FRC 5892 Energy HEROs 2025 - Build thread - Open Alliance

Weldingrod1 · January 5, 2025, 11:54pm

Introduction

FRC Team 5892, The Energy HEROs, is located at Energy Institute High School in Houston, Texas. Energy is a Title 1 public school dedicated to project based learning. We have competed for 9 years, and this is also our first year competing with a Junior Varsity Team, Energy NERDs. Since this is our first year of being a part of Open Alliance, we are thrilled to see what comes out of it! Building on the success of our season last year, we have revamped our training season, enhanced our equipment setup, and implemented a more structured approach with both overarching and week-by-week goals to improve overall organization and performance. Our team continues to grow every year, and we are super excited to compete in FRC Reefscape!

About Us

In our FRC program we have approximately 85 students. Both of our teams are structured with dedicated sub-teams, each led by a team lead. These leads are responsible for leading and developing workshops during the training season. Additionally, they provide ongoing support and delegate tasks, fostering an environment where students take the lead on designs and projects, promoting greater ownership and leadership within the team. Because of our smaller non-technical teams like Spirit, Business, Outreach, and Media, they are shared between the two teams.

Our teams focus on student-led designs and administration, with our 3 lead mentors, 3 faculty sponsors, and 9 slightly less robotics-crazy mentors observing and helping when necessary. Our Varsity team, 5892 HEROs, comprises of 39 students with the expectations of building off from last year. Our JV team, 6243 NERDs, comprises of 40 students with the expectation of figuring things out, skill development, teamwork, and using the opportunity to gain experience on another robot.

5 Goals for 5892 Energy HEROs

Smooth communication between CAD, manufacturing, and mechanical
1. We’re creating a process for requesting parts
Scheduling
1. More time to prototype (last year was one dedicated week)
2. More time to program
Robot-ing
1. Be able to quickly assemble parts
2. Understand where and how our robot breaks
Have a supportive and friendly community
1. Emphasize fair-ness (time to work on robot, regular reporting on issues)
2. Pride/Belonging (more team building)
3. Understanding expectations (open communication both ways)
4. Innovation for all (any idea is an idea regardless of experience so CAD isn’t in their lonesome making decisions)
Encouraging well-roundedness
1. People should understand multiple subteams
2. “Everyone in robotics should be a robotics kid” - Michael 2024
  Integrating soft-skill subsystems into robotics (To report on something, you need to understand it, and it can be secondhand information)

Ideal Schedule:

Week 1: Prototyping - Concept Selection
Week 2: Prototyping - Parameter Evaluation | Building Chassis
Week 3: Prototyping - Finalizing | Finish Chassis
Week 4: Mechanisms on Testbeds
Week 5: Upgrading Mechanisms
Week 6: Transfer Mechanisms to Chassis
Week 7: Full Capabilities | Driving | Making Spares
Week 8: Upgrading Comp-related structures | Driving

If you’d like to know more detail or about our soft-side, here’s our public calendar: FRC Calendar 2024-2025

5 Goals for 6243 Energy NERDs

Have good communication throughout the team.
We’re creating a system for our members to give anonymous feedback about the robot, subteam, etc.
Build a new structure for the team.
1. Our Leads will step off and provide both guidance and feedback instead of just focusing on the robot
2. We will have the students be more involved with the robot rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Ensure the team operates efficiently.
1. Everyone will be assigned a task, and if someone has no current responsibilities, they will be reassigned to assist another subteam with their portion of the robot.
2. The team should meet deadlines confidently, without the worry of incomplete tasks or last-minute stress.
Building a well-rounded team.
1. Team members should have a basic understanding of other areas, so if someone from a subteam is unavailable, others can step in and handle or address the issue.
2. Have leads and managers share relevant knowledge from other areas, even outside their subteam, whenever they feel it’s beneficial for the team’s growth.
Fostering a friendly and collaborative environment.
1. Organize more team-building activities throughout the season to promote collaboration and minimize any potential conflicts.
2. Being more receptive to all suggestions.
3. Ensure everyone understands expectations, including roles, goals, and performance standards, for better alignment and teamwork.

Tentative Schedule:

Week 1 - 3: Work on KitBot | Exchange program between subsystems
Week 4: Finalize KitBot | Begin Prototyping
Week 5 - 6: Brainstorm & prototype “spin on KitBot” with 5892 CAD members
Week 7 - 8: Build mechanism, test, and integrate

Build Blog Overview

The purpose of this blog is to both document our process for reflection later and shed light on our new prototyping/design process. Hopefully, some teams can gain information on the effects of our restructure.

This blog will have weekly (maybe more if deemed helpful) updates containing:

Progress on the robots
Any changes in organization/structure of the teams
Updates on non-technical team’s progress

As well as sporadic information on our off-season projects and activities:

JV Robot Cart
Battery Cart
RFID tagging batteries
Pit Banners and Frame
Implementing a “Merit Badge” System
Mock Competition
Kick-off Olympics

If you ever want more content, feel free to watch out monthly build season updates from both teams later on YouTube!

Team Links

Website
YouTube
Instagram
GitHub
CAD (coming soon)

pigrammer · January 5, 2025, 11:57pm

I might be missing something, but that seems like more than 5 goals?

Anyways, what I really want to ask is how you are planning to balance all these goals. We on our team set 3 major goals, and they are not really related to each other - how will you keep all your goals in mind? I’m interested to know because that seems like a good thing to do but also a tough thing to do.

Weldingrod1 · January 6, 2025, 12:11am

Well… the kids wrote this. I’ll see what they want edited!

A key goal, as far as I see it, is to get the kids more hands-on-robot time so we can keep building better kids. That was our biggest complaint last year! And we have even more kids this year… Thus, the reason for creating the JV team. Twice the robots, twice the fun, right? Energy Institute High School doesn’t have a football team (I know, crazy talk for Texas, right?); FRC is quite literally our biggest sport/team/activity. We actually brought the Energy Joules (our cheer team) to Belton last year. Kind of surreal, but it fit right in with the screaming hordes in the audience!

The kids have a top level goal of becoming a “normally goes to Worlds” class team. They’ve really structured the off season activities to support this goal. This requires us to really build a more sustainable team training and operating culture, so that graduating seniors don’t crash the team. The training materials and merit badges are one aspect of this. Finally -building- a pit structure to advertise on, and the associated equipment/media is another step forward.

As the physically closest team to Worlds, travel is a non-issue

Oh, one of the coolest things that has happened recently is that a 5892 alumni is now WORKING at the same company as me (SLB)! How awesome is THAT!

Weldingrod1 · January 6, 2025, 12:15am

And the answer is “I didn’t check the formatting”. Oops!

theclocrusade · January 6, 2025, 1:07am

Team co-captain from 5892 here!

For smooth communication between technical leads, we’re creating rules and accountability to ensure parts get delivered and ordered in an organized manner.
For scheduling, we didn’t have week-by-week goals and didn’t purposefully dedicate time for each subystem. There’s been a lot more pre-season starting planning than last year. All of the subsystems each have their own timeline that they understand they need to stick too that still feels within their comfort zone. Mainly, just planning with intent. (If you want our subsystem by subsystem plans feel free to ask. It’s kind of a lot)
This was pretty good last year! Just keeping up with drills and understanding who’s good at what. It’s important for us to confidently know who to ask to do what once we’re in the pit
There’s multiple parts:

I’m building in time to our meetings (1 hour every other meeting), to report on teams on open alliance and a comment on our team. This gives each subsystem the opportunity to speak up without having to do it on their own.
I want to add team building exercises similar to what we did at kick-off (but more robotics oriented; update on kick-off coming soon) on at least two saturdays.
A lot of making belonging is getting people invested in the robot and making them feel like they made a change. It’s kind of an environment that I’m working to curate, by reminding people they each have their part on making this team better. Especially our non-technical people!
Prototyping is going to be a full-team thing for all of our technical subteams for three weeks, not just CAD or mechanical (I’ll be heavily encouraging it

This is also mainly a mindset thing for our team. During off-season, they didn’t have time to train for multiple subteams, since all of our subsystems were working in parallel. I’m just going to encourage people to learn whatever is necessary when solving issues (and hopefully that culture proliferates).

Overall, I’m planning to balance it with a mix of charisma (talking to members), dedicating time to our goals during our meetings, and new processes.

Weldingrod1 · January 6, 2025, 2:27am

Doing a quick test with a DC vacuum pump and a 4" plastic cup to see if Algae can be picked up with a vacuum.

The answer is yes, but only with a really soft weatherstripping seal around the cup. The grip is pretty solid. Not perfect, as you can shake it off, but you need to try. And a dyson hand vac is definitely not enough vacuum! Even with weatherstripping it can’t really grab at all.

Neither one of my soft rubber suction cups worked on the Algae at all.

theclocrusade · January 6, 2025, 4:07pm

Kick-off/Olympics

Overview
The day consisted of team building activities in the morning, followed by a guided analysis of the game, and finally a lecture on prototyping. The set of fun and engaging team building Olympic games combines high-energy competition with basic athletic ability, allowing for full and active participation.

Event	Time	Activity Description
Deliberation time & breakfast	9:00 - 9:15 AM	Take the time to sign-up in the Kick-off Olympics to represent your team in at least one event
Kick-off Olympics	9:15 - 10:30 AM	Everybody’s it (All) Hula Hoop Pass (15 representatives) Carrot in the box/Steal or no steal (3 representatives) Relay Race (4 representatives) Musical Chairs (3 representatives) Oreo Eating Face-to-Mouth (5 representatives) Cup-stacking relay race (3 representatives) Lip Sync Battle (1 + back-up dancer representatives
Awards	10:30 - 11:00 AM	PRIZES: ○ First in line for food ○ Ice bucket student Team Captains ○ Tiny kick-off olympics trophy
Watching Kick-off	11:00 AM - 12:00 PM	(Optional) Bingo Sheet Begin the RULES worksheet during game release (it’s ok to work in pairs)
Lunch	12:00 - 1:00 PM	Eat! And wipe down the tables after
Rules Analysis (6243 & 5892 work together)	1:00 - 3:00 PM	Finish RULES worksheet (it’s ok to work in pairs) (Optional, highly suggested) Fill out STRATEGY worksheet (Optional, highly suggested) Use AdvantageScope XR to see the field projected irl
Decisions & Deliberations (5892 & 6243 split)	3:00 - 4:00 PM	Complete DESIGNING worksheet + other considerations as a team
Prototyping Lecture	4:00 - 5:00 PM	Since I’d like our first couple weeks to be prototyping, I want to show y’all how to do that. I’ll brief on what my goals on this build season time and culture wise look like, as well as how we’re taking advantage of open alliance this year.

Check out this document 2025 Kick-off/Olympics if you want to know more about:

How we organized the games, OR
Access to our team’s worksheets

Check out our prototyping lecture: FRC 5892: Prototyping 101

Post-Release Deliberation: 5892 Energy HEROs

General Process:

X% of capabilities exercise
Design Priorities

100% Robot vs 50% Robot

Design Priorities with Reasoning:

Intake coral
1. Ground: More opportunities to grab coral
2. Coral Station: Nice to not have to align to the coral; just use vision
Remove algae from branch: necessary to clear for scoring coral
L2/L3 Place: more points over shooting to score algae
Control deep cage: Just emphasizing that it’ll be moving a lot; We believe we have the design capabilities
Climb on deep cage: ^^
Control algae on the ground: Important for co-op
Score algae in processor: Important for co-op
Extra scoring in auton: Important to devote time, so we’re mentioning it

Post-Release Deliberation: 6243 Energy NERDs

General Process:

Which mechanisms from previous games can inspire our robot design, and how we can implement these concepts effectively.
Prioritized list of potential modifications to improve scoring capabilities and/or enhance the KitBot design.
Strategies for earning ranking points and the other factors that contribute to overall rankings.

Design Priorities with Reasoning:

Shallow Climb: Easier addition (?)
Algae: Allows for specializing and you don’t have to leave your side of the field (since only one robot is allowed on the opponent’s side at a time).
L2 Coral: Enables us to score more points and improves our chances of earning the ranking point in autonomous by successfully placing at least one coral on the reef, if all robots leave during auto.
L3 Coral: Provides us with greater opportunities to accumulate points throughout the match, as defensive play is limited in Reefscape due to the rule allowing only one robot from each alliance to leave their starting area at a time. As a result, our focus will shift towards maximizing our scoring potential and aiming to secure ranking points.

Bjorn · January 6, 2025, 4:28pm

I feel like the estimated cycle time for coral in teleop is a bit too optimistic

Weldingrod1 · January 6, 2025, 4:33pm

New Battery Cart

My FIRST Robotics team, 5892 Energy HEROs has started a JV team, 6243 Energy NERDs. That meant this season we needed to move and charge twice as many heavy batteries.

So, I thought about what it should do. At Energy Institute High School, they talk about driving questions, so that’s how I phrased it when I ran it past the team:
#1: We need at least 8 new competition batteries PER TEAM, and 6 amp chargers for 16 batteries. We have 16 TOTAL charger slots right now. PLUS we need boat and practice batteries.
#2: I want to get as much lead off of the super pit during transport as possible. No more 150 pound totes!
#3: I want us to have a cart to haul batteries to the basketball court and charge there during practice
#4: I want whatever we do to provide additional functionality in the pit (power, advertising, seating, drink cooler, tip down stool, fold out table???)
#5: I want to minimize the footprint of stuff in the trailer; we are going to be jam-packed with two robots!!!
#6: The cart needs to look cool, be easy to break over and move, and hard to tip over.
#7: Minimize the number of removable parts and steps that need to be done before moving.
#8: It needs to be on brand and awesome

My kiddos had some important opinions, with the most critical being that they wanted full-power charging, and a LOT of it! I was originally thinking of tiny float chargers…

I made some sketches after getting feedback and sourced some parts.

Some physical “how does that look” work helped firm it up and guide the CAD work and decide how big the pockets on the back needed to be

The actual fabrication was classic woodworking: mark, clamp guides, saw/route. I got some help on that She got to learn a bunch of new tools!

FYI, amplifier Tolex is really just fake leather. Buying it as fake leather was much cheaper. That covering gives you a very robust dent-hiding finish. Much tougher than paint! Real live flammable contact cement is much better than the water based stuff, but both DO work…

I’m really pleased with the end result! I think it will serve us well at competition!

We got to take it for a test drive at kickoff; 8 batteries were barely noticeable when rolling it!

CD crew: I was thinking of publishing instructions for both the actual cart I built AND a no-cover style of cart. Would there be people who would use a cart that JUST looked like this? With some way to keep the batteries in, of course!

philso · January 6, 2025, 4:40pm

Thanks for posting pictures of this on our District Slack. We have borrowed some ideas from it to greatly simplify our battery cart design.

Weldingrod1 · January 6, 2025, 4:44pm

Here’s the charger I used. SON-1206D. 6 amps. I got them for $12 each when I bought 12 of them! Crazy cheap! I love the displays, and the $$/channel is MUCH better than the marine chargers. I’ve had one of these for my home charger and regularly loaned to the team and used it for about four years and been very happy with the performance.

Winrich5 · January 9, 2025, 7:11pm

Did you try suction on coral? From your experience is suction a viable strategy for single manipulator?

Weldingrod1 · January 10, 2025, 2:29am

I have not tested suction on coral. It should be radically easier to grab due to the smooth surfaces.
The LadyCans has great results with a four cup, four pump system handling cubes and cones!