FRC 2181 Robotics

We wrapped up January with some more robot work today. The main robot change was that we installed both 4:1 gearboxes on the intake/shooter motors. This seeeeeeems to be the right balance of torque and rpm. We only recorded one test but it looks promising. I have to say that it was very difficult to test the cube given it's absolutely terrible shape (so many air holes hahaha). Andrew hot glued the holes which is funny and seemed to work but that didn't set until it was time to leave. We are getting 2 new cubes on Thursday so we are very excited to test the set up with actual cubes. We should also have our parts to rotate the intake with a motor on Thursday as well.  We brought the robot on an adventure today to the wrestling room. Not that we had concerns about weight but we were curious. It weighs 56 lbs lol. We have up to 125 lbs so I think we're good!! Of course we have a bunch of stuff to add so this wasn't a legit test but it was still interesting.  Lastly, we star...

Electrical - Andrew and Matthew got to work getting the CAN wires all hooked up so we could drive again. Sam and Charlie helped make a plate to hold the radio, raspberry pi, and emergency off switch and we got those all mounted as well. Electrical is in a good spot at the moment. We need to mount a camera, add sensors, and tidy up the wiring and stuff like that but, generally, we're all set for the moment. Yay! Mechanical - We're still working on the shooter speed and torque trade off. We took off the motors/sprockets and used our drills again just to test that it all works and it does. Something about the Dewalt drills have a secret sauce that gets the cube shooting far. We found some 16:1 gearboxes with red line motors and spent time switching those out for the CIM motors we had been trying (to get more torque). While this was a good thought, now it seems like the axles aren't spinning fast enough (not enough rpm maybe). So we're still not ejecting the cube with enoug...

We were hanging out doing stuff when I looked at the calendar and realized we only have 2 more Saturday meetings until our first Week Zero. WOAH! That shouldn't make any of us anxious but it definitely is wild just how fast time passes and how little time we really have until the scrimmages.  Build team did a few big things today. Sam and Jarrod worked on making our new and improved brackets for the intake/shooter. I gotta say, watching Jarrod be a wizard with CAD was pretty freaking sweet (s/o Solidworks). Also, Sam killed it making the steel brackets. They look so good. Build Team also moved the CIM motors around a few different times to try to offset the cube compression that was happening. The cube compression is causing the shooter action to not work reliably. We have a more ideas to try, not time to freak out. We are definitely on the right track (it works great when everything is lined up). We just need to keep iterating and trying to get that consistency. But we're conf...

Fits and starts of work today. Build team was working to make the new brackets shown above but then the pressurized air was leaking so they couldn't cut more. That should be back on Saturday though!  Electrical finished the main components of the electrical belly pan (nice job!!). Programming was finally able to have the robot and they were able to test the cube intake/shooter! It was a mixed bag of results. The concept definitely works but there is refinement needed. The placement of the CIM motors keeps the cube a little too close to the axles to shoot it properly. We tested it a bunch of different ways and basically, we need just a little more room for the cube to stay back. But the intake works great and the shooter works awesome once we get the cube in the correct positioning. We're getting there! It was still fun to see the robot doing all of it on it's own. Next steps: The robot will be drivable again early on Saturday we think (just need to finalize CAN wires I beli...

More work done! Electrical board is coming together and will be back and ready to drive tomorrow most likely. We started thinking about an arm/cone mechanism. Charlie, Sam, and William kept going on the brackets for the shooter/intake. They are very close to being ready for production. Jarrod had a great idea to use gears instead of a belt/chain for deploying the rollers so we did an AndyMark order. Fingers crossed the stuff arrives on Saturday and we can have a working cube robot  by the end of the day Saturday.  Also, we have a new sponsor!! Yay for IQa Engineering!  Only one picture today. I was distracted by everything going on haha.

Three teams tonight! Team 1 - Matthew, Edward, and Andrew worked on the new electronics belly pan. Lots of hole drilling and careful planning of components because this part of the robot is our final design. Plus Matthew was a "statue of liberty with a soldering iron." So that was funny. Team 2 - Gettel and Charles attached the bumper mounts again. Their main project was attaching the version 2.0 cube shooter/intake to the robot (we need to think of a better short name for this). They used about 1,000 washers (lol) and some old brackets. Possibly tomorrow we'll be able to run the cube shooter/intake with a controller which will be super exciting when it happens.  Team 3 - Charlie and Sam used CAD to design new, legit brackets for the shooter/intake. The ones we are using now are not competition ready and we know we'll need some stronger ones. As part of this, they're designing brackets to use with a sprocket/belt system to actually deploy the shooter/intake and tu...

Two main projects tonight Project 1 - Putting together the cube shooter/intake version 2 "this time in metal". Gettel and Jarrod worked on getting the sprockets for the axles tapped and ready to go. Charlie, William, and Sam mounted the motors and attached the 80/20 extrusion to form the skeleton of it. Lastly the group got it all together with chain so it's ready to rock! Next main hurdle mechanically is mounting it to the chassis and figuring out a motor/chain/sprocket/axle situation to actually deploy it to pick up cubes and spin it back in to shoot. But we made BIG progress tonight getting it all together. We also want to CAD it up so we can make our actual final pieces.  Project 2 - Getting the electronics belly pan mounted and electronics all wired up. Andrew, Edward, and Matthew hit a speed bump when the chassis of the robot was a little tippy for some reason so they worked on diagnosing that for a while. But eventually the electronics were mostly hooked back up ...

 Today was a long Saturday meeting but we made SO MUCH progress.  The day started by working some more on the Cube intake/shooter mechanism. We added the new wheels from Logan's team that Jayden brought (yay!). This made the shooter much easier to intake and shoot. We also added a plastic "hood" to hold the cube while we transition between the two spots. Once we had the wood prototype all set, we started the process of putting it into CAD We transitioned the CAD model into pieces on the plasma cutter. While that was happening, we made motor mounts, sprockets, etc. to be able to drive the intake/shooter wheels with CIM motors for testing. I think it's a reasonable goal that we will be picking up and shooting cubes with a driving robot by the end of next week (!!!!).  The other big project was that we made the robot skinnier (22" wide to be exact). This will allow enough room for up to 3 robots to get on the charging station together at the end of the game if we wa...

 What a day!! We saw a team did roller with a slightly different shape that was more stable so we copied.... I mean borrowed what they did. The rollers stayed in the same spot but the geometry of the whole thing changed. Then we mounted the rollers onto the robot (still don't have motors attached yet, need some parts for that). But it was really fun to suck in cubes and cones with our prototype actually attached. At this point, we were at a little bit of stand still. Everyone started thinking about what to do with game pieces now that we could suck them in so we experimented with a "hood". We also talked about a conveyer belt. Then... Sam said "what if we shoot them out?" UMMMMM YES. That's the videos in general I'll post a couple more pics below too. We really think if we fine tune some motors and get the right wheels, etc. we can reliably shoot cubes into any of the spots on the shelves. This leaves half of our robot open for a cone grabber and arm on ...

 I've been terrible with pictures the last couple days so you'll have to believe me when I say we have a wireless driving robot. Yay! Edward fixed the issue with the Radio today and has the robot driving like a champ. It is FAST!!!  As far as building goes, Andrew H, Charlie, Charles, and Mohamud refined the intake rollers some more and started the process of actually mounting them to the robot. There's still more to do but progress is progress. I think there's at least a possibility we pick up some pieces with a robot sometime this week (that's my hope anyway!).  We also learned quite a bit about pneumatics and made a pneumatics testing board for if/when we want to mount some pistons.

Charles, Charlie, and Sam expanded more on the intake roller method for ground pick up. FRC 4481 from the Netherlands posted a video/measurements (see the prototyping-ideas channel for a video). We found some leftover wheels and cut some plywood supports for the axles. It was pretty sweet to see it pick up a cone/cube. Next will be refining the shape and actually mounting it to the robot frame. Progress!!

 With everyone off work/school we met at the shop from 12pm to 5pm. Edward and Coach Sticht focused on programming the robot. The radio was being finicky so we didn't get to wireless driving just yet but we will soon. The robot DID drive and balanced on the charging station. YAY!!! That was the most exciting moment of the day. The rest of the group focused on moving stuff out of the back back room and prototyping. The prototyping went fairly well. We have a few general ideas for intakes and outputs. A milk carton was cut up as a basket. Jarrod and Mohamud did some math for us to figure out pivot points and arm lengths for a mid cone score. We're still working though lots of ideas but that's what this week is for!

What a day! Edward and a bunch of people got right to work building the drive train with our 8 wheel set up. We ended up having everything we needed (other than a few bolts). Things went together fairly smoothly! Andrew and another group got a make shift electrical board together which worked great! We have a real working robot! Woo!  Then we had a strategy discussion about what we wanted to prototype first this coming week. This was a great convo about what we want to aim for first as far as game pieces. Our number 1 priority is balancing on charge station but we have what we need to start that process so now it's on to cubes/cones.  Special shoutout to Charlie's mom for getting us Acapulco for lunch!! It was a good day 😄 

We did the last bolt in the ramp! So we have a charging station to practice on. We found out the real one has thinner material on the flaps so we’ll find out how that affects our bot when we put it together (Jarrod did some cool math on this). We also assembled the cone station and the cube shelf. So we have all the field elements. Woo! We took apart the 2020 bot to save room. We accomplished all our goals for today! 👍🏻👍🏻 Shoutout to Andrew H for being a great model.

We kicked butt today! The charging station (ramp) is one bolt away from being 100% done (so close)!! We also cut all the pieces for the cone placement (we can assemble this tomorrow). The cube placement shelf is also all cut and ready to be assembled tomorrow. We will build a robot starting very soon I promise haha.

January 7 - Kickoff Took apart old robots and cleaned up the robot room a little bit Watched livestream and got hyped for Charged Up Played the game as human players pretending to be robots Reviewed the rulebook January 9  Watched some Robot in 3 Days and other inspiration videos BIG robot wants/needs discussion about what we want our robot to do. Decided on 8 wheel drive train January 10  Started building the 4x4 charging station ramp (got about 60% done)