FRC 334 TechKnights | 2024-25 Build Thread | Open Alliance

FIRST FRC Open Alliance
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Welcome to the Team 334 Open Alliance Build Thread!

As a veteran FRC team with a long history of innovation and collaboration, we’re excited to join the Open Alliance for the 2025 build season.

Who are we?

Dedicated to building since 1998 and from New York City, we are the TechKnights, Brooklyn Technical High School’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team. Our team works out of the Ike Heller Robotics Center, where all our robot parts are manufactured in-house. Throughout 334’s 26-year history, we have won a host of awards and been to Worlds a handful of times. Undoubtedly, our best season was 2014 Aerial Assist, where we not only made it to Worlds but were Archimedes finalists! Each year, our team holds a tryout process for new members; in 2024, there were over 300 students interested in joining 334!


Photo with our 2024 NYC Regional playoff alliance teams 1601 and 354!

One of our longest ongoing team traditions is playing ultimate frisbee, which we have done every pre and post-season since Ultimate Ascent in 2013! Some of our other team traditions include making MetroCard props, and taking them to competitions to cheer our team on.


MetroCard TechKnight!

Team Structure

Our student-led program consists of 55 students and 3 mentors, structured into mechanical, electrical, programming, and operations. Mechanical is divided into CAD and fabrication, and operations are divided into media, public relations, safety, strategy, and mentorship.


334 team picture at FLR.

2024 Recap

Competition

FLR

We kicked off the 2024 competition season with an early Week 3 competition, the Finger Lakes Regional. After some intake and field odometry accuracy issues, 334 ranked 43rd with a record of 3 wins to 6 losses. Nevertheless, we had an absolute blast at Finger Lakes, attending for the first time since 2014. In fact, in 2014, 334 was an Archimedes finalist with Team 27 Rush as the captain. We took a drive team photo with team 27 at FLR in 2024, a decade after our alliance in 2014.

NYC

Moving into week 6 of the competition season, we settled on an updated design after many revisions of the intake, programming improvements, and stress testing. Our most major change after FLR was the addition of a bent churro on our intake to help center notes more effectively. This made the pass-off between our intake and shooter much better, allowing us to outtake notes at a greater speed and cycle much faster. 334 ranked 25th with a record of 4 wins to 7 losses. The playoffs were a rollercoaster, with a match replay in our first match and a red card in our second match. On the upside, the TechKnights were ranked 11th based on OPR at NYC.


334 at FLR.

Offseason Events

RoboFest

RoboFest was an offseason fundraising event hosted by our team in September, and attended by Tech alumni and the families and friends of team members. We used raffles, merchandise, food, and entry tickets to raise money for the coming season. Throughout the fundraiser, we made connections with attendees and showcased our team’s ability with a robot demonstration. The New York Power Authority even brought in their Boston Dynamics robot dog (Spot) for a fun showcase!


Photo of our team networking with RoboFest attendees.


Team photo with Spot at RoboFest.

RoboReplay

Alongside many of our fellow NYC teams, 334 participated in NYC RoboReplay, an off-season competition hosted by team 333, the Megalodons. At the event, our team put up a great performance, making it to the semifinals with a final record of 9 wins and 6 losses. Like many other teams there, we utilized the tournament to try new drive coaches and human players and make changes to our robot in order to prepare for future competitions. As a result of amazing driving and defense alongside a more reliable robot, RoboReplay saw us make significant improvements to our scoring ability. Despite this, we still encountered some mechanical issues, including our intake rollers coming loose during matches and our shooter pivot backlash creating scoring boundaries. Nonetheless, we gave it our all during the competition and were satisfied with the progress we made as a team. 334 ended the competition striking out in the semifinals.


334 RoboReplay playoff match with 2265 Iron Maidens and 395 2 Train Robotics!

FTC Team

To generate more opportunities for FIRST at our school, members of 334 founded Brooklyn Tech’s FTC team - 27705 the ByteKnights. After spring tryouts in 2024, we selected fifteen applicants and got to work immediately. Since then, we have progressed the ByteKnights slowly and carefully, starting off with training members in the fundamentals of design, mechanical, electrical, and programming. After going through a design process, the team created their robot concept and began working on the initial CAD. Our goal for the ByteKnights is to not only attend a competition or two as visitors but also participate and put up a solid rookie debut.


Conceptual sketches and information on the different mechanisms for the 2025 FTC robot.

2025 Preseason

During our preseason, we work hard to bridge the experience gap between veteran and rookie members through our mentorship program. Starting with presentations on the basics of FIRST and FRC, we ensure that the rookies have a strong understanding of the competition, how it works, and what is expected of them. We then transition into teaching technical skills such as CAD and Java for programming. Rookies who are learning mechanical are split into mechanism design and fabrication. Mechanism design spends the rest of preseason designing FRC mechanisms, while fabrication works on mini-projects to learn machining and CAM. Programming rookies spend the preseason learning Java and FRC programming, while electrical teaches electrical components, wiring, and more. In addition, rookies are taught shop safety, strategy, and team culture.


Rookies participating in an electrical activity.

What to Expect from Us

For the rest of the preseason, we will post additional information about our team and how we operate and bi-weekly updates on the progress of our design and fabrication groups when the season begins. Expect a follow-up post from our programming department soon. During the build season, we hope to post bi-weekly updates on the progress of our robot design, CAD, fabrication, electrical, team media, and more.

Team Links

Post Credits: Gadin, Husain, Samantha

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