Offseason Activities
After a pretty successful 2022 season, our team took a well-deserved break before jumping into the offseason at the end of the last school year. Here are some of the projects and things we’ve learned over the past few months.
Summer Camp
Over the summer, FRC Team 8177 Vector hosted its very first Vector 8177 Summer Camp (wooo!! 
) for incoming 6th to 8th graders. Overall, the camp went pretty smoothly but with a few notable hiccups that we are going to go over later in the post. But first, an overview:
The camp was relatively small, lasting only 5 days (July 18th - 22nd) from 9 am to 3 pm for 30 students and an admission fee of $225 per student or a sibling discount of $200 per sibling. Our goals for the camp were equally small. The camp was to cover very basic programming, engineering, and physics topics in an engaging and fun way that allowed students to get a glimpse of how STEM affects the world around them. As we learned, however, the engaging and fun part was the most challenging, as lecturing about newtonian physics certainly did not seem enticing to 6th graders, but more on that later. Our schedule for the week went:
Monday
- 30 min Camp Intro
- 30 min Ice Breakers
- 30 min Robot Showcase
- 45 min DIY Motors
- 45 min Code Monkey
- 30 min Lunch
- 125 min Arduinos
- 25 min Wrap Up
Tuesday
- 10 min Camp Intro
- 40 min Spaghetti Tower
- 65 min CAD Rings
- 30 min Egg Drop
- 30 min Lunch
- 65 min Arduinos
- 45 min Line Followers
Wednesday
- 10 min Camp Intro
- 80 min Smoke Cannons
- 60 min Line Follower Challenge
- 30 min Dry Ice Experiment
- 30 min Lunch
- 30 min Gear Ratio Lesson
- 240 min Vex Clawbots
Thursday
- 10 min Camp Intro
- 30 min Vex Clawbots
- 180 min PVC Catapults
- 30 min Lunch
- 30 min Vex Clawbots
- 60 min VexVR
- 30 min Vex Bounce Path Challenge
- 30 min Vex Slalom Challenge
Friday
- 10 min Camp Intro
- 50 min Sling Shot Rocket
- 240 min Vex Challenges
- 50 min Lunch + RoboLeague Documentary
- 15 min Kahoot
- 45 min Prize Auction
- 45 min Wrap Up + Parent Demo
So what worked and what didn’t work? Here are a few lessons we learned from running our first summer camp and insight into how activities could be improved.
Monday Introduction
Monday was the roughest because everyone was still getting comfortable with each other and opening up. We tried combating this with our ice breaker, which was a human scavenger hunt that forced the students to find other students similar to them. While the scavenger hunt did its job, it allowed some students to be left out because others capitalized on loopholes within the rules. Given our goal for the first hour was to engage all students, the scavenger hunt did not satisfy our goals and for future camps, we will look for an icebreaker that is more fun and less exploitable.
Robot Showcase Better Execution
The robot showcase was another instance of a great idea, with poor execution. Our idea was to give the students an idea of what everything they learn will contribute to, but it quickly devolved into us lecturing using these terms they don’t fully understand. Having them drive the bot also elicited an underwhelming reaction, as again, most didn’t fully grasp the complexities of the bot. While we are convinced that the robot showcase should be included in our camp, we would need to reevaluate our approach to it. Maybe shorten the initial showcase and, within each activity, focus on connecting it to a specific part or function of the bot?
Programming Activities Rushed
Our programming progression was very confusing. We went from Code Monkey, which was block coding and too easy for the students, to Arduino code which required more extensive knowledge of programming, and back to block code in VexVR. While a brief introduction to programming was taught, the students had little to do that engaged them. In the future, rather than separating the programming lesson and Arduino, it may be better to have multiple programming lessons that targeted a specific Arduino function, for example, flashing lights or sirens. To further streamline the programming progression, VexVR should come before Arduinos and probably replace Code Monkey. This would open up more time for Arduinos, which should give the veterans leading the lesson more time to flesh out topics and help the students.
CAD Activity Too Complicated
The introduction to CAD was interesting to put it nicely. Quickly, it became apparent that many students became lost in the various menus and terminology. Simply put, 65 minutes is nowhere near enough time to introduce CAD, explain why it’s used and its benefits, walk them through the various menus and options and also do an activity. In the future, CAD needs to be given more time and most likely separated into small, digestible parts so that everyone can keep up.
Gear Ratio Lesson Not Engaging
The last major hiccup was our gear ratio lesson. The issue with it boiled down to the activity being weak. Essentially, the entire activity was for them to figure out the best combinations of gears that allowed the last gear to spin the fastest. Mix the weak activity with a lecture on torque and its inverse relationship with speed and you can see how the students quickly lost interest. An idea that was tossed around to improve the activity was to essentially create top launchers and have the students experiment with which ratio is better suited for tops of different sizes, weights, etc.
Other Minor Issues
The remaining issues were all minor. For the DIY motor, make sure to have a powerful enough magnet to actually spin the wire. The spaghetti tower and egg drop need around 5 minutes more and the air cannon needed 80-90 minutes. Additionally, having a fog machine greatly improves the air cannon activity as students have fun shooting smoke rings at each other. The Vex Clawbots and PVC catapults could’ve had better instructions, perhaps custom-made ones that better illustrate our specific use case for those activities.
All in all, the summer camp was a massive success for our team and one that we hope to be able to continue on a larger scale. Starting small allowed us to get a taste of what to expect and taught us what needed to be changed in the future.
TRI: Texas Robotics Invitational
Oh boy. This was definitely a competition. TRI, hosted by FRC Team 3847 Spectrum in Houston, TX was a tournament of lows and even lower lows for us. The primary goal for the tournament was to get all rookies hands-on experience with the bot, from driving and climbing to scouting, strategy, and repairs. Unfortunately, that goal never came to fruition as a mechanical failure after mechanical failure had our bot barely functioning on the field. A majority of our issues could have been avoided but poor manufacturing processes and general oversight over the smaller details finally came back to bite us. Here are some of the more notable issues with our bot during the competition. You can find the post that documents our fix here.
Jammed Elevator
- Due to a lack of time and knowledge, we were not able to get our cnc up and running for cutting tubing during the season. All of our tubing holes were hand drilled, leading to out-of-tolerance parts. We thought that they would be “good enough.” Spoiler alert, they were not. At TRI, our cargo elevator motor finally burned out after having issues at worlds. A mentor of 3481 Bronc Bot was kind enough to give us a replacement 775pro to use (thanks again). We ended up fixing the issue by oversizing the belts and under-sizing the pulleys(insert pic of elevator for context) for our second off-season competition.
Jammed Climbers
- Our climber used two climbers-in-a-box, which we have had repeated issues with. Whether we implemented the system incorrectly or there was some issue with our climbers, throughout the season we ran into intermittent issues that prevented us from traversing. At TRI, the frequency of our climber’s failures peaked at an all-time high. We could climb to the mid-bar every match, but there was a >50% chance that we couldn’t make it too high or traversal. Because our technical leads were stuck in the pits after every match trying to fix the climber, we were not able to properly give our rookies as much focus as we should have.
Robot Remix
For our second off-season event during the 2022 summer, we went to Robo Remix hosted by FRC Team 1477 Texas Torque in the Woodlands, TX. Our main goal for this competition was to train rookie members and get them used to the competition environment and how everything works. This included things like unloading the cargo van, pit setup, inspection, practice matches, scouting, drive team, strategy, and more.
Overall, I think we were pretty successful in teaching new members as we had a good mix of veterans who attended multiple competitions the previous year which meant they were able to show them around. Because we were only able to bring 20-25 people, we roughly split it in half between veterans and completely new rookies so that each rookie could be paired with someone with competition experience. If you’re able to attend an off-season event after recruiting new members, this is a great way to get them super invested as going to competition is one of the most exciting things about the FRC season.
In terms of how we did at Robo Remix, it went pretty well compared to TRI. Since it was only a one day event, there were only a total of 5 qualification matches, so we had to make each one count. This time, the robot performed pretty well as we were able to get a record of 4-1 heading into the playoffs where we partnered up with 2881 Lady Cans, 8576 Golden Warriors, and 8769 G.O.R.T.s. Although we were knocked out in the quarterfinals after two close games, I think it was still an overall success as our robot was fully functional throughout the entire competition. We managed a traversal climb every match with the new ratchet strap climber modification we made (Link) which made the system way more reliable and durable. The shooting was also well-tuned and we didn’t experience much trouble with that either.
All in all, Robo Remix was a great learning experience for all our team members, both veterans and rookies, and it was an awesome event to kickstart the beginning of the new school year.
Bomb Squad Robot Repair
The Houston police bomb squad had an USAF autonomous RC-30 robot used for moving explosive ordinances or deactivating them remotely. The machine had a series of repairs that were needed for it to be fully operational, including several mechanical fixes (antennae electronics, battery changes) and software issues (lack of a connection between computer and robot, goal of streamlining the setup process for quick deployment in the field)
The bomb squad and our team got in contact with each other, and we went over to help them out. Working over the course of 2 days, we eventually achieved our goal of establishing a connection between the robot and computer, gaining teleoperated control! This was a very interesting project for us as the team got to learn about the real-world applications of robotics, and it was fun to draw a parallel between the professional systems on the EOD robots and our own FRC bots.
As they were impressed with our quality of work, the HPD bomb squad showed us several other projects they’re working on to open the door for future collaboration. This was one of our favorite outreach experiences, and we’re looking forward to working with HPD Bomb Squad in the future!
SWERVE!!
This offseason, we purchased SDS mk4i modules for the 2023 season. While creating our test base, we learned a few key lessons, so here are a few of our do’s and don’ts with more detailed explanations of our insight in each dropdown.
Mechanical Related
DO: Design your test chassis like you're designing a competition bot.
Design your test chassis like you’re designing a competition bot. What I’ve seen from some teams is a test chassis that looks like it’s held together by hopes and dreams, which can work great for the off-season. However, I found that by planning our chassis as if it was in-season and we needed to mount game-piece manipulators to it, we could better prepare for the season. As a team new to swerve, understanding where to add support, how to keep the COG low and centered, and how to manage the extra electronics was vital. Before deciding on the final layout of our chassis, a 2022 bot and a 2019 bot were mocked up in cad on top of the chassis. While they were (very) rough CADs, they proved that the general design could be feasible on a competition robot.
DON'T: Decide that electronics can get planned out later.
Don’t decide electronics can get planned out later. We decided on a fairly small chassis size(26”x26”), which as it turns out, does not leave a lot of room for electronics management. The battery is sandwiched between two support 2”x1” tubes that run down the entire chassis, which forced us to space the electronics out to the edge of the chassis. (insert pic) Proper planning would have led to the foresight of “hey let’s not separate the two major electronics that are linked.” What I would recommend teams do on all of their bots(and especially swerve with the added complexity) is spend time drawing out various electronics and wire paths on a 1:1 scale. This is where charts such as 3161’s wiring diagram become particularly useful.
DO: Triple check everything.
Triple check everything. While this may seem obvious, even the smallest thing can slip your mind. One of the major roadblocks for us was an error that caused a cancoder to lose its position every time we restarted the robot. The strange thing was that it was a different cancoder each time, and it didn’t seem to be caused by software or hardware. After over a day of head scratching, we finally identified the issue to be a bad super glue job on all of the cancoder’s magnets. After re-gluing the magnets in place, the error went away completely.
Programming Related
DO: Spend time studying the components of the swerve robot and how they function before coding.
Spend time analyzing the components of the swerve robot and how they function before touching the code. Learn everything you possibly can about them, the gear ratio of the drive motors/angle motors, the wheel diameter, how the gyro is oriented, and any information you might need, you should figure out ahead of time. This becomes incredibly important when you have to fill in your constants, and also when you’re implementing different systems or using code from another team. For example, when programming the mk4i modules it was valuable to know that the angle motors needed to be inverted to work with 3512 Sparkatroniks’ offseason swerve library. There is no such thing as too much information, be a question goblin and I promise it will lead to fewer errors throughout the process. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, there are lots of amazing people out there willing to help whether through Open Alliance or the (Unofficial) FRC Discord.
DON'T: Mindlessly copy and past code and expect it to work.
Mindlessly copy and paste code and expect it to work. There’s nothing wrong with using other teams’ code as a base point, but make sure you aren’t simply filling in data and clicking deploy. Not understanding what is going into your code is not only a living hell if you want to debug anything, but also is a major roadblock when you want to add something else to the code. For example, I spent hours just reading over 3512’s library, which allowed us to implement path planner relatively painlessly, a welcome change from last year’s struggles with incorporating it.
Here’s a video of getting path planner/an autonomous routine working. Credit to Murad for getting everything up and running!
Outreach Activities
Toys for Tots
Our team hosted a toy drive at our school for the nonprofit USMC Toys for Tots. We focused on acquiring STEM toys, as our members collectively vouched for the impact that similar toys had on ourselves growing up. In the end, we collected dozens of toys and are proud of the impact our contribution will have on future STEM enjoyers!
FLL Mentoring
Now that our team has become more established and organized, we’ve started to reach out and mentor local FLL teams. Our members rotate through mentoring two local FLL teams every week. By sharing our knowledge with a younger generation of roboticists, we hope to foster STEM growth in our local community and inspire the children to work toward their passions, so they can benefit not only FIRST but the entire world. This has been a really valuable experience for our members, and it’s immensely gratifying to hear that they’re doing much better with successful mentorship! Check out our Instagram for more updates!
. We feel that it is important for us to start now and get more experience for the years to come. The main highlights of our outreach events include our summer camp for incoming 6th-8th graders, FLL mentorship of 2 Tomball teams, and working with the HPD Bomb Squad with the theme being “fueling passion for STEM within Tomball ISD”. We will be also aiming for the Team Sustainability award, not only teaching our members how to properly present to judges but also working on a business plan to present.
We’ll get around to adding actual support to it… eventually…
). The distance right now is an 8" gap so 1.5" of compression, but we might increase the compression to 2-2.5" if we notice the small dead spot is affecting our intaking ability.
