Hello Chief Delphi. I am the captain and driver of Mon Valley Mammoths FTC and FRC team. For Crescendo my team has been setting unrealistic goals, especially for me as the sole programmer. They want to build two robots, and build a swerve drive for our first build season, during build season. But we only have 4, maybe 5, students. I have no passion for programming, and I am only doing it because no one else will learn. As of now I still have no experience with actual programming (only blocks in FTC). I keep trying to make it clear to them that I do not want to program. What can I do to get my team to set a realistic goal? (To me a realistic goal would be building one robot with tank drive.)
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I don’t really think this is a tank vs swerve conversation. Doesn’t really matter the drivetrain if no one is going to program it. It sounds more of a personnel and time kind of problem. Are there mentors/adults in the picture? 4 or 5 people is a very very small number of people for both FRC and FTC at the same time.
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Seek to understand what the gap is - why other team members think the goals are reasonable, while you do not.
Then, address the difference in opinion head-on.
A Gantt Chart may be a useful thing to create as a team to set expectations for the season. It would help levelset assumptions about how long different things take, in a context where the total stackup can be visualized by everyone at the same time.
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If you have not done FRC programming, tank code is MUCH easier to understand, build and support than Swerve. Just to give you an idea - a good tank drive code would take less than 500 lines. The from-scratch swerve code will likely take 1500, unless you use a library like YAGSL, and it may take you a little while to get used to that. Swerve also is MUCH more expensive to build. Even basic drivetrain without using very expensive motors (meaning using CIM and 775, for instance) will likely cost north of 2-3K in parts, while the tank will likely run less than half (or even a third) of that.
I support an opinion of others that suggested discussing expectations and putting them in a chart, which may bring the teams schedule to a more manageable level.
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Assuming that you have all the money to do swerve right, the swerve code is mostly just plug and play, that said if this is your view on programming
Please find a student (or mentor) that has some kind of passion for programming. You will need someone with some kind of interest in programming to code whatever scoring mechanism(s) your team makes, as those will not come with githubs/docs of ready to go code like drive bases have.
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Solidly agree with this .Not much to add to this besides the following - I am pro Gantt chart, but I would recommend consulting with veteran teams prior to finalizing yours. As rookies, you’re not going to know how long things like assembly, wiring, programming will take - so please ask! 
We just finished our draft 1 of build season schedule so will be happy to help if you need.
(Idk how to make this a non reply on mobile, sorry 
)
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I would argue that a tank (KoP) is the way to go…especially for rookies with no coding experience…or no desire as you put it to code.
We went to district champs last year on a base bot. Minimal coding experience. Of course we paid for it in selection on Alliance selection. And we are a Veteran team.
I would go back to the team and ask the all mighty question…Who will code a swerve? Just a tank drive is not fun…and add Auto…and it drops lower. It is doable…and a lot quicker to code than swerve.a
We had help with just doing the basics. This year, we are doing swerve…to what extent is to be seen. IF your team is gung ho about doing swerve…I would look at MaxSwerve. Cost wise…it is not bad. And it will get your program up and running.
ALL this said…you still MIGHT be behind the eight ball. Swerve isn’t like a tank drive. Tank is easier to drive…from my understanding swerve is a bit of a challenge…yet still doable. Just need more driving time than a tank. I think those that already have swerve programs will agree…it should be done as early as possible…not during build season…which we are fast approaching.
As a member of a fellow first year team, tank is hands down the way to go, especially for minimal FRC experience. For comparison, my team is pursuing swerve, but ONLY because we had modules donated to us, have the support of a mentor who is well versed in FRC programming, and have many veteran FRC members.
For a team with none of those, it is not very worthwhile and would likely set you back further than if you were to use tank. Even though swerve helps, a tank robot with well designed and programmed mechanisms beats a robot with bad swerve code and okay mechanism code.
If by any chance, you were able to find someone willing to program more than you currently are, then there would be more of an argument (though still likely not worth it) to consider swerve.
I would consider looking into many design from last year that successfully utilized tank (9098 comes to mind) to help set more realistic goals. You don’t have to be the best at everything to be good, you just need to be great at something, and pursuing swerve with minimal programming support likely won’t help that.
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Your profile says you were previously part of a well-established team, so I assume you’re familiar with many of the common aspects and pitfalls of FRC.
It sounds like your teammates aren’t familiar with this competition. You may not be able to convince them to change course until they have a greater understanding of how all of this works. It may not be enough to put up a timeline or Gantt Chart if they don’t accept that those tasks actually take that much time, or that acquiring new knowledge also takes time.
If they haven’t built/wired/tested/driven an FRC 'bot, or even an FRC drivetrain before, now is the best (remaining) time to do it – not during build season. (Yes, you’ll have to take it apart again; it won’t be the last time.)
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Last year, I joined a helped start a rookie team in FNC. One of our core goals for the season was to have swerve as we saw it to be an integral part of our team’s growth into the 2023, 2024, and beyond. We decided to run MAXSwerve due to the great REV ecosystem, and in my opinion its definitely the best choice available for rookie teams. That being said, a majority of our construction cost went into swerve, and it was a large reliability issue for our bot in matches. However going into our second year, the entire team is a lot more comfortable with swerve. I may be biased, but if you team geniunely wants to tackle swerve it is definitely achievable by rookie teams and can be a great challenge.
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First of all, well done to reach out to those with previous experience in FRC to get their opinions. The phrase “steal from the best, invent the rest” is a common phrase in FRC, and it applies to more than just robot mechanisms. If all the veteran teams around you are saying, “don’t do swerve your rookie season,” then you’d do well to trust them. Maybe you can convince some of your teammates to get on Chief Delphi and read other threads about great rookie robots!
But I love your team’s attitude of aiming high right off the bat! It shows you have ambitious team members! Just because you are a rookie team, doesn’t mean you can’t be ambitious. But I would caution them about being ambitious when it comes to the drivetrain. 7457 had a very ambitious endgame climber during our rookie season in 2019. We pulled it off and were very proud! That being said, we knew that if that climber failed, we were still going to be able to score points during the match and park at the end. The rest of the robot was much simpler.
Remember, If your drivetrain fails, your robot is sitting there doing nothing (often in the way of alliance members) for the rest of the match. Don’t risk the drivetrain your rookie year. If your programming department (you) says you aren’t ready for it, then you probably aren’t ready for it. Build the KOP drivetrain, wire it as robustly as possible, and save the ambition for something else. IMO.
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Thanks for the advice, everyone. Since I am the only driver for FTC (and most likely FRC) and only programmer, how would you reccomend splitting my team to manage drive practice and programming? Especially come January, when I am doing both FRC and FTC.
Do FRC or do FTC. Or do them both poorly. Or don’t sleep.
Really you should pick one.
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Seconding the reply above; pick one.
If you choose both, you will not sleep anyway and that will make you do both poorly. And you probably won’t be having fun either.
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Sage advice from suPURDUEperAndy. Sanity comes at a premium during build. That and, you are only one person. And if everyone just wants to watch you work…that is not productive nor fun.
Pick one. build and perform a simple, DEPENDABLE bot. We did that last season…and we did our best. Our bot was so simple and dependable…we couldn’t ask for a better bot…welllll…we could…one of our favorite teams refused to part with it!
Grow your team and attempt both at a later time. For FRC…you need more than 5 people. I don’t know the minimum for FTC. In fact…that is the drive team (you will probably need 15-25 team members for various jobs while the matches are going on). As much as any of us want to compete with you…you need to work on building your team. Not a single team can win a district match…team work does. And if the alliance can’t depend on yours…well…when it comes to selection…you will wind being us up until 2 years ago. Packing up and just watching. And while it is fun to watch…it is better to be out on the field…and having your supporters watching and cheering you.
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You should ask your team members and mentors what they think the team will gain by using a swerve drive train. You should also ask how many FRC scoring mechanisms they know how to build such that they would work well.
Last season, I saw several teams that had “boxes on wheels” that could move in all directions since they had swerve drive but there were no scoring mechanisms attached. There were other robots that could score and had tank drive chassis (KOP). I suspect the later had more fun at the events.
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@OP Gantt charts can prove to be very useful - over time. However, running a Gantt chart successfully is resource intensive and allocates at least one person managing and maintaining it over not just one season, but over many seasons. The problem is with your team, you don’t have a lot of talent - meaning students and mentors. My team went down the way of Gantt charts for three seasons- but in an exercise like FRC proved to be inefficient.
For a team the size of yours, Look to SWOT analysis to guide a goal setting activity. PM me for more info.
For your team with low number of students, the tank drive seems fitting - especially considering the timing of it all. If you don’t have a swerve drive already built, it will could prove disastrous for your season.
If you are set on Swerve for this year, please tune into Jumpstart Becker that takes place on December 2, 2023 where we will be leading teams that have mechanically sound Swerve Drivetrain to an operational robot throughout the course of the event (about four hours).
For any and all other info, go to our Jumpstart YouTube page that has hours of information and training on a wide array of topics.
Let me know what else you need. Good luck!
Try this: “I do not know how to program an FRCFIRST Robotics Competition robot.”
They’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor probably come back with “so learn”, and that’s when you come back with “What part of NOT IT did you miss?” (Or similar statements that indicate that you do NOT want to program this.)
That said: Labview uses icons as I recall. It’s also rather less common in FRCFIRST Robotics Competition these days. You, collective, may do well to at least look at it.
I think what’s going on is that the team members are looking at all the COTSCommercial, off-the-shelf stuff out there and going “cool, we can do that!”. There are two problems with that mindset.
- Got money? If not, you still have some time to fundraise. (Which, TBH, you should be doing anyways.)
- It still needs a lot of work to put together. With only 4 of you, FTCFIRST Tech Challenge, and a Week 1 event, schedule is NOT your friend!
How to get the team to set a realistic goal:
- Define the available person-hours. Start at noon on Kickoff, go through 2/28 at noon (because after that, you need to be getting ready to load in at said Week 1 event). Include only known meeting times and assume everybody is there (total hours*people).
- Remove time devoted to building FTCFIRST Tech Challenge robots.
- Cut the remaining number by 50%. This is your working time. To put it mildly, I would assume that some combination of people missing meetings or something going really wrong will eat up the rest of it.
- Further remove 2 people for 1 week. This is to account for building bumpers. The FIRST time, which hopefully is the only time, but more likely you’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor hit that reserve 50% pretty heavily for this part of the build.
- Ask if building two robots is reasonable in that timeframe.
Veteran answer to this, BTW: It isn’t. Your teammates may choose to differ. I do hope they like learning things the hard way? As was noted in the Golden Rules thread recently: Good Judgement is the result of Experience. Experience is the result of Bad Judgement–and preferably that’s Somebody Else’s Bad Judgement not yours. (And the veterans are all saying: Here’s our Bad Judgement, LEARN!)
- Run a quick cost comparison on swerve–it’s $550 for one module with motors and controllers, give or take a little bit. You need 4 (plus spare(s)). Can your team afford that?
- Remind everybody that QTY: 1 Kitbot is coming your way. This is likely a tank drive robot with a simple mechanism, or at least the plans for said mechanism.
If I were in you guys’ shoes: Build the Kitbot right quick. Get it running. Let’s say 2 weeks into build season, it should be driving if not quite fully complete. Drive it for a week, get used to it, play with it and game pieces and field elements (borrowed, if you can–otherwise, knock yet another week off your build for 2 people). THEN decide what upgrades you want to make for competition–this may include swerve, it may not.
Then, after competition… if you advance to Champs, great! Might be a good time to try the swerve upgrade, but might not be. Otherwise, convert to swerve for an offseason project, and show up at some offseason competitions.
Can you pull off swerve as a rookie, or even a pre-rookie? Yes. it can be done. (Just ask 9408…pre-rookie, built a copy of a good robot for the season during the summer including swerve. One win, one Match 13 finish.) But it needs some serious resources to pull it off, and it sounds like you guys don’t have them yet.
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I’d save the $3k you’ll spend on swerve and sign up for a second regional. Or at least put towards champs trip or next season registration. With as few students involved it really isn’t a high cost to compete more, and you can build a KoP bot that will do well enough while learning.
I was comparing situations and we are in a smaller town and haven’t always had many students, we built many days with 3-4 students, and took 14 to competition. We with some outside financial help could buy a rev swerve last year. While I don’t think building and programming were significantly more, they were more. We quick build the kop chassis and have it running in less than 4 hours. Building the swerve and getting it running basically took a weekend first time. Driving wasn’t significant more training, and you have more agility once you pick it up. In competition, changing wheels did take more pit time. We didn’t have many issues, but more than the kop chassis. Not having to fix drivetrain in pits is worth a lot of peace of mind. Programming is a challenge in general, not just for swerve, you’ll want someone that can do it more than half time, preferably dedicated. There are many swerve resources for programming and auto. I think generally the harder parts are somewhat done for you, and it isn’t clear cut which drivetrain actually will take more work to get it to do what you want.
In the end we spend 5-6k in total for the swerve bot with mechanisms, or something like $300/student. If we had half or less students it would be hard to justify without some higher dollar sponsors.
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Currently my team wants to do both kitbot and Rev starter bot. They come with code for them, including swerve code. Is this a reasonable task for us?