrenches, hacksaws, zipties):
Some other notes on making a program like this successful (from my own experience, doing it both successfully and unsuccessfully)
I commend you for starting the Service Angels program on your team. We’ve found that it’s a great opportunity for more of our own students to get more experience, and to make lots of teams’ competition experiences better in the process. I trust that if I’ve missed anything, one of the PulseCrew students (
) will Slack message me to correct me before the end of the day, and I’ll make edits as that happens.
I don’t want to derail this thread and I love these service programs, but I usually word this a little differently as a volunteer. I’ve run into a few teams that would prefer to try to figure things out themselves before another team just shows up to help. I usually phrase it along the lines of “hey, my team [2846 the FireBears] can help you with this, you can find their pit [over there]”. Most times the end result is similar, but I think it’s good for teams to ask for help.
Yes please, often time us CSAs are busy tracking down connection issues or the multitude of other issues teams have, so having a resource we can utilize to help a team more in depth is really valuable.
So true!! I usually start with “Okay, do you have (list of things they need)? Do you need me to get you any of those?”
Our alliance readiness team relies on a single blue cart to organize everything needed for events. Our approach to packing involves including essential items for our robot and anticipating the needs of other teams. For instance, this past season, we prioritized packing a variety of crimps, fasteners, tubing, polycarb stock, Wago lever nuts, Andersons, and copious amounts of hot glue. To cover all bases, consider preparing extras of essential items and brainstorming potential edge cases that might arise during an event. Additionally, when lending tools such as an electric riveter or hot glue gun, we ensure a student accompanies the tool wherever it goes to maintain accountability.
Edit:
It’s also very important to practice crimping connectors that your team may not be familiar with but are still used on other robots.
Something I think goes overlooked on these service cart things is a defined list of the things you/your team can/will help solve. This is especially true for programming languages your team knows but this list might also include specialty and/or power tools your team carries to comp or particular components that you have spares of. You can put this list on a notecard, print out several, and either post them around the event or better yet, have a group of your students stop by each team’s pit, the inspector table, and pit admin, and hand out these cards.
This is
a) another excuse for your students to go talk to other teams (hooray, community building!)
b) a way to advertise what you are doing and
c) a quick reference guide for someone who isn’t sure if you could help them with whatever issue they are trying to solve
I wanted to jump in mid-season to share some of our findings from this year. Using the request logs from the PulseCrew Slack channel, I’ve built a Google Sheets stat tracker for the team.
Those Help Accepted percentages show the number of times we’ve seen an issue, come to a team, and they’ve said something like “yes we are struggling can you please help us.”
We’ve only had to build a team’s bumpers at competition once so far. The best speed bumper tactic, I think, is to make four separate pieces, one for each side, in one color, and then a wraparound velcro-on cover in another color. We’ll probably be providing more bumpers support Week 6. Trying to come into this last regional with spare bumper sets built to common chassis dimensions to give away rather than building onsite, since it’s the single most time-consuming part of PulseCrew.
Parts Lended requests ranged from a CANCoder to a hot glue gun.
I’m learning both as an RI and a PulseCrew organizer that almost no teams are using pneumatics on their robots this year. I actually have not had to inspect a single team that’s using them so far, and these data show that we’ve only serviced one pneumatics help request in two regionals. It would be nice if the request numbers were low because everyone was using pneumatics perfectly, but it seems like most teams are just not using them at all.
And the elephant in the room, the most common issue types, code debugging and autonomous routine development. Preparing software students to help look at teams’ code with them is more useful than stocking up on any part or tool. Helping teams become competitive, and not just functional, is incredibly rewarding for both our students and theirs. We are really happy that we have the people and time to help teams with no autonomous routines earn the leave points or even score a preloaded note in the speaker.
I think the real difficulty in a program like this is team members’ interactions. We try to be really mindful about how we talk to the teams they’re helping, and we make a very conscious effort to involve their students in the repairs and troubleshooting we’re guiding them through. We’ve gotten quite a few nice notes and verbal thank-yous from teams that we’re really proud of, but I always want to push PulseCrew to be better or be more effective. In Week 6, we’ll be trying out a system where, for many-hour assistance projects, we pair off our team members 1-on-1 with the members of the team we’re helping. This suggestion came from team 1511 at Finger Lakes, who helped us get a team on the field after they came to the event without legal bumpers.
I’d love to hear from other teams running assistance programs what your most common issue types are and how you’ve been running your programs!
I’d love to hear from other teams running assistance programs what your most common issue types are and how you’ve been running your programs!
I really appreciate this thread. We’ve started a program here in Arizona called the “Beak Squad” and it has been great to hear about how other similar programs work. Beak Squad was inspired by 4118’s FLOAT program that I helped found back in 2016. Most of our assistance happens before competitions, but we expanded to supporting regional events this year as well. For a cart, we’re using two Milwaukee Packout Storage Systems. One is devoted to mechanical tools and supplies and the other is for electrical and programming. Currently, we have more space than we need and we think it might be possible to condense it down to one.
We helped run Spare Parts at a couple regionals this year and that helped us a lot as we now know what materials are already available and which ones are not. Anytime a team asked us for something that neither us nor Spare Parts had, we wrote it down. That will helps us be better prepared for future events. By far, the number one thing that teams needed help with was programming (developing autos, troubleshooting code, etc.). I would love to connect in Houston with any teams running similar programs to see if we can learn from each other on how to better support teams.
That logo and the hats go insanely hard 
Thanks! This was our original logo, but we changed it so that we wouldn’t get a cease and desist letter from Best Buy 
Instead, one of our students came up with this awesome logo.
If you like the hats, you should see the vests that we wear.
The uniform and branding was really important for the future of the program. We recognize that as one team, we’ll always be limited in both resources and knowledge. The goal is to expand the squad to include students and mentors from other teams in Arizona. To do that, it was important that the Beak Squad have an identity that was separate from 6413 for members of other teams to feel welcome. That hat and vest are things that can be worn over any uniform. They also make it very easy to spot members of the Beak Squad. We decide to go with red vests so that we’re not accidently mistaken for robot inspectors (which we work closely with along with the CSAs and other volunteers).
I’m curious, for the teams that have support initiatives, are any of them collaborations with other teams or are they run by just one team? The next step in our plan is to include people from other teams. There are some logistical challenges there (training, scheduling, etc.). I’m curious if another team has already developed a system or if we’ll be the first ones.
Is there a published list of what is in the official spare parts case that FIRST provides at events? I see this form for parts that need to be returned, I know the spare parts kit contains more parts then this. https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/volunteer/spare-parts-loaner-form.pdf
How large are your teams that you can offer an additional “pit cart” to stock and assist teams with repairs? While we like to check in with teams and future alliance partners, sometimes it is difficult to get the trust to actually assist a team, sometimes we assist with a fix to our alliance partners after a match.
I certainly enjoy being a robot inspector and able to provide solutions to teams vs. simply identifying an issue and telling a team it needs to be fixed.
Have teams tried to provide this service at a new to them regional? Seems that coming to an event you have not been to before and setting up a repair service may not see a huge take rate.
We don’t actually bring a dedicated cart! All tools and parts live in our main superpit structure. Without checking our docs, I think we had 40 students in Florida and maybe 70 at Finger Lakes.
Our last South Florida Regional was in 2017, meaning this was a new event for all of our students and some of our mentors. The data show we had a higher take rate and helped a higher fraction of the teams present at this event than at Finger Lakes (which we last attended in '22, and was full of NY teams we know well) which says to me that being well-known at an event is less correlated to the success of an assistance program than we might think intuitively.
Edit because I had more thoughts: My (not currently evidence-based but maybe soon) theory is that teams who are on their first competition need much more help than teams on their second, third, &c. I would be happy to share more of our data after our Week 6 regional where we are both well-established and there is a high population of teams on their first competition. It’s historically PulseCrew’s busiest event of the year.
Spare Parts contains three different types of items: black, orange, and red. Orange and red items are the ones you see in the form you shared. Those are the items that can be loaned, but need to be returned by the end of the competition. As you can imagine, they tend to be the more expensive items. The only difference between red and orange items are that the red items require a signature from an FTA or CSA before they can be given out. Note: black items in the form you shared = orange items on the complete list, red are still red…yea the lack of color consistency makes things confusing…even worse when the loan forms are printed in black and white. Black items (not listed in the form) can be given to teams without any requirement for them to be returned (e.g. pool noodles). I have not seen this complete of all items in Spare Parts posted anywhere.
We have 25 to 30 students on our team. We started working with primarily local teams, ones that we’ve already established a relationship with. Over time, our reputation started to grow (teams we’ve help would recommend us to other teams). Consistency in publishing our efforts on social media also helps. Also, working closely with volunteers like the inspectors has been valuable. They can introduce us to teams we haven’t had the chance to interact with before.
This is where working with the Regional Directors is valuable. They can help introduce you to the volunteers and teams. They can also help you become aware of any existing resources at the regional so that you’re not duplicating efforts.
Reporting back after week 6!! We’re tired. The “Multiple :(” request labels should be split into individuals soon, and the numbers will all go up some more. Whoever said a while back they were worried about the bumper rules changes leading to unprepared teams was right. Us and two other teams brought spare wood to build bumpers, and we all went through all of our supply.
We do this informally. There are three of us at NYC, and we all know each other, but we don’t have a real system for passing requests across teams. We work in parallel and often there will be multiple of us in the same pit.
PLEASE can we? I don’t know if it’s too late to get a conference room or if we should just all go sit in a corner by the practice field for a few hours or something, but I would love to get a real roundtable going.
