Week 1 & Kickoff Update
1/7/23
After joining the kickoff at Wylie 5431 headed back to our school to start ideation, rule book quiz, and pit designs. We went over the animation and field tours together as a team with alum, mentors, and build members pausing to make notes.
Scouting started practice by reading through the handbook and highlighting any important rules, loopholes, information for strategy, and things to put in the rules quiz. Then with all the info collected, scouting ideated possible strategies, bot components, and alliances. Lastly, scouting planned out this season’s scouting app
Marketing went through previous game reveals and previous merchandise/pit designs to see how previous years took game elements and Incorporated them into the decor. Toward the end of the kick-off, marketing was able to get a zoom call with Lexi and some previous marketing alumni.
The SOFA awards subteam worked with the project managers to construct a timeline for deadlines. This included Impact, Woodie Flowers, and Business awards.
For kickoff, our production teams (Electronics, Build, and Programminng) split off into smaller teams of 3-4 discussing robot designs and components. To answer the question of swerve drive was answered when the drivers ran over a cone to see if it would get stuck under the robot if we had swerve (It didn’t).
1/9/23
Today we got a lot done! We split marketing into three branches: this way we can focus on tasks and achieve desired deadlines.
Social media: These members are responsible for at least posting every Tuesday and Saturday. They will work with SOFA on Impact video, and robot reveal video. These members will be seen going around practice and competitions taking pictures and videos and collecting content for our team. This is a great way to track memories we are making this season!
Digital assets: These members are responsible for designing button designs, banner designs, T-shirt, designs, mini video game designs, and flag.
Physical assets: These members are responsible for completing pit designs, including assets made out of foam, cardboard, etc. These members will also be in charge of assembling the buttons! (Isaac voice)
Afterward Marketing pretty much decided where everybody was going to settle in for build season. They started finalizing our ideas from Saturday, This included thinking about materials, sizes, and possible deadlines.
Scouting started off by meeting with programming rookies to review progress made on the app and planned out what to add. Then we started creating the rules quiz and watched some ri3d vids for some strategy ideas. Next practice we’ll continue to monitor the scouting app, work on the rules quiz, and look at more ri3d.
Today, Programming introduced a new freshman to robotics and programming, and we worked on the pneumatics test bed. After learning the basics of pneumatics and how solenoids work, they made a test project from the 2023 WPILib template and were able to deploy and use code on the test bed. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the solenoid exhausts.
It was our first practice after kickoff so naturally, today was all about prototyping. Firstly, Build began manufacturing a new kind of battery mount for us. Part of the battery mount was aluminum, so we had to restore the orange plasma green which took most of the practice. Secondly, we haven’t used pneumatics in a while, so Build helped put together a test bench in order to get an idea of how they’ll work on the robot. Finally, some of our build ] team members continued designing our new robot via CAD.
Electronics started assembling batteries for this season. The majority of them were completed today some members also worked on the pneumatics panel.
1/10/2023
Social media planned out some ideas for posts in the upcoming weeks, this included new practice times, 1 & 2 competitions details (changes may be made), and a get-to-know-the-team series. They have also finalized some ideas and point to bring up to coaches for getting a TikTok for the team. The rest of the practice continued with constructing assets for the previous ideas.
The rest of the team continued on mini-game assets. This consisted of designing backgrounds, sprites, and additional details for the game’s plot. Our Marketing Lead also got started on some ideas for a new flag for this competition season, they plan to have multiple designs for the team to choose from, this way, the team is included, and opinions are heard.
The programming rookies paired up into “specialties”, where each pair focuses on a particular part of researching robot capabilities. In particular, one pair is working on vision (Limelight, Apriltags, PhotonVision, pose estimation) and the other is working on auton (PathPlanner, auto-balancing). Also, @Joshua Purushothaman gave a nice lesson on PID controllers. Programming will try to review PID and hopefully be able to program v0 drive base next time!
Our V0 drivebase was mechanically completed right along with our new battery mount. With the V0 drive base, we hope for programming, electronics, and drivers practice for the real thing. The V0 drive base will also give the build team the ability to test our new battery under a load similar to what would be seen in a real competition. Build members were also busy working with CAD in order to design our robot.
Update 1/12/23
SnS finished the rules quiz. It was 50 questions, open notes, and there’s no time limit Travel team must pass with at least 80%. Retakes will be available for the team. Other than that, Strategy also looked at more RI3D and scouted out teams at Dallas.
Electronics worked on the electronics for the v0 drive base. Electronics is almost done with wiring the serve, we just need to sort out a few issues with the cancoders.
Programming delved into PID more today, and we looked at real-world (and game-specific) applications for PID. The programming team also gave a basic introduction to SysID, WPILib’s tool for tuning PID using a predetermined series of tests. They’ll let rookies apply their knowledge of PID to their own specialties!
Each marketing sub teams continued their jobs. Digital assets finished character animations for the mini-game and continued background art. Physical assets listed their needed materials for the pit. Social media followed their schedule and posted.
Scouting made our pit scouting form and started our data master sheet. The next practice strategy will give out the rules quiz and start grading.
Electronics started load-testing some of the new batteries we made. We also worked on can for the v0 drive base and wire-managed it. They will continue testing batteries and working on v0.
Programming split up into specialty pairs - One pair focused on vision using PhotonVision, and the other two focused on auton using PathPlanner. Eventually, programming will use this knowledge and research to put on the actual 2023 robot, and it will also utilize the PID learning that we learned last practice. While this happened, our Lead worked on the v0 swerve drivebase to try and diagnose electrical issues. They will continue looking at PhotonVision and PathPlanner, and hopefully have a working v0 drivebase!
Build began prototyping any subsystem we could. Build started the peg, which rights cones with the bigger side facing us, by sticking a shaft into the back of them and rotating that shaft to right the cone. The shafts were cut, but the t-joint had to be 3D printed and build didn’t have time. Next, was the intake, which due to technical difficulties only had the aluminum plates cut out. Finally, the build team started a 3D print that contains parts needed for the climber.
