Build season

Saturday, January 7th, 2023 (Day 1 of build season)

Kickoff!

Our 2023 season started with an exciting kickoff event Guests from Stowe as well as students and mentors from around the region came together to watch this year's new game challenge, Charged Up. Teams are tasked with collecting cones and cubes as game pieces from the opposing side of the field, and placing them on the scoring racks next to their drive stations. The cone shape is a new and interesting object that teams will have to contend with. The endgame this year is a 4'x8' ramp that tilts as robots drive onto it. Alliance Teams will attempt to balance all three robots before time runs out.

Tuesday, January 10th, 2023

Our team brainstormed several ideas for ways to bring the game pieces up to the scoring area. Several designs were brainstormed and put into rough CAD models for further analysis.

Manipulator 1

Robotic arm with two joints. The upper arm is driven with a chain loop to the bottom of the robot to keep the CG low

Manipulator 2

Similar to a forklift with collapsible forks, this design incorporate a gantry carriage to move a gripper from the floor out to the delivery zone

Manipulator 3

Robotic arm with an extendable arm to reach the scoring zone while still being able to collapse into the frame perimeter

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Gripper Prototyping

The team has decided the biggest challenge this year will be picking up the game pieces in the various orientations. We are trying various styles of grippers to see which are the most effective.

Drivetrain Selection

The team voted to use swerve drive for this year, based on the need for agility and traction on the charging station. There are no major obstacles on the field and it seems like a good choice.

Color Sensor

We are hoping to use a color sensor to detect what game piece we are picking up. Using this information we can customize gripper settings for optimal performance.

Practice Bot

We are seeing an issue where the 2023 Roborio image does not seem to drive Falcon 500 motors. The motors will power on and can be configured in Pheonix Tuner, but when enabling the status LEDs blink alternating amber. The motors also will not spin. Formatting back to the 2022 Roborio firmware fixed the issue.

Friday, January 13th, 2023

Vision Tracking

Using AprilTag fiducials placed around the field, we should be able to locate ourselves and the scoring zones. The new Limelight firmware was released and we updated our cameras and started working on this.

Drivetrain Work

Our programming team spent some time getting the backup swerve robot code completed so we could do more thorough testing on the charge port.

Arm Prototyping

The team worked on an arm that would hold various grippers and move from the pickup area of the robot and extend out for scoring

Game Piece Detection

We looked into using a color sensor to find which game piece the robot was holding. This information is useful for adapting the gripper depending on what is picked up, and for heading to the right area for scoring.

Saturday, January 14, 2023

Balance Test

This was our first testing of some autobalance code. We ordered and are waiting on the official hinges before we spend too much time on it. but our programmers are building some test functions to try a few things out

Initial Logo Ideas

The students came up with some ideas for this season's custom logo, including some animation for any videos we produce this year.

2023 season scouting criteria

Scouting Data

Our Strategy / Scouting team began brainstorming what types of information needs to be collected for this season. Now we will need to update our scouting software to include this data.

Vision Tracking

The programming team were able to pull X, Y, Z, and AprilTag ID #s into a simple command based program. Our next steps are setting offsets autumatically.

One of big upcoming projects is to build the field elements so we can begin testing autonomous driving and more accurate path and scoring determination using vision tracking.
We are making progress on fine tuning our CAD models for three different types of arm / elevator designs

Inverse Kinematics

The team has a discussion about how to control our robot delivery method. We are hoping to model our end effector so we are able to use kinematics to tell it where to deliver instead of manually programming setpoints, but we will have to see if this is something we can do.

Sunday, January 15, 2023 (end of week 1 of build season)

Prototyping and Swerve Testing

The team has had a very valuable first week of the build season! There has been lots of prototyping and testing to help us figure out how we are going to tackle this season's game. we have been modifying one of our claw-like grabbers to work better and get a sense of how it would work on our robot. along with that, we have been testing our mini swerve bot to work out some coding kinks and see if it would hold up on a slick ramp.

Programing and Trouble Shooting

Over the past few days, we have been hard at work trying to get our mini-swerve bot up and running. we ran into some swerve code problems so we had to work on fixing that. now we have it running so we can conduct some more texts and figure some things out for when we start building our drive train.

Cutting pieces for our practice field elements

Today we finally started cutting the pieces for our practice field elements. We are starting with the grids so we can start practicing with placing cones and cubes on the nodes. After building that we will move on to our charge station but currently, we are waiting for the hinges to come in for that project.

Here is a little recap of some of the things we have done in the past week!

Building Gripper prototypes

Unboxing our Game pieces!

Cleaning up last year's swerve modules

Starting on creating field elements

Progress on our gripper mechanism

Autobalance routine is coming along

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Building practice field elements

We started today by jumping right into building our practice field elements. Last week we cut all of the individual pieces, so today is all about assembly.

More season-specific logo design work

we had some students working on the started concepts and doing some editing to existing renditions. we plan to finalize a logo soon so we can finally make our team shirts.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Lots of progress was made today on our practice field elements!

Student using a drill with the help of a Mentor

Three students collaborated to join wood together for a field element

Friday, January 20, 2023

Assembling the frame for the cone nodes

Placing the poles for the cone nodes

Making sure spacing is accurate and everything is level

Finishing up some of the cube node frames

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Completed grids!

Today we finally finished our practice grids! it took about three meetings to get everything cut and assembled but we finally did it, and it turned out amazing!

Swerve module assembly

During week one of the build season, we took apart our swerve modules and cleaned them from all of the grime and carpet/ ball fibers from last season. today we started putting them back together after we cut some new and shiny spacers for our motor. This was a great learning opportunity for some of our newer students and it was a lot of fun to assemble!

We Built our drive train!

We cut pieces of 80/20 to the size of our frame and put the swerve models on to form our chassis.

We started to play around with LEDs

We have our programming sub-team starting on some LED programming, as this season we plan to use them as signal lights for our drivers. We plan to use them to show what game piece we are placing and what level we are putting it on.

Adding support rails

After finishing the assembly of our chassis we started adding support rails very similar to our last season's robot. this year our robot dimensions are different/smaller as we want to fit in smaller spaces. the support rails provide support and a way for us to start the inner workings of our bot along with starting the electrical system to get the drive train up and running. last year we used an "L" bracket to secure these rails but this year we opted for an "L" with a curved shape to kinda resemble a 1/2 "D" shape.

Sunday, January 22, 2023 (end of week 2 of build season)

Drawing a schematic of our electrical system

Working on our drive train and updating our motors

Planning our electrical board layout

April tag + limelight work!

Today we had a sub-team working on limelight configuration and playing around with April tags so we know where on the field we are at all times.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

More logo work

We are currently in the process of designing and deciding on a season-specific logo so while waiting on some feedback from some professionals, some students are working on some logo animations!

Led programming

We plan on using LEDs to signal where we are going to place game pieces this year and to signal the last 30 seconds of the match. tonight we started on the programing of the LEDs.

Robot Advancements (Arm and Drive train)

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Robot in progress

the past few days we have begun machining parts and today we put them together!

Soldering practice

Today we had some students try out some soldering. this is a good skill to learn, especially because we use encoders on our robot and specifically on our swerve modules, to which we have to attach wires.

Logo design finalization

This week our design team has been working hard to get our season specific designs finished!

Logo Editing

along with working on season-specific logos, the team has been designing the back of our shirts and some logo animations.

Electrical covers!

For this year's robot we have created covers to be placed in between our falcon motors on each swerve drive to help manage wires and make it more contained. The filament the covers are made of is color-changing when heated so these covers will also help us see if our motors are overheating.

Friday, January 27, 2023

Today we had a few different projects in progress; we had parts being cut on our water jet, design work, safety work, precision measurement work, programming, and a start on bumpers!

Sunday, January 29, 2023 (end of week 3 of build season)

We are officially halfway through the build season! We have made tons of progress and we are ready to kick it into high gear!

Fabrication

As we work on our robot we are fabricating pieces to build our robot's arm!

Assembly

Along with the fabrication element we have put together a good portion of our arm mechanism, and to do that we have to make sure how all our parts will fit together by referencing our CAD models.

Cleaning and organization

Today we cleaned our machine shop! it has been a while since this space has been deep cleaned and since fabrication is going to be constantly happening in this next week we decided now was a good time to get organized!

Working on motors, sensors, and coding

Today we had a group of students working on coding for our swerve, getting some sensors up and running, and starting to get each swerve module running. We had members of our mechanical, electrical, and programming teams working together on these projects!

Starting our bumpers

We officially started our bumpers! today we started with prepping the pool noodles, clips, and wooden boards so we can form an assembly line when it comes time to put them together!

Soldering practice + soldering our encoders wires in place

Fabricating and machine work

Drive train work

Bumper prep

Today we officially decided on this season's logos! After very many iterations these two are the ones we landed on for this year's branding! Now, the first step is to order this season's shirts and then move on to other team swag. We will also then be starting our robot reveal video along with some super spectacular logo animations that are currently in progress!

Back of our shirt design

Front + sleeve shirt design

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

New and shiny wheels!

Last year while using swerve drive we tore up our wheel tread so much that we were frequently losing traction, so to combat that we bought new wheels so we can replace the entire wheel at competitions because it is faster than replacing the tread!

Electrical board layout

As we get closer to week zero our progress has been greater and greater! As the arm is being worked on (not attached to the chassis), our electrical team stepped right up to start the electrical belly pan layout to help figure out what configuration will work best for this bot.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Secondary robot!

This year we have decided to build two robots! One for programming and auto work and the other for building our mechanisms on. This will be very valuable to us this year and it will keep progress moving smoothly and keep everything efficient so when it gets close to competition time we just combine the two aspects to get our competitive robot!

Water jet

Fabrication is at an all-time high right now! The machine shop is busy with many parts being fabricated and the water jet is always cutting plates!

Programing

This week our Limelight 3 came in the mail! We have dived right into setting it up and figuring out optimal positions.

Friday, February 3, 2023

Wow, it's already Friday of week 4! Time flies when you are building robots! We have tons of projects in progress including Picking a bumper font, working on the electrical belly pan, limelight 3 work, Arm fabrication, gearboxes, water jetting plates, logo animations, starting our fabulous bumpers, and much more!

Last Sunday we started our bumpers and today we worked on cutting the fabric to size. Along with fabric cutting, we had a group working on the lettering we will heat press onto the fabric. Hundreds of fonts were sifted through to find some of the best ones to consider for our bumpers.

Green plates

This year along with having a working robot we want to look visually good, so we are trying powder-coated plates. These plates above are just spray painted to start to get the idea but we will get them actually powder-coated after week zero!

CNC Router

This year we got a new shiny tool to our collection! This CNC Router is very handy and will help us pocket our box tube this year. Tonight we did some practice cuts on a scrap piece so we can get it just right.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Electrical layout

This week we have been working on our electrical layout, which included working on our schematic diagram.

Starting the wiring

Today we wanted to get our robot up and running. We started by finishing placing the larger electrical components and then wiring them all up. The robot in its current state is just for firing up the bot to get it running but once we get closer to our first competition we will clean up the wiring and add wire labels.

Today our CNC router was running all day! This season we are trying to be weight cautious because last season we were right under the limit. The steps we are taking so far include a smaller chassis and pocketing some of our material. Pictured above is a piece we did today and the weight difference between the before and after. As you can see the weight difference is huge between the two!

The drive train is wired up!

Here is one of the finished logo animations!

Sunday, February 5, 2023

CNC Router work

Today we engraved our team numbers into our pocketed aluminum.

SWERVE!

Today we worked on swerve code and fine-tuning!

Monday, February 6, 2023

Wire management

Today wasn't an official meeting but we had a few of our electricians come in and fix up our robot a bit. We cleaned up all of the wires and organized them so it is easier to look at and tell what goes where.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023 (Ten days till week 0)

LOOK AT THESE SUPER COOL PARTS

Today we made our new custom parts colorful! They are just spray painted but after week zero we will get them powder coated.

Progression on our second bot

We finally wired up our secondary bot to start practicing with. We also started thinking about ways to manage our wires so they look cleaner and are more organized.

LOOK AT THESE SUPER COOL PARTS

Today we made our new custom parts colorful! They are just spray painted but after week zero we will get them powder coated.

Progression on our second bot

We finally wired up our secondary bot to start practicing with. We also started thinking about ways to manage our wires so they look cleaner and are more organized.

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

More, more, and more fabricating

We have been cutting plates and brackets, pocketing our box tubes, and tapping 8020 pieces, using our machine shop, water jet, and the CNC router. Fabrication and building are consistently happening today and we are making good progress.

Friday, February 10, 2023

Building our robot arms

Today we started the assembly of our newly cut and painted pieces. we are very proud of how they have turned out!

Gripper progress

The gripper has been assembled! yes, it may look kind of done but, we have been taking it apart and putting it back together many times to get it just the way we want. We also have been figuring out new ways to make it better and more efficient.

Saturday, February 11, 2023 (Six days till week 0!)

FRC In Vermont!

Today we had a new Vermont team from Stowe come and visit our lab and do some collaboration before the start of the competition season.

Bumper Development

Today we continued working on the sets of bumpers needed for both our robots this season

Programming!

We have been working on programming the arm with the encoders and limit switches along with fixing the PID loop!

Zip Tie Clips

Today we started 3D printing an add-on that sits the 8020 frame of the robot to attach wiring and clean up the robot and make everything neat

Actuating Pneumatic Gripper

The pneumatics on our robots grabbing are were tested to insure the pneumatic system was assembled correctly and that is was working correctly.

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