FIRST Team 1511 is happy to share their build thread again this year!
History
Team 1511 is located in Penfield NY. We have been competing in FIRST since the 2005 season. We have actually been an open source team since 2009 when we started to document our design process on our Wiki . It serves as our engineering notebook and a way for our build subteams to coordinate efforts.
2025 Season Goals
- Keep it simple - This is a goal every year but an important one. There are lots of benefits to having a simple and effective design. It is usually more efficient, easier to control, and involves less maintenance.
- More design iterations - We hope to be able to iterate faster on our designs. This means faster CAD and fabrication. We are hoping a transition to OnShape can help with the faster CAD and more effective use of our CNC with fabrication.
- Improve CAN bus reliability - We had issues during competition with the CAN bus that kept us from our full potential. We are going to work to resolve these this year.
Competitions
We will be attending the following competitions.
- Finger Lakes Regional
- Buckeye Regional
- World Championships (pending qualification)
Team Links
Team Wiki (engineering notebook)
Code Repositories
10 Likes
Kickoff Weekend
Hi everyone! Here is what our team did during kickoff weekend to prepare us for the rest of build season!
We started off by watching the game reveal video and then breaking up into small groups to read and inspect the game rules. Then we filled out workbooks with our same groups before coming together and consolidating the answers with the entire team. After that we took a quick rules test to make sure everyone has a basic understanding of this year’s game before splitting off into our strategy and design groups.
Mechanical/Design:
• Built 6 new SDS MK4n swerves using Kraken x60’s as driving and steering motors.
o We bought 10 so we are planning to use 10 for an Alpha bot, 4 for the final robot, and leaving 2 as extras
• Began prototyping different intake mechanisms with different goals, including intaking just the algae and coral, as well as both using one mechanism
- The mechanism shown below was made in CAD to show one possible way to grab the algae and hold it while transferring it over to the processor
• Discussed the size of the drive base and weighed the pros and cons of a square or rectangle base
Strategy:
• Further discussed points of the game and created a first draft of the mind map to offer guidance while prototyping
Controls:
• Began brainstorming possible designs for the case and referred to previous designs for ideas/shapes
We also ran a human robot game and split off into groups on Sunday to come up with robot concepts and explain both the mechanisms and strategies that will be applied to them before continuing with the prototyping.
• We taped out the field and had 6 volunteers play the game allowing us to visualize the pathways and give us a clearer idea of how this game was going to run
This kickoff was very productive, and we can’t wait to dive into this build season and share how we progress throughout the weeks!
Sasha, Outreach Coordinator
