Pre Week 1 Update
You know, from this angle it really looks more like a 2019 bot than a 2020 bot.
We competed in a Week 0 event this Saturday, and it mostly went well. The climber had just been attached to the bot hours before we competed, but it still worked perfectly on the second try. The first was when we squared the input to the motor to make it more controllable in open loop, not realizing that this prevented the climber from going up because squaring makes the output only positive.
Just after the first climb – we’re on the left here. We probably should have talked to 1418 about us wanting to climb beforehand – instead, we went up in the center, then on their way up, they hit us. We learned two things here: discuss before matches (even practice matches), and the climber is able to support the bot on one hook.
Also, we’re very very excited about the climb because this is the first climb we’ve pulled off ever, I think (unless we hit one in 2017). It’s really incredible to me how much progress we’ve made since then, and I hope any of our students reading this realize how proud they should be of themselves for pulling off this robot.
This is just before our first match. That intake actuation is super satisfying 
. This is what happens when programmers get extensive time with a robot to tune things.
Still shot of climber up (first full actuation). It was super scary because the springs pull it down with a ton of force, so the operator had to be very very careful to not let it slam down when not on the rung. In fact, we bent a bolt and dented our bellypan significantly when it came down the first time without even noticing until inspectors pointed it out. We later realized brake mode made this significantly more manageable, and we were going to do that anyway to help hold the bot up post-climb.
Video of our second match at the Week 0 event. Things to improve include auto (we fixed it after this – the issue was we stored a timestamp in onStop instead of onStart 
, shooter speed calculations (apparently we somehow lost our quadratic regression calculation on this branch? should be fixed now, too), driver practice, climber automation to avoid the issue at the end of the match (should theoretically be able to hold the rung level until a buddy is properly hooked, then go up close to together), and beam break sensor implementation just under the shooter to prevent balls from getting stuck while intaking.
Unfortunately, we only got two matches at the week zero event, but we got the bot pre-inspected so we know what to look out for before week 1. That inspection process took like 1.5 hours, though.
Also, don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but we somehow managed to wrap our blue bumpers in different shades of blue fabric. Not sure how it happened, but we apparently had some old fabric on hand and that caused the issue. Luckily we caught it before we sent the fabric to our vinyl cutting/ironing sponsor.
Auto Issues
My biggest worry going into Week 1 is our auto code. We can reliably hit 3 shots (if tuned, all in inner port) and cross the line. However, I’m not confident this will be enough to win the event. Overall, I’m confident that with some practice, our cycling + reliable climb will get us to the level where we can probably partner with a great auto team and it stops being an issue, but really it would be a lot better if we could get our path follow code working. Right now, the issue seems to be either a bad NavX or us missing something stupid:
Hopefully, we can get this worked out soon enough that we can at least attempt a >3 ball auto by the start of week 1, and hopefully tune it enough during competition to get it reliable by elims. Other than gyro issues, we seem to have figured out other issues we had (unit errors and the like).
Limelight issues
Not anything technical, but we were warned by a CHS LRI at Week 0 that there is a possibility they will rule the Limelight LEDs illegal at competition if teams complain about the brightness. I really, really hope this doesn’t become an issue. I’m sure it would cripple far more than just our team if they did this. We were told to bring a ring light to put around the Limelight as a potential backup plan, but the issue is 1) this was one week in advance of the competition, and we would need to do custom regulator wiring and whatever else is necessary for the ring light for the first time ever in that time, not to mention shipping time for the LEDs, and 2) we would have to find a ring light that was less bright than the Limelight, and there is no guarantee such a light would even work for our purposes while also being dim enough to not cause teams to complain.
Week 1 Preparation
We started the season well ahead of schedule for design, then due to CNC machine issues fell way behind schedule with fabrication. I’m probably not as concerned as I should be about the status of the competition bot (not fully assembled yet, but pretty close and mechanically identical to practice bot so hopefully minimal additional tuning?) Also, it’s good to have a backup plan (fully functional practice bot which we can compete with in the worst case).
But it does look very nice, so there’s that:
