34 Likes
Sauce '23
As part of our journey to explore and better understand the intricacies of gameplay, we often find ourselves brainstorming strategies that push the limits of what’s possible (and honestly probably even useful). While some of these strategies may seem unconventional, they allow us to test boundaries and see what creative approaches might just work!
Let’s kick off with a fun, out-of-the-box strategy from the 2023 season, More to come later.
26 Likes
Reminds me of the old totebot races we did.
Thats very thought provoking, I did not even think that it was possible but from being a drive coach that year and seeing the double substation up-close I can definitely see how it is possible. Did y’all ever utilize this in competition or just for fun?
We never used in a match, but we also never wrote it off as “just for fun.” It’s just another tool we could have used had there been a scenario in which it was beneficial for us to use it.
1 Like
Sauce '24 Pt. 1: Drop Autons
We’ve talked about autons allot, if you want more detail into our development you can read through
This post just exists to show the extreme of the evolution of drop autons.
This auton is very conservative with timing. It’s almost certainly possible to get the timing down on the centerline notes. I’m just using worst case senario based on our real match data.
10 Likes
If you have some time:
A. On the intake reversing shaft, did you modify the 3/8 hex to fit the splined 12 T pulley?
B. Does the intake motor have enough power to work even if the pulleys were 1:1 instead of 12:17?
We have a similar intake but we were using two 550’s. We might try a single motor for our last off-season. We’re trying to decide how hard to work on getting a small pulley on the drive side. It’s a good problem for us, we haven’t explored how small pulleys can go.
No, we modified the pulley to fit on the shaft
Our goal was to make the intake as compact as possible. originally we had 3dprinted pulleys and gears, but after multiple failures at Photon’s first event we decided to switch them both to metal. We had to cut the pulley down, bored the pulley to 3/8 round, and finally broached it to 3/8" hex.
Part of using the modified 12T pulley and custom 17T Pulley is getting the maximum reduction possible to reduce current of the motor. It might have worked 1:1, but that was with a Falcon / Kraken Driving it. Even with this, we saw more current draw then we would have liked, but couldn’t physically reduce the reduction without increasing the size of the gearbox, rollers, and intake.
I’m not sure this will work with 550s, we try to stay away from using 550 motors at all.
2 Likes
Thanks for the added details. NEO 550s with 5:1 max planetaries can each power a roller, but we are maxed out on the current there too. When a note is near the edge and needs extra cramming power, they sometimes stall.
If you are using a neo550 with a max planetary, then I would highly recommend changing that to a neo/vortex/kraken if you can. You might be able to get away with one motor that way.
2 Likes
I should have said Ultra planetaries, so not so big, but yes, that’s what we are considering.
Sauce '24 Pt. 2: Controlling multiple game pieces in auto
This one is a little crazy. If we would have built it or talked about it in-season, it would have been corrected in a game update, but still a fun one.
9 Likes
Sauce 2024 Pt 3: Alliance Selection
With the new Alliance selection rules coming up, I hope that they address this loophole that has existed for the last couple of years. We never attempted this, but thought this was an interesting bit about alliance selection that had never been exploited. Based on the wording of the new alliance selection document, this seems patched.
To be clear: THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED
Without too much fluff, The first alliance can pick the second alliance captain as their 2nd pick.
Following the rules strictly, the Alliance Captains should shift upwards, essentially scorching every alliance.
24 Likes
2 Likes
I feel bad that I feel bad that this never happened IRL. It would have been such a fun CD thread.
8 Likes
3 Likes
29 Likes
For our Dunk Tank Robot, we decided to hold off on publishing our build blog until the due date so we wouldn’t spoil any ideas and to give others a chance to tackle the challenge on their own. That said, we still wrote the posts as we went. Here’s the first day of our Dunk Tank CADathon Build Blog!
DunkTank CADathon Day 1
We read the full rules and talked about some past robots/games to brainstorm ideas.
- 2017 robots for fuel intakes and storage
- 254 - 2017
- 971 - 2017
- 125 - 2017
- 118 - 2017
- 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 elevator/arms
- 6672 - 2023
- 2056 - 2018
- 6800 - 2022
- 2022 Intakes
- 2337 - 2022
Game Breakdown
Robot Will
- Score on all three goal levels
- Score into the Dunktanks
- Ground intake basketballs
- Ground intake electrolytes (fuel)
- Human player load electrolytes
- Score basketballs opposite from the ground intake (faster auton)
Robot Won’t
- Turret
- Scissor Lift
- Launch game pieces far
Concepts
- Rising floor raises electrolytes to rollers to spit them into dunk tank
- Doing this with the intake is tricky, possibly brushes or elastic into to keep balls from falling down, spring hinges
- Lower floor prevents balls from getting stuck when floor is up.
- 254-2017 style fuel intake and expandable hopper
- Deploying the intake could either be a pivot or linear slide (971-2017) either way could be gas springs so it stays deployed all match
- Single-stage elevator + double jointed arm, like our 2023.5 robot, allows it to reach over the hopper to score on opposite side
- 2337-2022 intake lets us keep the intake out of the way of the arm, and folds easily on contact
- Mounted to stationary elevator rails
Sketches
Death Cycle
We discussed the possibility of shooting over the Dunk tank from the exit into the entrance and just cycling for auto or endgame. This only in theory gives us a maximum of 10 electrolytes per second, which would be 75 points in auton and 66 points in endgame.
Getting to the 10 electrolytes per second that the dunk tank extracts at with an (or 2) shooters is unviable so we moved away from this.
17 Likes