With rookie programmers, this year we went extremely simple. Everything possible is powered by pneumatics. Our goal is to keep the amp bonus going to multiply our partner’s scoring and get the climbing RP in every match.
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Looks like another really solid robot! The integration of the amp mechanism and the trap score is really slick. Great job, see you in week 4!
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Love it -very effective at what it does. I like the folding climber hooks and unistrut slides.
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A number of folks have asked about our choice to focus solely on the amp and trap this year. The decision was about building within our capabilities, which drastically changed this year. Our longtime head coach decided to take a well deserved break after last season, and we are still searching for a new lead mentor. We lost our longtime shop space at our former host high school and barely completed a move to a temporary build space before kickoff. This year we had two rookie programmers and no experienced programming mentor to teach them. On kickoff day we didn’t even know if we’d have a drivable robot. To help our programmers from being (more) overwhelmed, we chose to rely as heavily as possible on scoring mechanisms which are simple to program, like pneumatics (raising and lowering an arm or intake) and open loop motor control (intake roller). During our strategy meetings it became apparent that there was a place in this game for a helper bot that just focused on scoring in the amp. That would avoid the necessity of building a complicated shooter and PID tuning shooter wheel speeds with all those programming challenges. We felt that we could build a simple bot which might even get picked as a second alliance pick. Then we had our mechanism brainstorming sessions and out came an idea for a simple arm/grabber combo which could intake under the bumper, score quickly in the amp on the opposite side of the robot, and with some additional height off the floor could score in the trap. With the addition of a long stroke climber we could enable endgame RPs that could boost us to maybe the top 8, and a captain’s spot.
We quickly put together the swerve drivetrain and handed it off to the programmers to get working, then focused on getting the arm/grabber built. Because we kept it simple, that went together quickly and we could start working out the bugs and practicing cycling while we completed the climber. To keep things simple for the programmers, we went with a simple leadscrew design for the climber. To cut the speed of the climb we threw on overpowered motors and quickly deploying flip up hooks. Ultimately the software for the climber was more complicated than expected, but by that time the drive train and scoring arm were pretty much done and the programmers could focus on working the climber in parallel with autonomous routines.
We got in a lot of practice time and crossed our fingers that the game would play out the way we hoped. After week 1, we were happy to see that some of the strongest advise for week 2 alliance captains was “pick an amp bot”. We went into our week 2 competition hoping for a captain’s spot, and exceeded our expectations by landing at #2 after quals. Then it became a game of putting together the best alliance. By the numbers it was apparent that any combination of 422, 346 and us would have a good shot at winning the competition. With 422 sitting at #1 and us at #2, we knew we’d either end up with 422, or need to pick the next strongest shooting bot after those top two. We emerged from our scouting meeting with a short list of shooters to watch the next morning to see how they performed. Expecting heavy defense in the elims, emphasis was on seeing if anyone was able to demonstrate a successful shot from the podium protected zone. After watching the morning matches, we went with 5549 and 2988, and made it all the way to the finals.
So, compared to our expectations for the season on kickoff day, we have already far exceeded our goals. With the deeper field of working climbers and high goal shooters at Falls Church, we’re optimistic to see how far we can go…
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Well, our bold strategy paid off this weekend at Falls Church. All the way through the qualification matches we were bouncing up and down between ranks 3,2 and 1 as various teams managed to get 4 RP matches. As we got down to the end, 1731 had held the #1 spot for a good while. The night prior we assumed there was no possible way they would not end up as 1st seed captain, and all our strategy talks were based on that assumption. But, three 4RP matches Sunday morning for us, and Fresta Valley losing their final match of the quals put us a hair’s breath ahead of them for the 1st seed spot. Never in a million years did we think a purely amp bot could pull that off.
1731 is far and away the best bot in the CHS division, and is up there with the best in the world right now. We knew that if we could earn a spot on their alliance we could get a blue banner, and if they picked someone else we’d lose to them in the elims. That said, there are strong strategic reasons for a #1 seed high shooter to pick another high shooter rather than an amp bot. We had that happen in Portsmouth, and despite encouraging conversations with 1731 throughout the weekend, we knew it could happen again. It was a miracle that we ended up in the #1 slot and could somewhat control our own destiny. (Not really. 1731 had the exact same choice to make about teaming with us. They just would have had second pick of the remaining teams rather than first pick. They are good enough that they could have won the event with any of the top 5 or so as their 1st pick.) Regardless, it was a huge relief when 1731 agreed to join us rather than captaining the #2 alliance with another high shooter. Then, to make it even better, we picked up 2421 as our second pick, a swerve bot with great defense who could also shoot high goals. Exactly what we were looking for.
From then on, it was a wild ride through the elims, with alliances 2 through 4 being eliminated due to all kinds of crazy goings on. We faced alliance 5 in the finals, with those matches being the ones where little performance issues with our bots were finally resolved and we all clicked, resulting in two 100+ point matches. Alliance 5 put up admirable scores (way more admirable than the way we crumbled in the Portsmouth finals) but ultimately couldn’t keep up with 1731’s amplified firepower.
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It was a pleasure competing against you all! Congratulations on the win, very well deserved!
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I’m bookmarking this story as one of the best examples to share with my team and others next year and for years to come. Unreal how focus, self awareness and humility came together to make a #1 seed event winner. Yes again Triple Helix is among the most inspiring teams in FRC.
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I agree completely. They definitely set a very high bar for the rest of us to learn from 
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congrats on the incredible showing this past weekend @ falls church, wishing y’all the best at districts and (very) hopefully worlds! nothing short of amazing despite the circumstances.
I’m glad we got to play with you all this weekend! It’s good to see a robot commit to a strategy that is against the grain and still come out on top.
Really cool to hear about your thought process for alliance selection. We were definitely trying to noodle in our pits what must have been going on in your strategy discussions. We knew that it was likely that 1731 was going to accept, but if they didn’t it would have made things a bit sticky. If that had happened, we were pretty sure that you wouldn’t want to pick us(5338) since we really didn’t have an auto going all competition, but apart from that really had no idea what we would do if we were in your shoes. It was great to see how well your robots meshed together both in auto and tele-op and we wished we had gotten a chance to go against you all in the finals!
Looking forward to competing against you all again at District Champs!
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It was a lot of fun pairing up with y’all!
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Triple Helix 2024 robot CAD: https://grabcad.com/library/2363-triple-helix-genome-omicron-2024-1
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