I’m part of a rookie FRC team (Velocity Raptors #9450) and we have been rolling through our FRC season. Our mentor is great with anything that has to do with the mechanical or electrical side of things, but we don’t have a dedicated programming mentor that is able to come in and mentor us. Our programming department consists of 6 members at the moment with me as the programming lead. We are located in Woodinville, Washington and I was wondering if there would be anyone that is interested in coming in at least weekly to help us out (if you can come in more than that, even better). If that doesn’t work, maybe online meetings would work to walk us through things, but it would be really nice to have someone to walk us through things while we are testing the robot.
Some of the qualifications that we would want are:
JAVA programming for FRC
PID control and tuning
Vision tracking
Path planning
Let me know if anyone is interested in helping us out. Thank you so much!
First and foremost, Welcome to FRC, prepare for some of the hardest fun you’ll ever have!
Unfortunately I am in Louisiana, and been rather busy myself this pre-season outside FRC so I probably won’t be much help, though could probably manage a couple of remote Saturday education sessions with y’all and my current team 9153 if needed. Though I’d try some of the below suggestions first.
Considering y’all are in the Seattle area, I would be reaching out to some of the multitude of other teams in the area, considering most teams are using Java these days you should be able to arrange to work with another team in learning (who will also have access to control system parts) at least during pre-season, and possibly one of them can even help you find a local mentor to assist.
Taking a quick look at the FIRST Map your nearest teams are Team 3663 Cedar Park Robotics and Team 3268 Valhallabots and looking at their linked GitHubs 3663 uses Java, and 3268 previously used Java and now Kotlin, which is a different language but still somewhat Java-Like and intended to run on top of Java’s byte-code Interpreter the JVM (Java Virtual Machine).
So I’d reach out to these teams to see what resources/assistance they may be able to provide (You can try through a team’s social media, or have your team’s coach reach out to the local regional coordinator to assist in contacting the teams. Additionally if there are any companies nearby that involve any kind of software development, ask them if any of their employees would be willing to help. Some companies may even donate a willing employee’s time (meaning the mentor is being paid to work with your team) as a sort of sponsorship donation.
There is also the FIRST Mentor Network your team can setup a profile on to request assistance as well as browse potential mentors. Though I cannot attest to if this resource has been helpful for any teams as it seems to be often forgotten about? Likely still worth a try.