“We cooked, we got cooked, we did it all”
~Austin, 2025
We ball so hard
For those who did not see yesterday, it was definitely something. We started the day before with a lot of programming in our hotel, trying to get our autos to work better, and then when we got to the pits and practice fields, we eventually scrapped our second sample due to not being able to program the paths in time. Additionally, we only had a red auto, so when we were queued for qual 7, we unfortunately could not run an auto. But somehow, miraculously, we got paired with team 23569, the RoboCats, and we got a combined score of 107 after staying back during lunch to work on autos, giving us a much needed confidence boost. I’ll leave the other quals for later in this post, but eventually, the RoboCats made their way to 4th in the rankings and picked us for their alliance partners going into elims
Now going deeper (pun intended)…
Quals
Our first match wasn’t the best, as we were still rushed because we were in qual 1, so our auto shot our pre-load past the basket, and we could not park. Going into TeleOp, our entire drive team, including myself, was nervous, with remembering our last comp not helping, we still did good for what we could, and we ended up with a 42-24 loss.
Onto our next match, qual 7, as I mentioned above, we did not have a blue auto going into the day, so we stayed completely stationary, with our alliance partner getting the level 1 ascent. Then in TeleOp, we were only able to score 3 samples into the high basket when right when endgame started, we got a sample stuck between our battery case and the slides, so we parked and prayed that we won. Which didn’t work out, losing 32-30, bringing us all the way down to 25th in the rankings.
Now for some context, our next qual, qual 14, did not count towards our ranking, as we had to play an extra match due to not enough teams being present. Moving on to the good part, we played out of our minds with 23569, and we came out with a clean score of 107. Additionally, our auto finally worked well, as shown here
For our next match, qual 23, we were paired up the 3rd seeded team, 13364, which unfortunately was also a sample focused team, so we strategized, and decided that we would go for the high basket, and they would go for the low basket. This did work out in the end, with us winning 81-16
Our penultimate qualifier, match 28, went about as well as you would expect against the team that didn’t lose once the entire event. What didn’t help was a sample falling into our bot early on, so we decided to play some defense, basically making one of the robots on the field unhelpful. We then parked, ending the match 138-71 loss.
Finally, our last qual was the last match of qualification, match 33, and we unfortunately had a controller disconnect early in the match. We were luckily able to fix it, but it did make us lose a bit of time. Additionally, our partner, 8863 was unable to use their intake because of inspection reasons, so they funneled us samples so that we could ideally score faster. However, this was not good enough to beat the Enderbots, ending the match at 78-68 loss.
Elims
As mentioned previously, team 23569 the RoboCats chose us for the number 4 alliance, however, in the entirety of the elimination bracket, our auto routine sadly missed the high basket for our pre-load, and since we were constantly in queue, we were unable to fix that before we moved on each match.
Moving into the actual first playoff, we played against team 22612 again, this time doing much better with our alliance partner after a full day of warming up, getting a total of 5 samples into the high basket as opposed to 3 in our first match. This, along with the RoboCats getting 5 specimen on the high chamber, we moved on 116-89
In match 3, we unfortunately lost to alliance 1 234-114 (which btw congrats to TARDIS and Enderbots for hitting the event record 4 times). However we still played exceptionally well, scoring another 5 samples in TeleOp with a last second park right before the buzzer
Then in the lower bracket, match 5 against alliance 6, we unfortunately got a sample stuck in our robot, which took us out for the match as well as Robocat’s arm breaking, but they luckily made it in time to score one specimen on the high chamber, with a clutch specimen on the low chamber. But luckily, we came out 49-3.
Moving onto our final playoff match 8, we played against alliance 2, and props to them, they scored 171, but we still did amazing, getting our best score of 122, with the RoboCats getting 5 specimen on the high chamber, and us getting 6 samples in the high basket.
Awards
WE QUALED
So because both TARDIS and Enderbots qualified, the wildcard went down to finalist captain and then, you guessed it, 3rd place inspire
R & R
My favorite part, reflections and revisions
So not too many things went wrong this time thankfully. Our DS’s never crashed, and we only had two controller disconnects in the entire match. The only things that weren’t great were the autos not always being aligned properly and us flinging our samples out of the field on accident.
How do we fix this
For the autos, we plan on fully utilizing the capabilities of the LimeLight 3A so that we can read an AprilTag on the field and immediately know where we are as opposed to having to manually align at the beginning of auto
And then for the sample issue, we plan on doing more redesigning of the components, specifically our bucket, so that it has a roof and the samples can’t fly out
One more thing was that samples still got stuck inside our bot, so we plan on making ramps so that if that happens at Buffalo or Champs, we can just push them back out
With that, now it’s time to prep for Buffalo. See you later this week
