FRC 4131 Iron Patriots 2022-2023 Season

[jahs]

Salutations!
We are super excited about joining #openalliance this year! This presents our team with an opportunity of documenting all the positives and negatives involved with our build season.
As a team we have high expectations and big goals for this coming season, we are working towards reaching world championships this year, and earning our very first robot blue banner. We will try our best to do bi-weekly updates and post all our positives and negatives.

Here are some of the resources and social media our team runs:

• Website
• Youtube
• Instagram
• Iron Patriots | Linktree
• contact@frc4131.org

I will be posting a weekly update tonight so be on the lookout for that
Thank you,
Vachan Shah | President

[jahs]

11/22/2022 Pre-Season Updates
These past few weeks have been very productive in almost every aspect and we thank you for all the interest and support that you have given us.

First off, we have been able to achieve a substantial amount of team-wide training. Also, each subteam has made significant progress with their offseason projects. I am extremely proud of the dedication and hard work every student is putting in towards ensuring that our goals are met.

Additionally, we have been able to raise a lot of funds fully paying off our competition registration of $19,000, with a staggering $21,400! Any funds we raise from now on go straight towards parts and the whole team is ecstatic about that. Another reminder to see if your company has a matching funds program to see if you can further help the team. We greatly appreciate all the parents who have helped already with the amount raised.

Below are the links to photos and videos from the past couple months and some of the cool projects that we have been working on.

Even with the fun and productive meetings we have had the past few weeks, they have been far from perfect. We have always struggled in the past with not having the most trained crew this prompted us to start working on organizing a method to standardize training procedures for all different subteams using Excel sheets and checking people off based on knowledge they have been tested on (as simple as can connect to the robot or knows how to use the drill) . More info about this will be posted once we get the experience of it and can positively give it a rating and list its pros and cons.

| https://youtu.be/AI0N7zgNhGE
| https://youtu.be/jP631upU9Uk
| https://youtu.be/-513Azz9qhU
| https://youtu.be/MEyCgC8bAvk

Another cool project we worked on over the summer and these past couple months is a new battery cart. The current plan is to have a laptop charging station in the back [shown in the second image] and using the top as a workstation during comps for our software subteam. This battery cart came with a lot of procrastination and being annoyed by our old one.
Below are some of the lessons we learned from the old one and implemented in the new :

• Use vertical space
• Tilt the batteries eliminating the need for straps
• Have a compartment for Laptops and a workspace on top
• Keep weight low in the cart

We noticed this cart weighed a lot, and would like to figure out solutions for reducing the weight in the future. But are very satisfied with this design for this year

From,
Vachan Shah

[jahs]

12/19/2022 Pre-Season Updates
Its been a few weeks since the last update, and even though we set an ambitious goal, it was all on pause due to a week of snow.

We did get lucky that the snow melted enough for us to host our 2nd Unified Robotics Competition, which went as smooth as we could have hoped for. We had enough students of the team volunteer and couldn’t have done it without everyone. There was a bit of a hiccup which was us trying to push our T-shirt cannon up a hill in the snow to bring it to our gym but after about 20 minutes of hard work we did it and it went well In fact we used our T-shirt cannon to shoot out a piece of paper inside a T-shirt with the names of the wildcards which really cheered everyone up and brought a lot of energy to the event.
Here was a video that we showed to our school inviting everyone to the competition - Unified Championship Competition Promotion 2022 - YouTube

Although we did not get as many tasks done as we had hoped we were able to finish off a few significant achievements including re-organizing our CNC room which holds all of our tools, metal stock, and pretty much everything else we own that is used towards making robots.
We also are trying to switch over to #10-32 socket head screws this year to standardize to one size for most applications on our robot, and got a PO sent out for a large number of the screws mentioned. This will add additional work at the start of the season getting used to these screws but in the long term will help us standardize towards one size.

Another place where we got more progress done was Photon Vision. Our software team started familiarizing themselves with Photon Vision and started learning the basics. We did run into one issue with being able to detect the targets but not getting any data from PhotonLib. Our understanding as of now was that this was due to this issue mentioned on the Common Issues page of Photon Vision Troubleshooting, although we ran out of time before winter break to be able to update both the limelight and Photon Vision to the same version. This will be one of the first things we do when we get back from break.

Another thing we worked on was using training spreadsheets to start getting people checked off. Each subteam has their own and I am going to use the software subteam as an example. There are 3 levels to check off to be proficient in everything to do with the subteam.
Here is level 1 for software, the basix.

Here is level 2, le java

Here is level 3, end goals

The past few weeks have been hectic with training, snow, and any last minute projects before build season comes around the corner but I am glad we were able to stick to our goals and get our prioritized items finished. We are not meeting over winter break and are going to start meeting again on the 3rd of January, so look forward to more updates during the first week of build. We hope everyone has a safe and good winter break.

Adios Amigos,
Vachan Shah

[jahs]

1/14/2023 Build Season Updates Week 1

We have been super busy with kickoff and the past week of prototyping, software planning, and finalizing our game and design strategy. So, here are the things that came up over the last week of discussion and progress. We consider ourselves to be a mid-tier mid resource team that has limited access to CNC machines, so we are putting limits on ourselves and prioritizing simplicity to make the best robot our team can build.

Strategy
After kickoff and discussions about rules we split up and brainstormed multiple strategies and here are some of the things we agreed on in a priority list.

Priority List

1. Balancing

We figured out that balancing is essential since it is the easiest bonus RP to get, only requiring one other robot to get on the charge station at the end of the match.

2. Scoring cones

With cones having 2 times as many scoring positions we determined a robot that scores cones only would be more valuable to an alliance than a robot that scores only cubes.

3. Links

With links being the only other way to get a bonus ranking point, we decided in our game strategy getting links would be more beneficial towards our team and ranking than higher scoring options. Links being 5 points each helps to subsidize the lower-scoring strategies prioritizing the ranking point/ link.

4. Cube pickup

Cubes are necessary for links on mid and high. They also score the same as cones and will require higher gameplay levels.

5. Knocked cone pickup

The ability to pick up cones that are dropped in any orientation would significantly help to reduce cycle times and help us score more links and therefore rank higher. We are also reserving the right not to do this at all because we can get cones in a known orientation from the feeder station.

Progress
Here are some of the things we have done this past week.

Hardware/Electronics
Both departments have begun the fabrication and assembly of our drive base. We have decided to go with Swerve Drive Specialties Mark 3 modules. We currently have all the parts needed to make 2 drive bases.

Software
We coded our own swerve because we realized that SDS libraries were now deprecated. This was a surprise at the start of the season but may end up benefiting us in the long term. We also talked about some path planning and created a control scheme using a 3 x 3 button grid. This allows our drive team to pick exactly the grid they want to score in. We also were able to get our robot to track April tags while driving around and give us accurate data within 0.25 inches.

Our next weekly update will include the design of our robot and our goals for the season, as well as the progress we make in this week

Adios Amigos,
Vachan and Noah

BOTTOM TEXT

[jahs]

1/29/2023 Build Season Updates Week 2 and 3

The team has been super busy, we came to the conclusion that we want to create 2 robots this year, ensuring software always has a robot even throughout driver practice. In the past week, we had our Preliminary Design Review with our parents and mentors and it went super well. We have finished our version one of our robot CAD and are in the current stage of iteration and finishing up our robot #1 to get it handed over to software and drive team.

Now that finals week is over and semester 2 is starting, we get our schools metal shop all to ourselves for the rest of the year, and with a lot of re-arrangement we were able to fit part of a field in there to keep for the rest of the season.

We also finished up 2 drivebases this weekend and are happy with the way they look. Plan is to add a beam that runs across the 2x1 alluminum running down the side of the robot to make the robot abide by bumper rules.

Here is what each of the sub teams have been doing.

Hardware

We have finished manufacturing parts for 1 full robot and are waiting on getting in more parts that are on order. We have also assembled 2 drivebases and 1 of them is handed over to software and the second one is still with electronics. Another thing we have just finished assembling is the superstructure for robot #1.

Software

We have been working on creating a PoseEstimationSubsystem and have successfully gotten a drive to pose command working. This helps us lineup faster once integrated with the april tags for getting field relative location and integrating that with odometry. We also have figured out how to get our auton paths to run at an accurate pace and distance. Moving forwards in the next week we will be discussing exactly what commands and subsystems we want to use in our code and test our different auton paths.

Design

We have been working hard and finished up our version 1 of our robot CAD. This leads us into one of our harder weeks as we continue iterating our design and focusing on smaller details, while coming up with better designs for our claw.

Electronics

This has been a busy week and we have worked hard and wired up 2 of our robot drivebases. We did also run into an issue with our Can Coder not having a led and one of them not being installed correctly, and it took us a day to troubleshoot that. This hard work is enabling us to stay on schedule and we were able to hand over one robot to software yesterday for auton pathplanning and the second one is going to hardware on Tuesday for attaching of the superstructure and the arm.

Media

We have been working on our Impact Award essay and our handout. We are also starting our Woodie Flowers award Nominee writeup. Today we discussed and “finalized” an idea for our Impact award video and are going to continue filming and documenting over the next week or two.

We appreciate you for reading through and be on the lookout for CAD releases coming out soon.

[Lica2005]

2/11/23 Build Season Updates Week 4 and 5

The team’s momentum has not dropped at all, and a significant amount of work has been completed. A lot of this week was done to be able to have a working robot that could have all the basic functions done for drive trials. We decided we wanted to have our drive teams decided as soon as possible to allow for the most potential drive practice.

Our drive trials went on for about 5 days, during which people could self-nominate and practice with the robot while we took note of their skills. Then we had an invite-only day where we then decided on our drive team.

New video by Lica 2005

Our CAD of the first version of the robot is complete, including all of the limit switches and other electronics. The robot can score in all locations of the grid as shown below.

We were able to finish our arm and intake assembly and had it mounted onto the robot.

We saw many possible improvements for the claw and we have prototyped a second version.

New video by Lica 2005

We have also finished assembling our wrist. This wrist will let us flip the cone into its upward orientation without having to rotate the robot, saving more time.

Here’s what each of the subteams has been doing:
Hardware: Manufacturing and assembly of the first arm. Starting on manufacturing the second robot.
Design: Wrapping up all the CAD needed to be done to have a finished CAD.
Software: Worked on the efficiency of the arm by tuning its PID controller. We also worked to implement further changes to the arm and vision to get started on automating cycles for specific nodes.
Electronics: Wired all the mechanisms for the first robot.
Media: Finishing up the Impact Essay and Handout. Starting on the Impact Video.

[Rustomac]

Love the simple V2 of the claw. Do you have any CAD of it?

[KungFury]

Sure ting,

Onshape

[nuclearnerd]

That’s a solid, simple robot. Good job.

One caution: That lazy-susan bearing might work OK for your wrist, but I worry you’ll grow to hate it. They’re designed to lay flat and take vertical loads only. (The balls lose contact unless the two halves are being pushed together - leaving only the steel lips to rub against each other).

If you eventually find you need something a bit sturdier, I recommend something like these x-contact bearings (recognizing that they are harder to mount): 3" OD x 2.5" ID x .25" X-Contact Bearing

[ajax]

can you tell me the gear ratio you have lifting up that arm? my team has ~10lb arm and 1:28 gear box and are trying to trouble shoot.

[Rustomac]

I have no affiliation with the team you are asking but you’ll want something much higher than that. You can do that through the sprockets too, but something at minimum of 150:1 by the time you get to the arm. Gearbox = 50:1 and another 3:1 with the sprockets. It’ll still be plenty fast.

[KungFury]

We have 1 motor running 60:1. Were still messing around with it (will probably stay where it is) but its plently enough to lift our arm.

[Lica2005]

2/11/23 Build Season Updates Week 6 and 7

Attendance these weeks has been rough, making our robot progress fall behind schedule, but we have finished the robot that we are likely bringing to the competition!

With our first competition approaching soon at Glacier Peak, here are our goals for the comp:
-Rank higher than 13th
-Rank as a 4-5 captain or be 1st pick
-Get some elimination points (make it past round 1 of elms)
-No drive failures
-No “stupid mistake”
-Robot doesn’t completely break down
-Help at least 1 other team
-Win an award

Our robot has the second version of the arm. We have done some changes to the arm to further stabilize it and fix some of the other problems we’ve had during the last two weeks.

Our claw and wrist are also attached, with some minor changes added to the claw to have a better grip on the cone and cubes as well as easier access to the motor in case it breaks.

The names of our robots have been decided: our competition’s main robot will be Phobos and the second robot will be Deimos. Our front plate highlights the name of the robot

Overall, one of the prevalent issues shown this week is our dependence on certain people, leading to a bottleneck when they aren’t available for that meeting. We need more people capable of certain things to avoid the bottleneck issue better. Communication this year has been dramatically improved, especially with the use of Monday.com and maintaining our officer meetings.

Here’s what our subteams have been doing:
Hardware: Building the second version of the robot, and we have also been organizing our pit for comp.
Software: tuned current limiting and other safety precautions to prevent brownouts and other potential damages to the robot. Also wrote some autons but have yet to be tested
Electronics: Wired limit switches and subsystems (excluding drive base)
Design: We worked on the 2nd design of the robot with hardware
Media: We have our impact handout printed and our impact video is in progress.