We are super excited for another year in openalliance this year! As a team it has always been our standard to be open with our findings and development, mostly by sharing on Facebook. By joining the openalliance we have been able to more formally share our process, while also working together with other teams to be more successful.
Somewhat unfortunately, Tigerbotics is not always the most “successful” team, due to many factors such as: being student lead, rural small school, and time available to students; we struggle with organization, funding, and general effort. Know that we do our best to overcome and continue to work and stay positive on all ends. But, due to this Tigerbotics does not necessarily strive to be the best team, but we simply strive to go above and beyond our reasonable goals, to do better than we previously have, and most importantly we just try to have fun. If you’re not having fun, why do it.
After kickoff, we got our FRC Binder out and added in the freshly printed rules for the 2024 season. We started reading as much as we could and start to decide on an overall strategy and plan for the season. We have the basis of what we would like to accomplish. We want to have a focus on being able to score in the Amp as our priority. We do have multiple ideas and sketches where we believe that for once we can successfully do everything. Our goals for this season:
-Score Speaker & Amp.
- Be Fast and efficient.
-Min. leaving it up to Chance and Min. chances for human Error
-Be able to pull up on the chain.
Build
While we are waiting on our kit, we have been sketching and watching Alot of Ri3D, and we have a base idea of what we would like to do. Now we have not made a final agreement, but as the clock continues to click, we are very close to a final Design.
As of right know we are leaning towards a very similar design to Unqualified Quokkas Ri3D. We would most likely add 2 Climbers in a box for chain ability.
We plan to begin prototyping and setting our final design when we get ahold of our kit.
Software / Programming
We have begun to go through previous years’ work and allow our new Programmer to just get a fill out begin working on getting it ready. Luckily Our CEO and Programming lead from last year has been helping as much as possible in deciphering his code to help better understand.
Howdy! Sorry for the lack of updates but here is our update before our week 1 in Waco. So far, we have been working hard on are build to be finished in time.
Build
There is a lot of updates on the build progress. To start, we finalized are design. It resembles a lot that of the @UnqualifiedQuokkas . With the actual progress, we first got the models in CAD made. While the CAD was being worked on, we started handling and preparing the base. Once we had the CAD done, we started the build. Are bot can be separated into 3 sub categorize. The Arm, The intake, and he shooter.
The arm was pretty straight forward, or at least we thought at first. It uses two NEOs to rotate. Now, I’m going to explain as vague as possible with it still making since, to allow for little spoilers for are official reveal. The arm rotates on a single Hex Shaft with Spur Gears and chains to allow it to. With supports throughout to keep it from not snapping.
The intake is fairly simple with compliance wheels, 5 on three different HEX bars, for a total of 15. Now here we had to get creative. Since short on time and money, we weren’t able to get the plexiglass we needed for the intake. So, Plywood would have to work. Add some spare Polycarp and churros and that was completed. Powered by some spare Neos ofc.
For the shooter we had to get real creative. With the fairly simple design, we had to use 6" HiGrip Wheels for are shooter. This was due to not having the right parts around and being short on time, so we needed to improvise. Only major worry with that is we have seen how easy the game pieces have been getting eaten up.
As of right know we are currently just assembling all of it together. We hope to have it done by the end of this week to allow for are drive team to have plenty of time.
We do plan to be able to climb, but for our week 1 competition we are going to hold off.
Software/Programming
The drive train has been coded and tested. We have implemented the use of shuffleboard to select which type of drive that we want to use during the math. Our two options we decided on are tank and arcade drive. We also had to troubleshoot and decide which motor classes to use, and we continued to change the hardware. We started with TalonSRX but decided on SparkMax. The intake system for the notes has been coded and troubleshooted. We are in the process of coding and testing the program for the arm in order to raise and lower the intake system. - Seth Beneze
Future
For future updates we are going to do are best to have them out weekly at least, but this may mean posts are not so much in depth. Are goal is just to get them out on time and for use (me) not to procrastinate getting them out. We also Plan to break it down into a Build update and a Programming update.
Izayik Bell, Team CEO.
Seth Beneze, Programming Lead
UPDATE 3 - “Help please, the arm fell on me, it’s heavy” - Austin
So, as we roll into week 1 at Waco, we are losing are minds. So here is the update.
Build
To start, we have been to get everything assembled, are intake is on. We did have to make it out of plywood, but we do plan to make the switch to plexiglass for Amarillo. The arm is together for the most part. The one issue we are running into is the chains. See with the way we have it designed; we have a plate across the two supports of the arm that allows us to mount the motors to rotate/pivot the arm. But we either can’t get the chain tight enough or some other things happen…
The major problem that we have had that has kind of thrown us into this downward spiral. Is that plate i mentioned before snapped. See, when we finally had everything mounted, we went to test the programming to make sure everything was running well. When we did, the robot was doing fine, until it disabled itself, causing that when it turned back on, it tried to run the arm through the robot. Causing that metal plate to bend.
Are fix, LIMIT SWITCHES. We added two limit switches, one to not repeat, and one to not fly out the other side of the robot. We also added a steel cable to keep it from trying to become part of the game field. We also had a barring in the gearbox of the right side of the drive train break, so we had to halt everything else to fix that so we could actually at least play hockey.
As of right know (as we are driving up to Waco and I’m typing this in the car), we made a new and hopefully stronger mounting plate for the arm motors that we plan to add once we get into the pit an get everything set up. We also need to put the chains back on and finish any other arm assembly.
(not biased)