FRC 3641 The Flying Toasters | 2025 Build Thread | Open Alliance

[Lucas_B]

Welcome to The Flying Toasters’ 2025 Build Thread!

Hello and welcome to our openalliance build thread for the 2025 FRC season. For the first time ever, The Flying Toasters’ are working to give detailed updates on a weekly basis to share our learning experiences with the FRC community at large.

About Us:

The Flying Toasters are a proud FRC team based in South Lyon, Michigan, USA, comprising students from both South Lyon and South Lyon East High Schools. Since our founding in 2011, we have traditionally operated with a "closed source" approach—sharing our knowledge only after it became publicly available at competitions.

However, over the years, we have greatly benefited from the openness of the FRC community, particularly through the contributions of Open Alliance teams. Their willingness to share insights and progress throughout their builds has been invaluable to our growth as a team.

Recognizing the importance of collaboration and knowledge-sharing, we are now embracing a new chapter. Moving forward, we are committed to contributing to this culture of openness by sharing our own lessons, experiences, and insights well before competition events. We hope our efforts will empower and inspire others, just as we have been inspired by the generosity of this incredible community.

Our Team:

Like many other teams, we use a subgroups structure for how we organize the work our team does. Below is a list of the current subgroups that our team has as they pertain to the development of our robot.

Subgroups:

Mechanical

• Members of this subgroup are responsible for the design, prototyping, and assembly of our robot’s subsystem mechanisms.

Programming

• This subgroup contributes to the teams various software projects, but solely owns the work for the robot’s software.

Machining

• The Machining subgroup is for those who are working on taking fully designed components and producing final components.

Electrical

• Our Electrical subgroup works on design and assembly of the wiring and electrical component layout for our robot.

Strategy

• Strategy works on developing how our team plays each game, as well as developing and maintaining our scouting system used at competitions.

Media and Communications

• This subgroup works on curating and collecting media for our press and social media. The Media and Communications group also works to establish our team’s branding and communications outside of our team.

Team Captains:

For the 2025 season, our team has adopted a new organizational structure for the group responsible for building our robot. At the core of this structure is a small leadership team of three students, known as “Team Captains.” These captains are carefully selected by our coaches based on specific criteria, including their volunteer work with local teams, proficiency across multiple disciplines relevant to our team’s subgroups, and a strong record of attendance.

The primary role of the captains is to serve as a bridge between the subgroups, ensuring communication and integration across all aspects of the robot’s development. As experienced members of the team, the captains also take on the responsibility of mentoring new and less experienced students. They lead team exercises and training sessions, sharing the established processes and best practices that have contributed to our team’s success.

Looking Forward:

As we provide weekly updates of our progress, we ask that you will join us as we learn, make discoveries, and compete in the upcoming 2025 season!

Team Links:

Github

OnShape

Youtube

Instagram

Website

[RobBlair]

Any relation to the old Flying Toasters screen savers?

After Dark (software)

As a Berkeley Systems alumni, I’m always happy to see the memory persist.

[Steven_Carmain]

Are you planning on using a guitar controller for the operator again?

[Lucas_B]

Yes, there is definitely a relation to the old screen savers. I don’t fully remember the entire team naming process, but what I can recollect is after coming up with several similar names, this one stuck the best and mentors at the time were already somewhat nostalgic towards it. Very cool to hear from a Berkeley Systems alum directly, so thanks for reaching out!

[Lucas_B]

Our current philosophy with regards to drive team composition has been that of only having controls for one driver. If we somehow get the controls automated enough, it’s possible that we could completely abandon analog joysticks and just use a guitar hero controller… Probably far off though.

- RIP (2018 - 2022)

[Lucas_B]

2024 Offseason Recap

Events Highlights

This year, our team had the opportunity to attend a couple of local offseason events. These gave us a chance to stretch our robot’s legs and give our new students their first taste of competition action. Here’s how it all went down:

• Rainbow Rumble
  

  For the first time, we attended the Rainbow Rumble, and wow, what an event! It was our robot’s debut outside of the regular season, so naturally, we hit a few hiccups. But after some quick adjustments, we found our rhythm and started climbing the ranks.

  By the end of qualification matches, we were sitting at Rank 18 with a solid 8-6-0 record. We were honored to join the third alliance as the second pick alongside teams 1506, 5712, and 2832. After four intense semifinal matches, our journey came to an end, but we left with big smiles and new lessons!

• Kettering Kickoff Day 1
  

  We love the Kettering Kickoff—it’s the perfect way to introduce new students to the thrill of FRC events! This year, we brought several newcomers, and they jumped right into the action as part of the drive team.

  After qualification matches, we secured Rank 6 with a 5-3-0 record. We proudly joined the fifth alliance as the first pick alongside teams 5577 and 66. Once again, after a series of intense semifinal matches, we concluded our run with a ton of experience under our belts.

Shop Updates

Over the summer, our build space at South Lyon East High School has been undergoing large renovations. Following our return from the Houston Championships, we packed everything into storage to make way for contractors to begin work. While the construction has limited our ability to meet some goals (like driver practice), we adapted with virtual meetings and occasional in-person sessions in nearby spaces.

Shoutout to the CC Shambots for lending us a hand when we needed it! They were able to give us the opportunity to test and practice with our robot at their new build space prior to Kettering Kickoff.

Media & Communications

For our Media & Communications subgroup, several new projects have been underway. To start, we’ve been developing several news letters that we will be sending throughout our local community and sponsors. This subgroup is also working hard to implement new standards for branding that will impact our website and posts like this one. Also, there has been large amounts of discussion regarding revamping our social media like Instagram and Youtube.

Mechanical

The mechanical subgroup has been hard at work on the design for a new prototyping chassis. The main goal for this project is to have a platform to test new software and prototypes once the 2025 season starts. In addition, this has been a good training tool for our team to learn Onshape and how we use it to develop assemblies for our robot.

You can check out our progress here: The Flying Toasters’ Offseason Chassis

Software

Our software team has been hard at work laying the groundwork for the upcoming season. Here’s what we’ve been working on:

• 2024 Robot Code:

  • Creation of Java Docs and Commenting code for better readability and documentation
  • General Code cleanup, including the removal of unused functions and imports
  • GitHub Link: The Flying Toasters 2024 Robot Code

• Offseason Swerve Chassis Software:

  • New drivetrain software is based upon the mapleSwerve Chassis template
  • Write drivetrain software that allows autonomous routines to be simulated before testing

• Training New Members:

  • Getting students hands on time with the 2024 software
  • Learning java through various challenge problems to solve

Strategy

For this offseason, our team has been prioritizing three main areas within the strategy subgroup:

• In match strategy for our drive team
• Match Data Collection
• Alliance Selection

Our current largest endeavor is the development of a new scouting system for the 2025 FRC season. The teams previous scouting system was developed for the 2023 FRC season and adapted for 2024. This comprised a simple backend using the Django framework and an Android app for data collection. This has worked well, but we have seen a need for many improvements going forward.

• GitHub: The Flying Toasters Scouting Database 2025
• Features planned for the new system include:
  • Built using node.js and React for a more modern user interface
  • Match data collection via a React app, to be used by scouters in the stands
  • A centralized scouting SQL database for all data that is collected
  • A user interface that allows for easy viewing of relevant information for analysis
  • Synchronized forms so each scouter is pre assigned a team for each match
  • Better input data validation
    • Team Number supplied to the scouter for each match
    • No duplicate entries for any matches

With these advancements, we aim to streamline our scouting process and enhance our competitive edge for the upcoming season.

Coming Soon:

In our next post, we will be talking about our Mock Kickoff, an event we hold annually each December to train our team on how to develop strategies and robot concepts for the FRC Kickoff.

- Coauthored by: @Mattstewie

[Lucas_B]

Kickoff Recap!

REEFSCAPE!

Long time, no see! The Flying Toasters are ready to play REEFSCAPE! We’ve been hard at work during our kickoff weekend, and this post will encompass all of the post kickoff madness that we experienced.

Initial Thoughts

To start our day once the kickoff stream has ended, we all go about discussing and interpreting the new game. The team is split into several groups who will spend the rest of the weekend as a team trying to work together to develop a set of robot concepts. There are many steps that we take to get to this final goal and that starts by using our Game Rules Analysis Document.

Game Rules Analysis

So once all of the groups are formed, each group begins reading the rules and summarizing the content of the rules in our Rules Analysis Document.

You can find the Rules Analysis Document here:

The Flying Toasters Rules Analysis Worksheet

We’ve attempted to make sections of this worksheet fit the general trends that the game manual follows year to year, but in the situation that it doesn’t follow we will update and share a revision to this sheet.

Teams usually decide to split the content among members of each team. Certain people might cover match play, and others might cover robot construction.

The final end result is a full summary by each team that we then use to compile a final master rules summary for the entire team.

Here is an example of a summary done by one of our groups the Submerged Circuits:

Submerged Circuits Rules Analysis

Requirements

As a starting point for our strategy discussions, in groups we begin discussing the requirements that our robot must follow. These requirements are actions or attributes that the robot follows. At this stage there are only three categories that we fit our requirements into: Need, Nice to Have, and Not Do. This follows a similar paradigm that others have been using in terms of establishing robot requirements, and is heavily inspired by FRC 2910’s seminar from 2023.

Once all of the groups feel satisfied with their initial version of the requirements, as a team we go through each of the lists and work to compile a singular set. There is usually lots of debate between teams in terms of establishing what parts of the game are the most important, however; This year the team unanimously decided on most of these requirements listed below:

Detailed Requirements

On Sunday we went about establishing our detailed requirements. Again in groups, everyone goes about establishing the necessary subsystems that each robot will have. After each subsystem is established, requirements are then set for each.

Again similar to how 2910 presented their way of making requirements that are S.M.A.R.T. (Scope, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Based). Teams now work really far in advance to predict when certain requirements will be necessary to be competitive. We strive to win at every stage of our competition season, so we look to see at what stage each subsystem will need to perform at certain capacities.

Here are some samples of what each team had in terms of their detailed requirements:

Concept Development

This year we found a lot of common agreement across the team in terms of what is achievable and what we feel will be successful in terms of robot strategies. We then spent times in our groups looking to take those strategies and implement new robot concepts that could complete each of the strategic objectives.

In 2024, we found huge success using Krayon CAD, and that continued this year. We had several groups who developed full concepts using this feature in Onshape. We also encourage all students who may not be comfortable yet with CAD, to still attempt to draw and make sketches for what concepts they may have for robots.

Here are some snapshots of our concepts from Sunday after Kickoff:

Final Presentations

To end our kickoff process, we have each group put together a short presentation that talks about their findings and shows off their concepts. We’ve included links to each groups presentation for you to look at for reference.

Submerged Circuits Final Presentation

Group 4 Final Presentation

Watergamers Final Presentation

HP P22 G4 21.5-inch Monitor Final Presentation

Field Build

While a majority of the team has been working hard to learn the new game, a small subgroup has been working hard to develop and build the our new field for 2025.

This season we were lucky to find and get running on using the PVC gussets and drill guide provided by The Thrifty Bot for building our own at home version of the Reef. We also ran to our local hardware store to get our Coral! Our goal is to have the field completed Jan 8th, and so far that is coming true.

So far we have had one of our local sponsor Superb Fabricating LLC laser cut and bend the sheet metal for the cages. We then bought the necessary pipe and welded our own version. Superb Fabricating is offering to make these parts for other teams who are also looking to have their own cages fabricated.

[Mattstewie]

Requirements and Robot Architecture Selection & Prototypes!

After reflecting on our requirements, architecture, and on field performance in 2024, we came to a few conclusions.

Our requirements were sound in their direction but they were for an elite team with many capabilities including a highly knowledgeable student and mentor base, a large budget, and large amounts of available time during build season. We are not quite there yet. Maybe some day soon.

Our robot design selected was a valid and competitive solution to the 2024 game challenge and met the requirements that we created. Admittedly, we performed very well during the competition season. However, We ended the season after not being selected at worlds with the nagging question of where we went wrong.

Once we arrived at our events and started looking at other robots, the machine that we built was far more complex than our peers with little on field performance benefit.

We ended up making a robot that was more integrated and complicated than our team could pull off at the highest level. We sacrificed Robot tuning, Verification, programming time, autonomous development and Driver practice to have a “more competitive” robot design.

This year we are trying to be more cognizant of our team’s resources and structure our requirements and designs around our own capabilities.

Key Takeaway:

Don’t assume that because you can build an advanced machine, that you should build an advanced machine!

“Final” Requirements

With this understanding in mind, we all sat down and discussed what our “Final” robot requirements would be.

(These requirements can and should change as the season moves forward and we gather new information)

Robot Concept Selection

Key Robot Objectives:

• Score Coral on L1 - L4 in the reef
• Intake Coral via direct loading at the Coral Station
• Intake Algae from the Floor and place into processor
• Climb on the Deep Cage

Robot Architecture Selected!

We believe that this design will meet all the stated objectives in our detailed requirements.

This robot concept uses an elevator to carry the coral to each scoring position, a high pivoting funnel to enable retrieval of coral from the coral station while moving out of the way of the cage for climbing, and an alae intake that will enable intaking from the ground and scoring in the processor.

This architecture will enable us to modify every mechanism throughout the season independently if needed without the need to redesign every subsystem together. We also think that this robot has the potential to enable advanced software control during autonomous and teleoperated periods.

Prototypes

In order to verify that this concept’s core component would function as desired we determined that further prototyping would be necessary to confirm each part’s performance.

Cage Funneling Prototypes

This is an early spear design that was developed to orient the cage square to the robot.

We built a structure that contained two spears stacked on a rolling chassis to simulate how the cage might interact with the robots bumpers. We found that the robot would be able to push through the cage dropping it inside the frame and into the spear. However with only the spike, The alignment would need to be precise and the robot must move slowly as it approached the cage.

We added funneling at the corners of the robot to enable the positioning of the cage even when swinging or slightly misaligned.

Future improvements include rounding out the bottom spike to allow the cage to slip into position easier. We also plan to create a mechanism to clasp the bars on the cage to ensure that it is pulled all the way into the robot’s frame.

With the success of this concept our next step will be to integrate our learnings into our CAD model and start working out the finer details of the robots geometry.

Coral Station Internal Ramp

We are taking inspiration from Cranberry alarm Coral hopper and the videos that 4481 have posted to their OA page as inspiration for our team’s mechanism going forward.

We will be building this adjustable funnel prototype during the next week to confirm geometry.

Coral Scoring Mechanism

We have also developed a testing platform for determining the correct wheel/material combination for storing and scoring the coral onto the reef branches.

To use Pneumatics or not to Use Pneumatics

Many of the mechanisms above could be deployed or moved with a motor or pneumatics. This lead us to challenge our previous take of avoiding the use of pneumatics due to previous poor experiences with improperly designed systems. We sat don and talked through the Pros vs. Cons of the inclusion of Pneumatics in this years machine. The results can be seen below.

Pros:

• Easy Binary Control via software
• Simplifies new mechanisms being added in future
• Motion between 2 positions
• Bonus: Possible after the buzzer mechanism motion

Cons:

• Only two positions available without significant design work
• No built in position feedback (on common cylinders)
• Adds many possible failure points at each fitting connection
• Compressor and tanks require large robot volume and increase mass

Conclusion:

We will not be shying away from implementing pneumatic control this season due to the simplified mechanization of our currently planned robot mechanisms.

Hardware Assembly

Swerve Drives are here!

Our West Coast Products Swerve X2t swerve modules have arrived and have been assembled.
Currently, they are assembled with the 5.67:1 gear ratio option. We will re-evaluate if a more optimal gear ratio is desirable when we do further cycling breakdowns.
We will also be trying out the new X2 Molded Wheels and tread this year once they arrive in the near future.

We selected these modules due to their larger wheel diameter and width after using the WCP Swerve XS in the 2024 competition without issue.
We look forward to seeing the tractive benefits that the larger wheels and the new molded tread will provide!

Software Progress

Currently, our programmers are hard at work getting new laptops set up with the correct tools and developer environments to create this season’s robot and strategy application code.

This season we plan to have the software ready to upload to the robot as soon as it is built and wired. With this goal in mind, we are setting up simulation of all of our robot components.

Now that a concept has been selected, the Mockup “KrayonCAD” version of the concept will be exported and used to help visualize the robot’s mechanisms while the real robot cad is being worked on.

We hope that by writing software and creating the mechanical system in a parallel process that we will be able to get to important things like autonomous tuning and driver practice earlier.

[Nuttyman54]

Looking good, especially those requirements Glad you found the 2910 presentation helpful, looks like you integrated it into your process really well!

[Lucas_B]

Programming Updates!

Robot Software Development

This last week, our programming team has been dedicated to building skeleton subsystems and simulation. Our goal this season is to assist the human driver by automating most of the robot processes. To start developing on this now rather than later, our programming team has been working to simulate the robot’s subsystems to test automation. This week, we have managed to simulate pathplanner’s pathfinding library to move the robot to a specific pose. We have also made significant progress in simulating our elevator subsystem.

By simulating the drive and subsystems of the robot, we can test how the robot functions before the robot is finished being assembled. This should allow us to allocate more time for better software development and driver practice later in the season.

As a reminder, you can publicly access our 2025 robot code by checking out our repository here: GitHub - FlyingToasters3641/FlyingToasters2025Public: FlyingToasters2025Public

Github Projects

Throughout the build season, there are many tasks and projects our programming team needs to get done. To keep matters on track, our team decided to implement Github Projects. Last year, our team used Trello for task tracking; however, due to several advantages, we have switched over to Github Projects. The software allows us to assign members, establish priority, and have an accessible road-map.

Our programmers have already noticed an improvement in efficiency of meeting time. By being able to access all available tasks, they can continue working on a new project when they finish with their task, or collaborate with another programmer on a current task. It’s currently helping our team stay focused by prioritizing what needs to be done.

Future Plans

We are currently investigating methods for localizing our robot to the field for this year. We are highly intrigued by the Navquest project and we have purchased a Quest 3S to see if we can integrate the system into our robot for testing.

Another large project that we plan to work on is the implementation of a behavior tree model to automate the scoring process of our robot. This is going to take a lot on the sensor side of our machine, so in addition to the integration of Navquest, we are also looking at once again using PhotonVision to allow us to more precisely line up with the reef.

There has also been lots of discussion on what driver controls will look like this season, and the coconscious is that we will likely need a more advanced user interface for our operator to properly command the robot to the correct positions on the reef. This is likely going to look like a tablet running an app, and unfortunately not a guitar…

There are definitely other challenges fast approaching in getting these items implemented, but we hope to share our progress here soon.

Authored by: Maximo R.

[Mattstewie]

Design Updates!

Design Philosophy

As we are finalizing our current iterations of our various subsystems’ CAD, we have taken quite a lot of inspiration from public robot concepts. We currently have a limited capability to prototype our own concepts and are, therefore, utilizing these resources to create a competitive design within our capabilities.

If compared to our previous posts, you will notice some large directional changes with relation to algae and climb. We saw the amazing work that the people on 118 and the “Everybot” team did with their climber and the work that West Coast Products did putting together the “WCP cc” and decided that adapting those designs would better fit our team than trying to create designs from scratch. The addition of scoring algae in the net is a nice bonus that we believe will be impactful at a high level of play.

Learn from the best invent the rest!

CAD Progress

Robot Starting Configuration

Robot Climbing Configuration

Robot Algae Scoring Configuration

Climber

Our climber is based upon the Everybot’s climbing mechanism. It’ll be a very similar with an arm that will pull down with the cage pivoted on a vertical pole. We’ll be using plates that flip down to engage the bottom of the cage past the bumpers for a lower pivot point allowing us to climb higher of the ground. Our Goal is to be able to climb so that it is very apparent that we have secured the points after the match.

Drivetrain CAD

Our drivetrain is swerve drive using WCP Swerve X2t modules. The frame is 28" x 28" with 2 parallel bars across the middle spanning from the front to the back. we are dropping the bellypan and frame rails by an inch compared to the stock configuration with using 1x1 blocks on each swerve. This change should help reduce the height of our Center of Gravity and allows us to increase our lift extension height.

Coral and Net Scorer CAD

Our coral and algae scorer is heavily inspired by the WCP Competitive Concept. We’ll effectively be using a flipped version of their scorer so as to use the coral scorer as they do but to use the algae scoring mechanism to pass through our robot from an algae intake or to our algae intake to score in the processor. This intake also allows us to easily remove the algae from the reef.

Elevator CAD

Our Scoring Mechanism will be on an elevator made of 2 Swyft Ascend telescoping tubes. With this elevator we’ll be able to reach and score on all scoring locations for coral (L1-L4) and in the net with our elevator fully extended and the scorer flipped up. The tensioning for the chains connecting the elevators to the gearboxes at the bottom is done via turnbuckles. this is inspired by FRC 3005’s robot in 2023.

Algae Intake and Processor Scorer CAD

We’ll be using a BumBotics Ri3D inspired roller in order to hold the algae on the side of the robot. We also hope to be able to pass this through the robot to the algae scorer.

Hockey stick shaped intake bars to enable side sweeping over the algae when ground intaking.

Closeup of intake Cad (Design Mirrored to other side).

After experiencing many failures last season with our over the bumper intake, we are taking no chances this season. This intake is built using two 1/4in poly carbonate plates on each side. the live axle has bearings stacked with the flanges on opposing sides of these polycarbonate plates. this ensures that when impacted from the side, that the bearings will not be able to be removed from any bearing retainers, and it should spread the load between the additional bearings to prevent the bearing races from exploding.

Future Plans

As we finish our CAD we will begin on assembly of our robot. We will start with the chassis and climber to verify the climber geometry and to give the programmers as much time with the chassis as possible to start working through autonomous motion.

Coauthored by: @Cullen W.

[Alperen]

original, wonderful