FRC Team 4118: Roaring Riptide | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

[frcriptide4118]

FRC Team 4118 Roaring Riptide is electrifyingly excited to join the Open Alliance for the 2024 season!

Who are we?

Roaring Riptide: FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team 4118, was founded in 2011 at P.K. Yonge DRS in Gainesville, Florida. Though we’ve had many successes as a team, we’re most proud of our work in Assistive Technology. In February 2020, we founded our #FIRSTwithAT program and have gained the support and recognition from 4 local college student organizations, as well as national organizations for our work. In addition to these partnerships, the students of Roaring Riptide have contributed over 4500 hours to promote STEM education, assistive technology outreach, and within the other FIRST program levels. We are the lifeguards of 4118!

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Our Story!

Founded in 2012 by P.K. Yonge Teacher Kerry Thompson, Dr. Lynda Hayes, and Dr. Carl Crane, Roaring Riptide originated as a robotics team at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School in Gainesville, Florida. In its initial establishment, Riptide comprised of 18 dedicated student members and supported by 8 mentors.
Throughout its 12-year journey, we has been guided by several coaches. However, a pivotal moment arrived in 2017 with the arrival of our current coach, Leigh Anne Brewster. Under her leadership, we underwent a comprehensive reimagining of our identity, aligning Roaring Riptide cohesively with its mission and vision. This transformation laid the foundation for the tightly-knit collective we proudly exhibit today. As we approach the 2024 season, Roaring Riptide now boasts a team of 10 accomplished student members, bolstered by the steadfast support of 7 in-person mentors.

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Our Vision!

-Sustain a cohesive team identity that students are proud to identify with and share with others.

-Promote STE(A)M through outreach events & summer camps.

-Design, create, and open-source Assistive Technology solutions to help individuals in our community and beyond!

-Continue growing to new heights our #FIRSTwithAT initiative!

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Links:

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

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Team Structure:

Subteams:

-CAD + Design

-Robot Build + Technical

-Electrical + Programming

-Pitch Team

-Imagery

-Impact + Outreach

We divide our sub-teams in this way to be able to separate team tasks as evenly as possible which then makes our team environment a place where everyone is pitching in their part to be able to accomplish our team’s season goals as a student led team.

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Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

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Final Notes!

Please give us feedback as you see fit. We’re excited to bring you along on our CRESCENDO 2024 season!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!

[frcriptide4118]

Build Season Week 1 Summary | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

Initial Game Impressions

Riptide is absolutely ECSTATIC for this year’s FRC game, Crescendo!! During Kickoff, our team worked together in studying the Game Manual, as well as celebrating the exciting feeling of diving in to a new exciting FRC season! We are a student-led, mentor supported team and we are a team with 10 members so it is important for us to make sure everyone on the team understands the game before we decide on anything relating to strategy or robot design.

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Strategy

During Week 1 we we decided on a strategy to proceed with prototyping based our reading of the FRC Crescendo game manual and what we wanted to prioritize. We created a list of all of the possible ways to score to make sure we don’t skip anything.

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Decided Upon Strategy

With having the goal this season of learning as much as possible with our robot design, we decided on prioritizing being able to score consistently in the speaker and amp primarily against the amp and on the subwoofer for scoring in the speaker. We decided on this because we believe it’s beneficial for us to be able to score consistently from one point on the field. In addition to us wanting to prioritize scoring on the speaker and amp, we want to be able to hang consistently on the chain.

One thing that we did decide was to not prioritize designing for the trap. Our reasoning is that we think the trap is possible but we want to spend more time on what we consider to be more important which is scoring in the speaker, amp, and climbing. The trap requires in our opinion very specific designs to be able to accomplish the goal of opening the trap door while hanging and then being able to score the trap in.

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Prototyping

In Week 1, we’ve been prototyping different intake and launcher designs which will be shown in the images below. We decided on having a roller intake because based on our tests, we’re confident in how the note is picked up. We’ve been testing out a launcher that has 2 wheels on one side and a boundary on the other because the note is pretty flexible overall.

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Field Pieces

We want to thank one of our mentors, Mr. Bill, for building an amp and source zone field piece which will significantly help us with prototyping. We don’t have a full field so seeing what size the field pieces are each season is important to us to see how we need to build them and what materials we’ll need to purchase.

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Goals for Week 2

As we head into Week 2, our main goal is to continue working on our robot CAD. We want to have our thought out intake and launcher design in CAD to be able to order the parts we need to build it by this week.

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Links

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

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Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We are more than happy to help with anything. We wish the best of luck to all other FRC teams in tackling this year’s game, as well as having a blast playing it!

Stay tuned for our Week 2 summary!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!

[frcriptide4118]

Build Season Week 2 Summary | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

Strategy

During Week 2 we decided on prioritizing scoring in the amp and being able to climb. We decided on focusing in these areas of scoring because we want to be consistent in certain things rather than trying to figure out what design can work for all of the ways to score in Crescendo.

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What we’re Currently Working On

In Week 2 we’ve been setting up our partial field in our lab space so we can be able to test out our swerve drive. We’re currently running SDS Mk4i modules which have been working well for us. This is our first season running Swerve Drive so we’re in the process of programming the modules and making sure everything runs smoothly for competition in March.

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Goals for Week 3

As we start Week 3, we are finalizing our Bill of Materials to be able to order everything that we need for our major subsystems by the end of this week.

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Links

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

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Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We are more than happy to help with anything. We wish the best of luck to all other FRC teams in tackling this year’s game, as well as having a blast playing it!

Stay tuned for our Week 3 summary!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!

[frcriptide4118]

Build Season Week 3 Summary | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

Hi everyone! Here’s our Week 3 Open Alliance Build summary!

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Strategy

During Week 3 we are still prioritizing scoring in the amp and being able to climb. We decided on focusing in these areas of scoring because we want to be consistent in certain things rather than trying to figure out what design can work for all of the ways to score in Crescendo.

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What’s been Accomplished

In Week 3 we’ve:

• Finalized the decision of our slides/elevator and decided on having a Cascade design that will be chain driven.

• *Finalized the decision of making the intake into 2 different sections so it can be manufactured more easily. We have a limitation on how long and wide we can manufacture pieces on our CNC machine so we our design work to fit that constraint.

• We have an electrical panel laid out on our Main Assembly CAD document showcasing what it would look like.

• *Final frame perimeter for our robot was decided and has been updated in our robot CAD. 29in x 29in is the frame perimeter that we have decided.

• We’ve purchased 2, two-stage “Climber in a Box” from AndyMark to have something that we can test out and use on our robot. We’ve imported this climber into our robot CAD to implement it in our design and place it on our chassis.

• General wiring for the electrical panel is complete. All motor controllers are connected and all of the electrical components are connected to our REV Power Distribution Hub.

• Cancoders have been mounted onto our Swerve Drive Mk4i modules. Code has been written for the Cancoders but needs to be tested.

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Goals for Week 4

As we start Week 3, we are are working on:

• Finalizing our intake CAD which is divided into the beginning section that intakes the note and the back section that outtakes into the note into the amp. We will have the CAD complete for the intake this week to build it.

• Finalize the design for our slides/elevator to be able to order any parts that we don’t have on hand to build it.

• Finish assigning materials for all subsystems in our robot CAD to know how much it’s going to weigh.

• Creating a limelight mount on our robot.

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Prototyping

Intake prototyping

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Links

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

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Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We are more than happy to help with anything. We wish the best of luck to all other FRC teams in tackling this year’s game, as well as having a blast playing it!

Stay tuned for our Week 4 summary!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!

[frcriptide4118]

Build Season Week 4 Summary | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

Hi everyone! Here’s our Week 4 Open Alliance Build summary!

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Strategy

During Week 4 we are still prioritizing scoring in the amp and being able to climb. We decided on focusing in these areas of scoring because we want to be consistent in certain things rather than trying to figure out what design can work for all of the ways to score in Crescendo. BUT, we are now aiming to create an intake that also serves as a launcher for both amp AND speaker.

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What’s been Accomplished

In Week 4 we’ve:

• Mounted the belly pan to our 29" x 29" chassis.

• *Finalized the decision of making the intake into 2 different sections so it can be manufactured more easily. We have a limitation on how long and wide we can manufacture pieces on our CNC machine so we our design work to fit that constraint.

• Built our electrical panel completely and finalized where it will be mounted on the chassis.

• Physically built our 2, two-stage “Climber in a Box” from AndyMark to be able to test out and see what modifications we have to make to the climbers to fit our robot design.

• Added hardware into our CAD to be able to see what we accurately need to order to build our robot’s subsystems. Which entails having a Bill of Materials we can utilize to know what to order ASAP.

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Goals for Week 5

As we start Week 5, we are are working on:

• Test out our built climbers on our chassis.

• Construct our intake design idea completely and out of aluminum.

• Install our electrical panel onto our chassis.

• Order ALL of the major hardware components we need for our subsystems.

• Create a limelight mount on our robot.

• Install our elevator/slides system onto our robot which later on, the intake will be attached to.

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Links

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

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Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We are more than happy to help with anything. We wish the best of luck to all other FRC teams in tackling this year’s game, as well as having a blast playing it!

Stay tuned for our Week 5 summary!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!

[frcriptide4118]

Build Season Week 6 Summary | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

Hi everyone! Here’s our Week 6 Open Alliance Build summary!

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Strategy

During Week 6 we are still prioritizing scoring in the amp and being able to climb. We decided on focusing in these areas of scoring because we want to be consistent in certain things rather than trying to figure out what design can work for all of the ways to score in Crescendo. BUT, we are now aiming to create an intake that also serves as a launcher for both amp AND speaker.

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What’s been Accomplished

In Week 6 we’ve:

• Machined almost all of our parts needed for our robot build.
• Started building the FRC Kit of Parts KitBot to be a backup robot for testing and driver practice.
• Physically built our 2, two-stage “Climber in a Box” from AndyMark to be able to test out and see what modifications we have to make to the climbers to fit our robot design.l
• We were able to make our swerve drive move! It took a LOT of work but we accomplished this task.

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Goals for Week 7

As we start Week 7, we are are working on:

• Test out our built climbers on our chassis.
• Construct our intake design idea completely and out of aluminum.
• Create a limelight mount on our robot.
• Install our elevator/slides system onto our robot which later on, the intake will be attached to.

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Links

-Team Instagram
-#FIRSTwithAT Initiative Instagram
-Team Facebook
-Team X (Twitter)
-Team Website
-Team GitHub

---

Registered Competitions

We’ve registered and plan to attend the Tallahassee Regional on March 13th-16th, 2024.

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We are more than happy to help with anything. We wish the best of luck to all other FRC teams in tackling this year’s game, as well as having a blast playing it!

Stay tuned for our Week 7 summary!

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Lifeguards!
On deck!!