2018 - Power Up

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Season Overview

2018 Robots & Game Animation

Team 3847

Infrared

• 3events
• 23-9-0quals
• #1/51best rank
• 4awards

Season Hardware

• Engineering Inspiration Award
• Quality Award
• Regional Winners
• Industrial Design Award

• CAD→
• Code→
• Photos→
• Events & records→
• Design review→
• Highlight video→

How Power Up worked

FIRST's official game animation for the 2018 season.

January 1, 2018

Spectrum 2018 Resource Collection

We have released several new resources this fall and also updated some of our old resources. We collected them here so they are easier to find.

1. Spectrum Robot Design Sheet - DesignSheet.spectrum3847.org
• Designed to be a centralized resource to use while designing FRC robots. Each page includes part specifications and calculations that you can use to help in the design process. 
• Many of the COTS parts common to FRC robots have their size and other design parameters included here so you don't have to open up the part in CAD to measure or find and download the drawings every time you need to quickly add something to a sketch or prototype.
• We keep a copy of this sheet for each robot that we build and then add new pages for each module/subsystem on our robot. That way we can keep track of our design decisions, variables, part numbers, etc in one centralized place.
• Features
• Belt, Chain, and Gear C-C calculators.
• Simple drive train, and mechanism calculators.
• Pneumatic cylinder base lengths, clevis, lengths and more.
• Gas spring retracted and extended lengths.
• Sample Module page to document your robot design variables, and decisions.
• Drill sizes, & bolt sizes
• Electronics status light reference
• CD post about the Robot Design Sheet is here
2. Spectrum Design Concepts Slides - Design.spectrum3847.org
• This is an accumulation of information to help design FRC robots from physics and design basics all the way to FRC COTS parts. There are nearly 200 slides that were used to teach FRC design each week during the fall semester of 2017.
• CD Post about these slides is here.
3. Spectrum Solidworks CAD Library - CAD.Spectrum3847.org
• Updated Solidworks CAD Library with new products for the 2018 season from VEXpro, AndyMark, REV Robotics, Arambot, and more.
• Added pneumatic cylinder CAD models provided by Milkenknights Thank you Marcusbernstein for putting that together.
• If there is anything missing from the library please let us know. This is the most complete library that we know of for FRC.
4. Spectrum FRC Mechanisms Library - Mechanisms.Spectrum3847.org
• Photo gallery of 2017 and 2016 robot mechanisms. 
• We will be updating this with 2018 mechanisms and past mechanisms that inspire us during the 2018 season. 
5. FIRST $1000 - 1000.spectrum3847.org
• Our recommendations for the first $1000 you should spend on tools as a brand new FRC team.
6. Spectrum Electrical Guide - Electrical.spectrum3847.org
• A still under construction electrical guide for how Spectrum does our electrical wiring. 
• Some people will find this useful. It will be fully developed through out 2018.
7. What's in the Box? - Blog Posts 
• A look at how we organize some of our parts and tools.
8. Recommended Reading - spectrum3847.org/recommendedreading
• Our favorite resources that help teams become better at FRC.
• These are the items that have taught and inspired us over the years. 
9. Behind the Lines: Social Media Best Practices
• Video - socialmediabtl.spectrum3847.org
• Slides
10. Spectrum JeVois Test Project - github.com/Spectrum3847/SpectrumJeVois
• A simple test project for using the JeVois camera in an FRC Java project.
• CD thread

Bonus Stuff

• The tools you can't get through FRC build season without?
• Favorite robot parts teams should know about
• Electrical Test Board for Prototypes
• Fixing a stuck USB cable in a roboRIO

- Spectrum

“If you have a candle, the light won't glow any dimmer if I light yours off of mine.” - Steven Tyler

January 3, 2018

Driver Station Stop Processes Scripts

Here are two scripts we wrote to enable and disable several of the window’s processes on your driver station computer when you are connected to the robot. This will turn off windows firewall, defender, update and superfetch. This should make your CPU more stable and allow for less packet loss. Read the “Read Me” file for how to install and use the scripts.

Spectrum Disable Processes Script
- Spectrum

January 4, 2018

Subscribe to Spectrum updates and other FRC blogs in Slack

You can add a slack integration that posts blog updates in your Slack channels. https://slack.com/apps/A0F81R7U7-rss
Here are some good examples of blogs to add to your slack.

• Spectrum 3847 Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Spectrum3847Blog
• FRC Offical Blog: https://community.firstinspires.org/topic/frc
• John V-Neun's new blog about 148's desgin: https://johnvneun.com/
• The Blue Alliance Blog: https://blog.thebluealliance.com/feed/
• Robozone Podcast: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:249285108/sounds.rss
• Elm City Robo Squad FRC#558 Blog: http://robosquad558.weebly.com/3/feed

- Spectrum 

January 4, 2018

What's in the Box? - Spacers & Washers

This bin is used for bolt spacers and washers.
We order our bolt spacers normally #10 and 1/4" IDs with 1/2" OD.
https://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/123/3291/=1azhniw
We have 1/8", 1/4", 1/2" and 1" spacers.
We order most of our washers from zoro.com
This also has some wave spring washers for taking up slack on shafts and replacing them in VPs. We order them from McMaster mostly.
- Spectrum

January 4, 2018

Driver Station Upgrade

Before

After

Our old driverstation was unsatisfactory for a wide variety of reasons but we decided to hold over a few features that we liked a lot such as the handle style and size.
Problems with old:

• Velcro controller straps are easily lost, ugly, and worked poorly
• Shelf mounting velcro was a strip of adhesive backed velcro that ran across the entire bottom and attached to the sides of the driver station
• Driverstation never had a consistent location at competitions
• Laptop charger cable had to be routed out of a hole on top of the driver station instead off to the side

Fixes/Improvements:

• Velcro controller straps are now nylon and have a plastic buckle
• 2 Wooden blocks underneath have velcro pads for driverstation shelf mounting
• Slots are cut on the sides so it can be attached to the robot cart handle
• Power cable hole on the side of the driverstation so the entire laptop charger cable route can be hidden underneath
• There are now 10 programmable LED pushbuttons on the driver station controlled by a TI launchpad
• Driverstation corners are now welded and seamless
• USB hub is now a triangular pyramid
• Front and back of the driverstation has a purple acrylic backing to highlight decorative cutouts
• Underglow
• The side cutouts are highlighted by a carbon fiber backing
• Laptop power cable can be stowed away by being attached to the USB hub

Critiques

• Pushbutton maintenance is doable but should have been a higher priority when being designed
• Should use a teensy board instead of a launchpad next time for space and easier wiring
• 3D printed wiring enclosures are a little too weak for the velcro
• Handles hang the driverstation low so putting it on the cart handle and field shelf is a little annoying for shorter people
• Retrofitting a camera pole to the driverstation would be difficult
• No solution for controller wires tending to twist and crimp
• Controllers still slip out of buckles

Click here for more details and documentation.
Click here for grabcad files.
- Spectrum
"Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation." - Sebastian Thrun

January 7, 2018

Power Up Teaser Guesses Recap

The 2018 FRC Game FIRST Power Up started this morning with the release of the game animation and rules.

Spectrum watched the 2018 FRC teaser back in September and guessed what was going to be in this game. Tonight we are going to start the season off with how well we did on our predictions. Commentary is in italics. 

What did we get right?

Elevation Changes
Got this about half right, robots are going up.

• Power UP - makes it pretty obvious that robots will have to climb something,
• that may be stairs like the student walks down in the beginning of the clip or it could be ramps that robots have to drive up.
• There are stairs/ramps in the poster and on top of the arcade machine

Power Ups = changes or bonuses mid match
Hit this one pretty much on the head.

• Bonus points
• Get certain items or score in a certain order and then there are multipliers. Similar to ubertubes in 2011
• Unlock certain parts of the game or objectives after scoring or completing objectives

Misc We got this one right.

• Human players score the game pieces on the side of the field similar to pilots placing gears this year.

Just for Fun Dean Kamen was wearing a DK tie in the kickoff video, we are taking this one as a win.

• Human players dressed as Donkey Kong

What did we get wrong?

Elevation Changes
Didn't end up being any big elevation chages for the robots, no large ramps on the field but we did see some platforms moving just not for the robots.

• Multi-Tiered playing field, multiple ramps
• Mario Kart - Battle - Block Fort
• Parking garage
• More obscure level changes
• Ladders?
• Moving Platforms
• Up / down
• Sliding (Similar to 1999 Puck)
• Tilting

Power Ups = changes or bonuses mid match
No audience selection or different power ups each match but teams do get to choose how and when to use them.

• Possibly get to choose which power ups to use each match
• Audience selection of power ups?

Coins
No Coins at all in this game, guess it was just a red hearing.

• Collecting them as a game piece
• Discs/Frisbees/Disc Golf Discs
• If you turn in coins your human players can put out different game pieces based on the amount of coins.
• Possibly scoring in coin slots
• Tiny coins (like 1in or less)
• Large coins (2 ft or bigger diameter)
• Coin dispensers on the field, so you have to pull something, push a block, hit something, to release more coins (hoppers?)
• 500 = Coin Amount on the field?
• (Searches for “500” in google did not return any relevant results)

FIRST Logo on poles (similar to logo motion)
Nope it wasn't part of the game

• Possible Mario Flag Pole
• Possibly hanging logos like 2011
• Maybe have to get logo pieces off the poles instead of putting them on
• 4 out of 5 games on the machine were pick and place games
• 2005, 2007, 2011, 2017 (not 2016)

Misc
Nope nothing as cool as these ideas.

• Size changes?

• The power ups may allow your robots to expand to a taller or larger size.
• Inflatable robots (unlikely but cool)
• Video Game Mechanics

• A lot of things are possible with video mechanics.
• Mystery boxes
• Co-op elements
• Intra alliance co-op elements were it takes multiple robots on an alliance to do something
• Inter alliance co-op similar to 2012/2015 (hopefully not)
• Barrel Jumping/Ladder Climbing

Just for Fun
Didn't expect to get any of these right, 1 out of 5 isn't bad.

• DDR pads / NES Power Glove
• CHUCK TOWN
• Charleston, South Carolina

• Fire Alarm = Lava Game

Conclusions

Overall we got more wrong than we did right, but there was a lot in this teaser to think about and did lead to some very accurate conclusions.

- Spectrum

January 7, 2018

Day 1: Let the games begin

Power Up is finally here

Game Manual

Field Tour Videos

If you want to see how many of our Teaser guess we got right check out our other post here.

Kickoff Event

Day 1 starts with heading over to our kickoff event, this year hosted by our friends in Katy, TX they have 5 FRC teams building at their STEM center and they invited the rest of the area teams there to watch the kickoff and pick up our kit of parts. 

After we get our KoP its back to Strake Jesuit to read all of the game rules and start talking about strategy. 

Game Analysis

Quick Max score math

Auto: 15 Seconds

• 15 crossing line
• 28 for switch (2 + 2*13 secs)
• 26 for scale (2+ 2*12 secs, opponent scoring cubes could stop this)

Telop: 135 second telop

125 * 2 = 250 (125secs * 2 for the scale and switch points)

10 * 2 * 2 = 40 (scale and switch Boost Bonus)

Vault points

9 * 5 = 45

End Game

30 * 3 = 90

Total

15 + 28 + 26 + 250 + 40 + 45 + 90 = 494 =500 (give or take 4-20 points)

Functional Requirements

Talked through some functional requirements, these aren't set in stone and will likely change through out the week.

Drive Train

• Drive around field 
• Go over speed bumps 1" dome. at weid angles 
• Go the ramp to the platform at weird platform 
• Maneuver in tight spaces 
• Quick sprint distances 
• Possible Brakes? 
• Tank Drive 

Elevator

• Ground to 8ft speed? 
• Able to asssit with climb 
• only 2 moving stages
• Camera mount on the elevator 

Intake

• Grab cubes in any orientation. (3 different ways) 
• Grab over bumper 
• securally hold the game piece 
• Deposite into exchange 
• Integrate with elevator 
• Touch it, own it 
• robust can take a hit

Eject Cubes

Options

• Shoot cubes
• Gentley place cubes
• Firmly place cubes
• Auto place cube

Climber

• Climb with another robot
• Climb quickly sub 5 secs
• Holds it self up after match
• Get the bumpers above 12"
• Easy alignment for the driver

Tomorrow

We'll finish building our Scale so we can test how the game pieces interact with each other as you place them. We also have a few bench tests we want to build for testing ideas for climbers.

- Spectrum

"Luck is not something that happens by chance. Luck is earned through dedication, work and determination." -Katie Mickley

January 8, 2018

Day 2: Field Building, design ideas, and strategy convergence.

First Sunday is always a little weird, lots of field building mixed with some some impromptu strategy discussion. We make sure we have any critical parts ordered for prototyping (this year that was WCP silicone compliance wheels).
We should have most of our field elements made up tomorrow for the scale, fence (we don't a see-saw in the middle of it), and the half exchange zone. We'll build up a platform next weekend most likely. Thank you to all the parents and team members that have been working on this over the weekend.
Some of the key points from today's discussions.

Basics of Power Up

1. Score cubes fast, some games are just that simple. Last year if you scored gears fast and climbed you won, this game might be pretty similar.
2. Ramps are hard, don’t think they are easy. You can build them but they are hard to build and hard to climb. They are also heavy and take up a ton of room you could be using to score cubes faster. Will there be successful ramps of course? Will there be more unsuccessful ramps, probably? If your ramp is steeper than the field platform be prepared for some teams not to be able to climb it. 
3. The scale isn't that high, it's basically half the height of the 2011 high goals. Is it a challenge? Yes. Is it as hard as other year's challenges? Probably not. (Adam Heard of 973 has a great video series on how to build an elevator, it's pretty amazing. Also VEXpro sales a linear motion gusset kit with detailed drawing on how to assemble it.)
4. Careful with the cube covers, many teams are starting to rip their cube covers with intake prototypes. These aren't as durable a game pieces as the gears or the fuel last year.
5. A simple climber just takes a couple poles, a hook and winch. Just get the hook to the bar(motor, springs, pneumatics, etc) and winch yourself up. It's harder than last year's climb but nut orders of magnitude harder. Doing that with multiple robots gets tougher but it should still work if you're patient with each other. 

To Seed First in Power Up

1. Ninja Squad (Robowranglers help squad) style team to get your partners an auto program that drives them across the line. 
2. Auto: cube in to your switch 
1. Needed for the Auto ranking point 
2. at a minimum, probably a cube or two after that during auto for the elite teams 
3. Requires good auton driving and control 
3. Climb and lift one partner with you 
1. you can’t count on two teammates getting up a ramp or even on being able to climb along side you. 
4. Control the Scale 
1. wins any match where your opponents can’t go high 
2. needed to win matches where they can

Random thoughts, notes and questions, from this weekends meetings

• Careful not to extend past the tower or outrigger walls when climbing, you won’t be able to break the extension limit if you do because part of your robot would technically leave the platform zone. It's bonded by the walls of the outrigger and the wall. 
• How do you find the exchange zone autonomously? 
• How do you find the scale autonomously? 
• Vision tracking cubes? 
• Outriggers to prevent tipping forward? Outriggers to grab your partners by the bumpers and drag them across the auto line? 
• Camera on the 2nd stage of the elevator looking down to see the scale plates? 
• If your missing a robot from your alliance (no show, not inspected, or broken) can they be levitated?

- Spectrum

“If you want to make the right decision for the future, fear is not a very good consultant.” –Markus Dohle

January 8, 2018

Day 3: Intake all the Cubes

The focus of today's meeting was to catch people up on our analysis from the weekend and then start thinking about intakes. Every robot this year needs to be able to intake cubes and do so effectively. The best robots in the world will have some of the best intakes in the world.

Functional Requirements

• Grab cubes in any orientation. (3 different ways) 
• Grab over bumper 
• Securely hold the game piece 
• Deposit into exchange 
• Integrate with elevator 
• Touch it, own it 
• Robust can take a hit 
• Light weight
• Set cube in switch/scale
• Possibly deposit cube in back of switch or scale

References

We started by discussing a few of the different concepts we thought of over the weekend and looking at previous years examples of those intake types.

• Multi wheeled side compliant intake (Landfill Intake)
• 118 -2015
• 987-2015
• Four Bar side intake (Clapper)
• 1538 style
• Bottom and top roller 
• 111 - 2011
• 1678 - 2017 (gear intake but bigger)

We then discussed the advantages of each type and made sure everyone had felt the cube and understood what we were trying to do.

Draw an Intake

We had each of our members draw their depiction of an ideal intake given the information we currently had. The reason for this was to see if we could find any assumptions that we were making about intakes that may not be true.
Here are some examples of the sketches we made for cube intakes.

More Designs

Several new designs were created during this process of sketching intakes and talking about assumptions.

• Boomerang intake
• Pivot is between the two sets of wheels.
• Linear compliant intake (Slide Intake)
• Sets of wheels slide on a linear track to add compliance, instead of pivoting 
• 3 Sided Box 
• Adds the side and top roller together but removes the bottom roller so we can still place cubes nicely.

Other intake notes

• Possible pneumatic punch to help push cubes to the back of the plate.
• Wheels on each side don’t have to be in the same location or same height.
• Stacked wheels to get more grip
• Independent control of each sides compression?
• Pivot doesn’t have to behind the wheels (bomberrang shape)
• Centers to a back holding place instead of the wheels in front centering. You may get lopsided without it.
• Conveyor / belt between wheels or only a convener?

Design Parameters (Variables)

• Speed of the wheels
• Motor types, gearing
• Area of acquisition (how big can it open or how wide are the rollers)
• Number of wheels
• Type of wheels
• Compliant wheels vs solid wheels
• Different types of rubbers and materials
• Do nubby/studded wheels grab into the indents of the cubes?
• Entrapption Stars instead of wheels? In addition?
• Positions of wheels relative to each other
• Distance between wheels (if they are in a row)
• Different compression amounts for each row of wheels in a set.
• Thickness of wheels
• Compliant distance (how close can each side of wheels get and how far away can they get)
• compliance geometry 
• Intake wheels center line distance from the ground
• Different wheel positions instead of straight lines

Next Steps

• Start designing prototypes that allows us to establish the most optimal versions of these intakes.
• Build mounts that allow us to use small wheels quickly in the prototypes and changes their positions.
 
• These should let us mount multiple types of wheels quickly and easily and also change the wheel spacings using the REV Extrusion and spacers on the VP mounting bolts.
• 24T GT2 pulleys, 60t belts, and 1/2" hex shafts with shoulder bolts in 3/8" bearings.
• Could go even smaller with 1/4"shoulder bolts and bearings.
Designs will continue for the next 3 days and we should be testing multiple intakes Friday-Monday

- Spectrum

"Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success." - Scott Adams

January 10, 2018

Day 4: Subsystems are being decided

Today was a relatively quite day. Mostly finishing up some of our field elements and doing a lot of thinking about the robot.

Subsystems

We have our subsystems pretty much rounded out for this years robot.

1. Drive Train
2. Elevator
3. Wrist
4. Intake
5. Hook (The elevator system is in charge of actually doing the heavy lifting)
6. Tailgate (where another robot sits while we climb the scale)

Climbing Goals

Climbing is both a small part of this game and of major importance. There will be plenty of matches where no one is successful at climbing (other than levitate). However because of the ranking point associated with "Facing the Boss" (having 3 robots "Climbed") the highest ranking teams will regularly allow for 2 climbs and levitate in their matches. 

Our Priorities

1. Use our elevator to climb our own robot using the rung in under 10 secs.
2. Easily align our robot and hook to the bar. Speed will be important in this game.
3. Use our tailgate to be able to hold a partner and have them climb up with us.
4. Have our tailgate be laid out flat and on top of the platform to avoid any bumper issues, etc.
5. Use only one side of the rung (box tube) and face of the tower to allow a 2nd climbing robot in cases where our tailgate isn't needed or is broken.
6. Be able to climb from both sides of the rung.
7. Be able to climb from the front of the rung if needed.

Current idea has hooks on both sides in the rear of our robot attached to the telescoping (2nd) stage of our elevator and using the hooks to grab onto either box tube of the rung. Then our tailgate would be positioned mostly below the rung. 

We will be attempting some bench tests this weekend to see how this idea works.

Discovery of the day

Cubes can get stuck in the area between the switch plates, near the teeter totter? Is anyone designing their robot to reach in and grab those cubes?

Burning Questions

• How do we build a strong rigid deck that is light weight but lets us easily hold another robot?
• What's the best way to deploy the tailgate?
• What is the best way to have a fast elevator for scoring cubes and a strong elevator for climbing the tower?
• How can you design a hook that helps keep your robot(s) level?
• How much horizontal reach do robots need over the scoring plates?
• Cable vs. Chain driven elevator?

- Spectrum

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” - Socrates

January 11, 2018

Day 5: The Q&A is open

Today brought the first clarifications of multiple rules from the GDC in the Q&A.

https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/

Climber/Bumper Questions

Two critical Q&As are Q4 and Q8. They clarify the definition of a floor and how the robot will be transposed to the floor.

With these rules, its now okay to lower a tailgate (what we call a panel for lifting another robot) to touch the carpet in the platform zone and then lift them up on that tailgate.

This is good news for a lot of designs.

Climber Sketches

Before those rules came out we were working on a way to climb with a partner that didn't need to have the ramp on the carpet. This was the hook design we came up with. It can be improved by coming into the rung from the top and then backing up to secure yourself but we don't have a sketch for that yet.

Design Review is tomorrow.

We'll be doing our design review tomorrow. We have taken this season slower since in the past we have been hasty in our decision making. We'll reevaluate where we stand after 5 days of thinking and dreaming about how Power Up is going to be played.
- Spectrum

"Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large competitors." - Sam Altman

January 12, 2018

Day 6: Redesigns coming early this year.

We're not sure if you call it a redesign when you never really started designing the first option. Today's design meeting led us back to our priorities of scoring cubes as fast as possible. Time is points in this game and the faster you can score cubes the more matches you should be able to win.
There are 4 distinct cube scoring areas for each alliance.

1. Exchange
2. Your switch
3. Scale
4. Opponents switch

Three out of the four tasks are better suited to a shorter robot that can pick up cubes on one side of their robot and drop them off on the other at 2 different heights. Stopping your opponent from owning their switch is just as valuable to you as it to own your own switch since it's a plus 1 point differential for every second you prevent them from owning it.
So having a shorter nimble robot that can score quickly in the 3 short zones while still assisting with the scale is a valuable robot for any alliance.

Here is a quick Solidworks sketch that shows how a robot might be built without a traditional elevator to complete the low tasks efficiently while still being able to put cubes in the scale. This design is heavily inspired by previous season robots from 233 and this past pre-season robot of team 2168.

All the dimensions haven't been worked out yet but this gives an idea of a possible configuration. The 5 pink lines are 5 different positions of a retracted arm. The orange line shows an extended arm. In the full retracted position this arm doesn't break the 16in frame extension rule and the only time you need to extend is when you are pointing almost vertical to be able to eject a cube into the scale. We may also experiment with being able to shoot cubes into the scale as well so we can be faster and not have to extend every time we place a cube in the scale.

The current thought is we can also get away with a smaller frame with this design. Somewhere around 28"*24" instead of the full size 33"*28".

Clamping a partner

This new robot doesn't easily allow an integrated elevator/climber solution (not sure any elevator/climber is going to be that easy) so we need a new way to try to climb with our partners in nearly every match. JVN and the Robotwrangler's Hierarchy of Climber Types is a great read about the potential various different climber options. Our original Tailgate climber was a 13 on the scale. It relied on our partners driving on to the right spot for us to lift them and us both up. Our new idea is to try to go one up on the hierarchy and be a "14. Help-A-Fridge Climber" where we are able to clamp onto a partner robot and bring them up the scale with us. This would also let us potentially be something similar to a "7. Versatile Basic Climber" where we clamp on to our partners and they climb us both up. 

The idea is to have fold our forks that we drive under a team and then a top clamp that we are able to clamp down on a partner.

Vacuum Cube

- Spectrum

Efficiency is doing better what is already being done. - Peter Drucker

January 13, 2018

Day 7: Power Up Tips & Resources plus some of our prototypes

We are a week into the season and a bunch of resources, examples, and documents have been published about the game. We're also giving links to some of the robots we have been looking at that have inspired us so far.

FRC Official Power Up Rules Updates

• Combined Team Updates PDF- Updates are published every Tuesday and Thursday.

EWCP Basic Bot Design 

• Power Up Strategy and Guide

Design Resources

• designsheet.spectrum3847.org - Spectrum Robot Design Spreadsheet, great 
• Design.spectrum3847.org - Design Slideshow from Spectrum
• CAD.spectrum3847.org  -  Spectrum Solidworks CAD Library

Electrical Tips

• "Why Aren't We Doing This" by Rob Heslin
• Spectrum FRC Electrical Guide

Q&A Link

• https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/
• If you have specific robot or rules questions its better to ask a mentor team then the Q&A. Then where you think there might be two interruptions of a rule or corner cases for a rule that is when you should ask the Q&A for clarification. 
• Reading the Q&A is a good way to see how the rules will be enforced and get some ideas of how the game may be played.

Robot Examples

Snow Problem

• Video
• Robot Walk through Video
• Documentation

Greenhorns

• Video 
• Greenhorns Strategy
• Greenhorns Comprehensive Paper

Inspiration from Past Robots

• 233 The Pink Team
• 2007, 2011
• Flickr Album for telescoping arm
• 1114 Simbotics
• 2011 & 2015
• CAD
• 2015 Intake Prototype
• 2168 Aluminum Falcons
• 2017 Pre-season Robot
• 1538 Holy Cows
• 2015 

Prototypes we are working on

Active Retaining Mechanism

This is for making sure our alliance partners don't slip down our forks while we lift them up into the air. The test robot there is our 2013 bare chassis with multiple weights, a vise and a broken arbor press mounted on top. It weighs in at 143 lbs. If we can lift this we can lift nearly any robot this year (CG could be an issue with some very tall robots). 

Fourbar intake mechanism.

Inspired by the 1538-2015 intake we have a team looking at a double 4 bar intake. If we finalize on this, our robot could have a large arm joint, a telescoping extension, 2 four bars, and a wheeled shooter we are pretty sure that wins us FRC Bingo (1323's 2012 robot with a turreted shooter on a four bar is close though).

Linear compliant intake

This intake uses linear rails and chain linking the two arms together to keep them centered to allow the intake to adjust to the different cube geometries.  We'd have a pneumatic actuator to open the claw to make mid field cube acquisition easier. We noticed the cubes like to slide away form a lot of intake if you don't have a wall behind you.

 The Prototype Robot

We are converting our 2014 practice chassis into a prototype for this robot. Mainly because it's 28" long just like our current planned robot. We added a quick 2x4 A frame and Arm mock up to lets us see the geometry that we are working with. The shoulder joint is off axis with the arm to allow the extension to go through the joint without having to two separate pivot arms clamped around the extension tube like 233 and 2168 example arms. This will present slightly different heights to each side of the arm's motion but with much of this game relying on imprecise movement (place a box in a 3' by 4' plate) it shouldn't effect us too much. 

Three Day Weekend

We get to do a lot of robots over the next 3 days so we should have more test video up in the next few blog posts. 

- Spectrum
"Steal from the best,invent the rest”

January 14, 2018

Day 8: MCCC and lifting prototypes continue

Lifting Prototypes

We purchased a lever chain hoist this morning so that we could test different lifting concepts without having a robot cable of lifting another just quite yet.
Keeping a partner level is definitly going to be a challenge. We are going to continue working on our retaining device as well to help hold our partners securely close to our bumpers. We do have tread on the two forks that we have under the partner robot as well.
The robot with the arm weighs ~120lbs, the robot with the vise mounted to it weighs 140lbs. 

We will also need to make a robot with a higher Center of Gravity (CG) than this current partner bot. As the CG of a partner that you are attempting to climb is going to be very important. 

MCCC 2018: Minimum Competitive Concept Competition

East Texas hosted 3 Robot in 3 Days teams and 118's Everybot team this year and they all headed to The Woodlands, Texas home of Texas Torque World Headquarters (FRC#1477) and had the first ever MCCC. A true "Week 1" competition. We had several of our alumni and friends up at the event and we were able to secure video of several of the matches. 

The fields were only the wooden version and weren't setup up perfectly (lacking exchange/vaults) but it gives you a good idea of how some matches may go. You can learn a lot from watching real robots play that you may not notice when you simulate in your head or with humans.

Match 1

Match 2

Match 3

Match 4

Take Aways (some we already knew, just confirmed)

• Scoring in the scale is difficult but if you can do it, even one cube could win you the match. So finding a way to do it will help win you a lot of matches
• Defending your switch is going to be difficult. Your opponents have 11 of their cubes on that side of the cube all in easy to remove portals and you'll need to be able to ground collect and score or defend against them to keep your switch safely in your control and getting your alliance points
• A great intake will make your robot much better than a great lift/arm/shooter/etc.
• The cubes like to slide on the carpet so test intaking by pushing your prototype towards the cube and not the cube towards the prototype.
• Climbing points will be important and it's a hard task (they also only had a week so we can cut them slack)
• Vision will be limited around the switch and scale. Camera feeds and sensors will help make your drivers' jobs much easier
• Scoring a lot of cubes quickly will win you matches (seems obvious but we like to repeat the obvious)

- Spectrum
"Competition helps people figure it out." - Brian McBride, U.S. Soccer Player

January 15, 2018

Day 9: Climber Progress and Intake Prototype CAD

Just a short update of what we are working on. 

Our current plan is to have two seperate climbing methods depending on if we need to lift a partner or if we can climb alone.
With a partner we will use our fork lift and winch to lift both our robots at the point between the bumpers. This will let us reduce the amount of tipping during the lift.
When we climb alone we will use a curl at our arm joint so that we can curl away from any robot that has already climbed or if they have bars mounted to their robots.
Intake Prototype
Our intake prototyping has gotten a bit more complicated to be able to meet all our requirements. It uses a virtual four bar belt and a pneumatic cylinder to move the pivots and compress the cube. It also has multiple co-axial movements.

Should have it built tomorrow if we are able to print all the pulleys we need for it. 

- Spectrum

"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." - Indira Gandhi

January 16, 2018

Day 10: Wooden Chassis

Quick update again today. We are continuing some of the testing and finally deciding on a drive train. We didn't want to rush into our drive train design this year as we knew it could change a lot based on our robot design.
We still have some testing to do to make sure we can make the configuration we want work but we should be able to start getting it fully CADed this week.

 We also mounted the wooden arm on the robot base to make sure we will be stable with such a small wheel base (28.5 x 24.5). We added some weight (sand bag) to the arm as well to see if it looked like it would be unstable when we are holding a cube above our chassis..

The intake prototype is still in the works. Our 3D printer had some issues so it was slow going get all the pulleys we needed printed for the testing.

- Spectrum

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

January 17, 2018

Day 11: Ice day in Houston, this is weird

We actually didn’t meet for the first time in recent memory. The roads were iced and we have a deep freeze for over 24 hrs which rarely happens in Houston.
Since we can’t work on our prototypes, we wrote out our entire current robot plan also their is some updated CAD of the virtual 4 bar intake at the end.

Robot Plan

Drive train and base

- 28.5" long by 24.5" wide
- 4 wheel drive, 6" omnis
- 2"+ ground clearance, it won't be great over the corner but shouldn't get stuck. Should be fine up the platform.
- Not great up steep ramps but steep ramps are bad anyway. Arm may help us out of weird end game situations, forcing it in to the ground, etc.
- current plan is to go with a sheet metal inverted west coast drive (cantilevered wheels on the inside, like 118 last year) to get us a bigger belly pan. 24" is small, our normal wheel wells wouldn't leave us much room and vertical electronics are annoying.
- small size let's us drive under the scale when needed and through the null territory without getting in the way of a partner scoring on the scale. (Also drive under opponents scale if you want to risk it)
- Small size makes it easier for us to get on to tailgates (lifting platforms)
- omnis makes it real hard for us to tip sideways, arm can right us if we tip forward or backward, hopefully we don't need to do that ever.
- 6 miniCIM drive train
- balls shifters
- 5-7 low, 14-16 high gear, need the high gear for portal cycles.(those aren't set and will probably change as we run the numbers better)
- a frame for the arm also acts as frame members

Arm

- pink style arm
- single big rotation joint (about 28" from the ground)
- single telescoping extension
- all sheet metal, all bearings for extension.
- 3x 775pro on the arm with a disk brake so we aren't stalling the motors much. Gearing allows us to curl for the climb when we aren't lifting a partner.
- 1 or 2 775s on the extension, not climbing with the telescoping stage, just hanging from it (has to be able to hold the wait of the robot but not lift it)

Intake

- able to intake from both sides of the robot when the arm flips over
- still prototyping our final solution but worst case it's some version of a sideswipe intake (1114 2015). We want to get the virtual 4 bar intake(look below for a CAD sketch) working but it's definitely more complicated but it should let us intake 11" cubes easier.
- Every cube in this game matters and time wasted trying to turn cubes is time not spent score. Drivers may be able to just approach cubes from a different angle to avoid the 11" face but probably not everytime.
- intake is 2x 775pros, one for each side so we can spin the wheels at different speeds to help with I taking.
- wheels should be able to launch cubes 2-3' for pushing them up to the scale (arm will rest them on the side of the scale for up tilted scales). May include a pneumatic punch if we need more height/distance.
- intake opens and closes with pneumatics, let's us drop cubes and place them nicely.

Climbing

- hooks hard mounted to the arm extension. One on each side we can grab the square tubing from either attack direction.
- hooks fold out or extend to give us more reach for the bar then we get from the single extension.
- solo climb is a curl. That way we can climb second and as long as we can reach the rung we can curl away from the already hanging robot and both get points.
- dual climb is a forklift tailgate that folds out the front of robot, forks are stored along the a-frame for the arm.
- winch is attached to the tailgate so we can get our winch pull location as close to our partner as possible so our climb doesn't lean as much.
- forks have tread or other traction on them so robots don't slide off
- forks have ramps on the sides of them so teams can drive over them.
- some type of retaining bar goes over the partner so they can't tilt off, this won't need to actually tighten to their robot, just prevent them from tipping up.
-winch cable gets mounted to the same hooks we use for the solo climb, as we winch up the arm is back driven to allow us to get it height.
- winch is 2x 775pros
- tailgate and winch can be detached easily match to match, so we can be lighter when we don't need it.

Strategy

- own our switch and the opponents switch as fast as possible and maintain the lead.
- run cycles from portals to op switch and to the scale.
- climb around partners if needed, lift a partner if that's needed as well
- able to pull from the cube zone without knocking to many cubes out of the zone
-able to quickly grab cubes our opponents knock out of their cube zone.
- have third partner maintain your own switch lead and score at least 3 cubes in the vault.
-scoring on switches under defense will be hard since you have to get your bumpers touching the fence to be able to score (reasonably). Lots of spin moves.

favorite alliance task breakdown right now.
1. Score in op switch and the scale, defend them from scoring in their switch.
2. Score in the Scale and your switch
3. Score in your switch and vault, defend your switch

How much time each of those teams spends on each of their tasks and how efficient they are will decide the game. May need to call audibles and have #1 come back from far side and score your own switch to maintain ownership.

Intake CAD

The red sketches show the belts and shafts that would spin the wheels powered by the VP 180 degree adapter. The orange shafts show the movement of the two arms that will move the wheel plates in and out to compress the cube this is powered by a pneumatic cylinder since we only need about 90 degrees of rotation which is 45mm of belt travel. The green sketched belts are used to keep the wheel plate perpendicular to the motor mounting plate those 4 pulleys are directly mounted to the plates they are near and don't even touch the shafts they are around. Note these belt distances are done in CAD yet, this was just to figure out the stacking of all of the components. Many of the distances will change, for bolts, etc.

This gives a large range of open and close in a very small vertical displacement of the wheels.

Most of these pulleys will be printed, if needed most of these can be made from the hex versions but would required cutting a bearing hole into them.

This will allow us to adjust how far we close and open the claw by allow us to adjust hard stops on the pneumatic cylinder motion (or arm motion). 

- Spectrum

“Friends share all things.” - Pythagoras

January 18, 2018

Day 12: Second Ice Day

We couldn’t meet Tuesday or Wednesday this due to hazardous road conditions and closed highways.
We are too the stage we call Block CAD. None of parts are how they would actually be manufactured but they are more than just two D sketches. If we have prototypes CADed of the systems we can use those as place fillers but a lot of the elements are just simple extrusions based on our previous sketches. This stages helps get robot from just a bunch of collective thoughts to something with a little more detail. You can start seeing in 3D where you care going to have packaging problems and where you need dedicate more thought to your final solutions.

Side view of the robot with the arm in multiple positions. The final intake won’t have motors sticking out the top to allow it to flip from side to side. 

Side view of the robot with the tailgate attached and shown in the up and down positions.

Head on view with the arm straight up. Easy to see how a fold out hook will be able to latch on to the square tubing of the rung. 

 Head on view with the intake tilted at the frame perimeter, this is if we are potentially reaching over another robot that is already hanging to grab the rung.

 This position show the length of the robot during it's curled position. The final size will add a few inches for bumpers and any length that we make the hook. 

There are still tons of details to iron out with our systems.

Robozone Podcast

If you're looking for more FRC content check out the Robozone Podcast. Gives a bit of insight into FIRST in Michigan and their 500+ teams but also just general FRC information that is great to know.

The 2nd episode of this season was released yesterday.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/robozone-podcast-episode-044-week-1-design-and-strategy/162299
You can also subscribe to their RSS feed in slack to get updates that way.
http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:249285108/sounds.rss
- Spectrum

"If you can’t understand it, you can’t change it." -Eric Evans

January 19, 2018

Day 13: Intake motion and Drive Train Speeds

We did have our first meeting back after the winter storm. Most of the team spent the day at Memorial Hermann Hospital getting a tour of the new "da Vinci Xi® Surgical System." We were able to see real world applications for the technology that we learn in FRC. We should have photos soon.

Intake

We progressed on the virtual four bar intake. This prototype has some issues and we have begun building the 2nd version to fix most of the problems. The gif below show you how the arms actually move. 

Climber

We are also looking into systems for folding out our climber hooks and also keeping our tailgate winch cable organized while it is attached to our extension arm, our current plan is use coiled pneumatic tubing to allow the cable to stretch and retract as needed before pulling it in to tension at the end of the match. 

Drive Train Speeds

This is our current drive train gearbox plan. This may still change but we are looking to be very fast this year. The amount of full field runs may down this year but it is very possible that we will crossing the field width wise regularly from portal to scale.

- Spectrum

"Through my education, I didn't just develop skills, I didn't just develop the ability to learn, but I developed confidence." - Michelle Obama

January 20, 2018

Day 14

Drive Train

Drive train CAD is starting to progress. We'll get the gearboxes and belly pan on over the weekend, and start working on the mounting points for the A F-frame. 

Intake

The prototype virtual 4 bar intake is progressing, but we still haven't gotten fully functional. Ideally this weekend we have version 2 to the point of collecting cubes. We'll need to make a decisions to continue optimizing this design or change course soon. Luckily the intake doesn't have to slow down progress on the rest of the robot.

Climber

Cable management is going to be a big issue for when we have the tailgate and winch installed in the robot. The rope needs to be able to move and extend with the arm during the match, and then pulley free from the arm to allow the winch to pull directly to the hook. Today we prototyped lexan flaps that are close with Velcro. The rope will ride in these flaps through out the match and then be able to pull open the doors once the winch cable is under tension. As for allowing the cable to extend and retract we are going to prototype a system that uses a coil of pneumatic tubing to spring the rope back when it's not in tension, the pneumatic tubing coil should arrive on Monday.

- Spectrum
“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.” - Barbara Kingsolver

January 21, 2018

Day 15: More CAD

Hook geometry to starting to take shape. We love this video by Adam Heard and 973 for designing pneumatic linkages. 

Drive train is moving along, it now has a belly pan and more holes

Arm pivot is more flushed out, we'll be using a colson dead hub in a way it wasn't designed for but it should serve us well in this new role. 

- Spectrum
“Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.”  - Maya Angelou

January 21, 2018

Day 16: Virtual 4 Bar Intake Clips

Intake prototypes are finally running, took a little longer than we wanted with the ice days last week. It's working well for most cube orientations but we still aren't full go on this version of the intake. 

Photo

Grabbing a cube

Intaking a cube

Grabbing an 11" wide cube

More photos and videos are on our build season photo gallery, http://photos.spectrum3847.org/2018-FRC/Build-Season/2018-Build-Season/

We have the intake mounted on to our mock arm and will be testing tomorrow how well it works at an angle. We have some ideas for how to improve in-taking at a steeper angle or possibly reducing the angle. 

Other intake prototypes

If you're interested in other teams' intakes take a look at a quick playlist we put together of dozens of videos that show possible cube intake designs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTocT0DivsNkwi9s1elL-6knGA8SSbs8a

There isn't one perfect intake for every design find that one that integrates with the rest of your design. 

Arm

The CAD for the arm is coming together. 

- Spectrum
"Be so good they can’t ignore you." - Steve Martin

January 23, 2018

Day 17: new wheels

We received our Fairlane wheels in the mail today. These are the 20A Nitrile durasoft wheels.

They hold the cube far better than the our previous attempts.

- Spectrum
"If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success." - Malcolm X

January 23, 2018

Day 18: 4 Bar No More

Today was probably the end of the our 4 bar intake prototype. We had some goals for the intake design and it does meet some of those goals but we believe we can get comparable performance from a much simpler intake design. As we tweaked this design the best grip and intaking occured without the rear wheels even touching the cube and if you don’t need the rear wheels than you don’t need the 4 bar.

Pneumatic Punch

Since the first week we knew that if we couldn't get the intake wheels to launch a cube the way we wanted we'd probably need to use a pneumatic punch. We had done some very basic tests the first few days of build season but we hand't mounted a cylinder to an intake until tonight.

This is a simple prototype but it shows the proof of concept to allow us to punch the cube up and in to the scale or to the back of a switch plate.

- Spectrum

“It is a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.”  - Steve Goodier

January 25, 2018

Day 19 & 20: Other Teams' Vlogs and Updates

Vlogs and Video Updates from other teams

A ton of teams have been making build Vlogs this year on YouTube but they aren't the easiest to find. We've compiled a big list of Vlogs and video series from teams around the world.
Other Teams Build Vlogs Playlist
272: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CD4iPZcj74
334: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOXTCIjyfo
365: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496RRoYpwtU
399: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Lw-LCgtMs
558: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZx7BUfi53w
687: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cWva4QJGZY
694: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zyyKY_Ka-w
1684: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY88kJjXV9g
1712: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1oQw6fIo5Y
1737: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwU8V-jW94s
1792: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKWZfvBeOL4
3005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx1IvKJGB9E
3100: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6RO51UAsxw
3374: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFm_RRJJG08
3414: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPg2JGypZQw
3952: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySllR4WjDGY
4134: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEZJn2e0wIw
4584: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj_KUzIhHCQ
4561: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95d1DP-XUPI
4904: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r_UV0YxXgQ
5090: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gW-BVtJUuw
5333: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3btQJW2Rqgc
5700: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u4ojStVtKU
5800: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHLDdFb3cs
5951: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTm76EvufWU
6418: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAy5PulEeQM
There are almost certainly more teams putting out cool content, so if you know of any we missed send us a link so we can add them to the playlist. The playlist only includes one video from each team to start but we'll try to add more as we find time.

Arm CAD

The CAD for our extending arm is moving along, we have bearing placements mostly finished and the gearbox packaging for the extension is all done on the arm sheet metal.

Electronics

Initial electronics layout is starting to take shape.

- Spectrum

"Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives and remembering what one receives." – Alexander Dumas

January 27, 2018

Day 21: Hook Prototype and Intake Testing

Hook prototypes

We are working through some basic routed hook prototypes to see how the pneumatic fold out will work on the robot. We also hung some sandbags from the wooden one to see where it would start failing first. This is mounted on the back side from the intake version in this case, but the real robot would have the hooks on the same side as the intake but to the outside of it.

New intake almost ready

Tomorrow we will have the new intake mounted to the fake arm and we we'll test how well it works. The plan was to dramatically simplify the intake while keeping the contact points similar to our previous intake. This version keeps the motion of the front wheels from our previous intake close to unchanged and leaves room for the cube to rotate behind the wheels that we found was helpful for getting the cube square. 

Team Update 6 - G25 Rewrite

Make sure you have read Team Update 6. It includes a major rewrite of G25 in relation to how robots can interact with the scale. This clarifies exactly how teams can place cubes on the scale and how the penalties for moving the scale with your robot will be enforced. Robots that put mechanism above the scale will have to be careful that they don't lower the scale or hold the scale down with their mechanism. 

- Spectrum
"If you can laugh together, you can work together."- Robert Orben

January 28, 2018

Day 22 & 23: Next Intake working well

Intake

The new intake prototype was the main focus for testing this weekend. We only CAD enough of it so that we can assemble and build it quickly.

Download CAD of the intake prototype

When we first tested the intake it would jam. You can see some of the intial testing on our build gallery. http://photos.spectrum3847.org/2018-FRC/Build-Season/2018-Build-Season/

This weekend we removed the bumper which will force us to have a bumper gap in the front and back of our robot that we don't really want to do but it will let us intake far better. We also swapped one of the fairlane wheels that was intaking for different wheels and that stopped our center jam problem since now the other wheel can slip and the fairlane wheel can go over the corner of the cube and intake it happily. 

The gif below shows the much improved and non-jamming intake. We are very pleased that the intake is able to lift the cube up while it's in taking.

Drive Train

Drive train CAD is nearly ready to be sent to our sponsor for laser cutting, we still need to lighten some of the parts

Arm

Arm is also getting ready to be send to our sponsor as well.

- Spectrum
“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” – Max Lucado

January 30, 2018

Day 24: Entering the 2nd half of the season

Most of the past few days has been lots of CAD work for the subsystem teams. Getting the first major subsystems ready to be sent to our laser sponsor, Solarcraft, and we are just about there.

What's next

1. CAD/Production for the tailgate and winch (lifting device for a partner robot)
2. CAD/Production for the hooks and hooks mounting
3. Intake iterations and tweaks to keep improving it
1. sensor integration
2. impact testing
4. Tons of assembly and in house parts manufacturing 
5. Lots of details
1. Handles
2. Patch panel for ether net and USB cables
3. Air tank mounts
4. sponsor panels
6. All the programming

- Spectrum
“A Clear Vision, Backed By Definite Plans, Gives You A Tremendous Feeling Of Confidence And Personal Power.”- Brian Tracy

February 1, 2018

Day 25, 26, & 27: CAD and Intake

The first of the robot parts were sent to our sponsor on Tuesday and we should be getting them back tomorrow or Monday.

Intake

We have continued working on the intake and refining it.
FRC#558 Elm City Robo Squad put together a cool tutorial video on making parts by tracing a 1:1 print out of the CAD model. If you are looking for a way to make an intake like ours without a router this is a pretty solid solution.

We have played with various wheel configurations and now we are working on tuning pulley diameters and gear methods. We know we want the motors to lay flat so we'll need to remove the VPs or use some form of 90 degree adapter. There are lots of gearing options for getting to 90 degrees or making the package small we just have to find the one we like best and fits our packaging.

Climber

We think we have a solution for managing the rope of that will be attached to our tailgate climber when we need to lift a partner. It uses a high extension ratio spring to keep the rope length manage when the arm telescopes during the match and when we go to climb the spring retract up near the hook to allow us to winch the cable. Rope and wire management on a rotating and telescoping arm has taken a lot of thought and we are sure that we will be making many modifications and iterations until we get it right.

Drive Train

We've started making the first real parts for the robot on the lathe, mostly just standoffs and spacers at this point but it's still exciting that real parts are getting made. We also sorted, bagged, and inventoried all the parts for both robot drive trains. We still have a few parts to order but nothing that should slow us down too much.

Timeline

We feel a little behind a lot of teams but we also have to remember that even though FIRST claims it's a "6 week" build season that is factually false. It's 45 days and we don't compete until week 3. So even though tomorrow is the end of week 4, we still have 19 days until End of Build season, and 40 days until Lone Star Central where we can be working on the practice bot and withholding allowance items. 40 days is long time and we have 79 days until the end of our season on the Saturday of Houston Champs. Lots of time to build, program, iterate, and improve our team and machine.

- Spectrum

"The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion." - Alexander Graham Bell

February 2, 2018

Day 28: The hard life of prototypes

We were testing how narrow our max opening could be for the intake arms and during the testing the intake decided instead of slipping against the cube it would rather cleanly snap two pieces of the cheap plywood we use for prototyping. 

We have new plates being made tonight that are designed with smaller pneumatic cylinders and a shorter mounting system for the motors. 

- Spectrum

“Тhe gentle overcomes the rigid.
The slow overcomes the fast.
The weak overcomes the strong."
…
"Everyone knows that the yielding overcomes the stiff,
and the soft overcomes the hard.
Yet no one applies this knowledge.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

February 5, 2018

Day 29, 30, 31: Intake Updates, Robot Update, CAD Download Reminder

Intake Updates

This is intake version 8 for us. We modified the arm angles to improve the geometry and moved to smaller pulleys and smaller pneumatic cylinders. We did have to increase pressure in the cylinders to keep the closing force the same. With the smaller 9/16" bore cylinders we need 40-55psi to be able to intake like this.

If you are using parts of our intake to help inspire your designs please let us know.

Robot Update

The whole robot is coming together nicely in CAD. This means very little for how the robot will work in real life.

We get our first sheet metal parts back tomorrow so our drive trains can finally be assembled this week. Sheet metal for the arm and arm gearbox will be set out tonight or tomorrow.

Download our CAD

Reminder all of our CAD from the season is avliable to download on our GrabCAD partner space.

https://workbench.grabcad.com/workbench/projects/gcTUAdK8uGcdI41qkILUVc9stRankNdzBpM0vdey_Sn49N#/space/gc9YdkWEl_-r50tMd408nJF8IZ_FpB-xmCSyPQeH2RaTpJ

- Spectrum
"is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." - Vince Lombardi

February 6, 2018

Day 32: Sheetmetal Delivery 1

Awards

Reminder your Chairman's Award and Woodie Flower's Award essay's are due Thursday afternoon, get them done and submitted tomorrow night so you aren't worried on Thursday trying to do it.

Sheetmetal

We have our sheet metal for both our drive trains and both sets of A-frames. Solarcraft Inc. is the awesome sponsor who has been supporting us for 6 years now and doing a fantastic job. 

The robot looks tiny. It's 29.6" x 25" so it's smaller than max dimension by a lot and that's part of our strategy be small and agile. But when we see it in person it seems even smaller than we knew it was in CAD.

Now the real race starts to assemble all the parts, get our belly pans, router and the robots assembled and running by the end of the weekend.

- Spectrum
"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory." - Herbert Kaufman

February 8, 2018

Day 33: Demos and Award Submissions

We had a demo at Neff Elementary Science Night tonight. It's always fun inspire younger students to get excited about STEM.

We got our Chairman's Award submission in tonight. Now our attention turns to our presentation and deliverables.

The robot progress was limited, mostly CAD. We did get some test fits finished for  slot and tab lexan construction. This will be used on our intake and hooks, we were inspired by 148's 2017 Gear intake.

- Spectrum

February 10, 2018

Day 34 & 35: Puncher Test

We were able to bench test our puncher concept today. 

This is uses fast McMaster solenoids, two 8" stroke 1.0625" bore cylinders, and an air tank before each solenoid. It shot the cube about 6ft above it's starting height. 

Note this setup doesn't currently have a way to retract the cylinders as nothing is plumbed to the retract ports which helps make the cylinders extend faster.

- Spectrum

"Imagination is the air of mind." - Philip James Bailey

February 11, 2018

Day 36: Drive Train, Belly Pan, Hook Test

The practice bot drive train has begun assembly over the past few days. There were a few minor tweaks to it as it went together to get everything spinning nicely but it is nice and smooth now and the competition robot drive train should go together quickly once it is done being powder coated.

The belly pan will go on tomorrow and we can wire up most of the robot. 

Belly Pan

We have used 1/4" (6mm) Baltic Birch belly pans on all our robots since 2015. They are very rigid and light weight and allow us to easily machine in mounting holes and add other holes when needed. We can lighten them if we need to later with just a hole saw and painting them is easy. This year's was a little tricky as they are 23.25" wide and our router is only 24" so it just barely fit.

Hook Test

We tested a new version of the hook that held 300 lbs without breaking.

- Spectrum

"Practice is not the answer here. Practice, the 10,000 hours thing, practice alone doesn't produce work that matters. No, that only comes from caring. From caring enough to leap, to bleed for the art, to go out on the ledge, where it's dangerous. When we care enough, we raise the bar, not just for ourselves, but for our customer, our audience and our partners." - Seth Godin

February 11, 2018

Day 37: Springs on the Intake, Wiring Practice bot, Dog in the Lab

Springs on the Intake

If people are looking for a cheap way to do a compliant intake without pneumatics or as a back up (which is what we are doing so in case we vent during a match we can still intake), adding some torsion springs is pretty easy. These fit right around 1/2" hex shaft and are almost exactly .5" tall so they just replace a spacer. Add some bolts to either side and you're done.
https://www.mcmaster.com/#9271K622
https://www.mcmaster.com/#9271k687/=1bj02fu
We found that two spring on each side of our intake worked well enough but the pneumatics definitely are better for adjusting the compression to get it just right. Having them work together means we will still be able to score cubes even if we accidentally vent during a match (or start a match without air, etc). We will also be able to use less air to squeeze the cubes then if we only used air. They will be mounted much cleaner on the real robot, this was just for the quick tests to prove the concept and figure out how much force we needed. We tried a few different bolt placements since that changes the lever arms on the springs and the intake arms.

Lab Dog

We heard all the good teams have lab dogs so we had Cream visit the lab today. We even got one in our color scheme so we didn't have to talk about how to make it white.

Practice Bot Wiring and Assembly

The production on the practice bot continued. We found more little things to tweak to make working on the robot that much better in the future (you know like not having rip out large structural members just to change some wires, things like that).

We added some nice wheel guards so our internal wheels don't start grabbing stray wires. These are made out of 0.020" polycarbonate (0..015 seemed a little thin, and 0.030 seemed like overkill).

- Spectrum
"If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative."

February 13, 2018

Day 38 & 39: More Parts

Power Switch and connector mounting

We worked on our power switch and battery connector mount the past two days, going through about 4 versions before finally getting a good solid setup.
Version 1 and 2 didn't include the connector mount. This is version 3.

Version 3 didn't actually reach the battery connector so we had to add some parallelogram and make version 4. 

(The breaker is on the wrong side of the polycarb in this photo, it will be turned around and cover will be on it for the real robot.)

The real robot will get at least version 5 that has a few more holes.

Sheet metal Delivery #2

More sheet metal arrived this afternoon, we are able to get more items powder coated as well in our shop. 

Routed Parts

We do make a lot of parts in house in addition to our sheet metal parts. Here is some video of our router doing a couple of the arm gearbox plates from last night. 

Gearbox covers

We also made some simple gearbox covers out of 0.02" polycarb.

- Spectrum

"People say, “Why don’t you give it up?” I can’t retire until I croak. I don’t think they quite understand what I get out of this. I’m not doing it just for the money or for you. I’m doing it for me." -- Keith Richards

February 17, 2018

Day 40, 41, & 42: Starting to sprint

We have been putting together the competition bot and powder coating parts. We also got the practice arm assembled and should have to mounted to the practice bot quickly tomorrow.

 Arm

 Practice Robot

Details

(Arm Gearbox)

Comp Bot

\

- Spectrum

"If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it."  - Anthony J. D'Angelo

March 7, 2018

Pre Lone Star Central Update

Quick update, the robot design has stayed the same we have just been finding things to fix and getting subsystems tweaked and ready.

Lone Star Central

We compete next weekend (March 15-17) at the Lone Star Central Regional. It's nice that's its only a few hundred yards from our lab. Infrared will be ready for the big weekend and we are happy to be able to welcome so many of our friends to our campus for the competition. 

Tailgate

The tailgate is out for now, probably won't be made until after championship. It will be fun lifting partners in the off-season but for now we are going to focus on climbing around our partners.

Visit to 118

We got to take the practice bot to 118's shop the weekend after bag day. It was our first time driving it around the full field. It showed some promise, but it definitely need a lot of tweaks before it could reach it's potential. 

Full Photo Gallery Here

Dallas Regional

We split up this weekend with some of our team heading up to the Dallas regional to learn how the game is played and the other half staying at our school to run our Spring Fling Maker Faire and demo our robot.

The Dallas regional is awesome we got to see a lot of friends including 118, 148, 1296, 2848, and 3005 who we won't get to play with this year until South Champs. Congrats to all those teams for awesome performances this weekend. 

We took almost 1500 photos at the event so if you're team was their or you just want to look at cool robots have a look through the gallery. 

Spring Fling Maker Faire

This was our 2nd Annual Maker Faire at our school's Spring Fling Scholarship Faire. We had fun demoing the robot, making art robots, and we also had a police robot to come demonstrate as well.

Robot Demo

Art Robots

Puncher

The puncher tests have been going well. We should be able to shoot most of the first layer of cubes and it will also help speed up autonomous cube scoring. 

Notes from Allen

Take aways from watching Week 1

1. This game is about scoring cubes fast, it seems obvious but it's now backed up by match play.
2. #NoParking, it's 5 points don't park for 30 secs when you could put more cubes in the vault or take the switch or scale for 5+ secs. Also don't park/climb all three when you have levitate, it makes you look foolish.
3. Partner climbs seed you high they don't win you the event. It's only 30 points (compared to a solo climb) if it takes 30+ secs for 2 plus robots to do it, are their better ways to get those 30 pts during playoffs? If there isn't have you already won the match and now are you risking breaking something by dropping a robot? If we see partner climbs get way faster, this is a completely different story.
4. Auto is king, again obvious but now backed up with actual match play.
5. Defense will get interesting but like most years, very few teams will play it well and Einstein will still be won by the best offensive robots but smart defense can turn matches. Stopping a team from scoring a cube is almost as effective as placing another cube that keeps the scale/switch on your side for that same amount of time. Possibly more so if your scale plate is full.
6. Some penalties just don't matter, assume you are going to get some penalties every match. Pushing multiple cubes into the exchange, a five point penalty that immediately gets you more than that back. Also few matches are won or loss by 5 points. It seems impossible to know what is actually being called for a large percentage of penalties and they aren't being called consistently (yet, hopefully)
7. 7. All omni drive train seemed to work pretty well.

On that note, Robots I liked this week. (Didn't watch a lot of video since i went up to watch Dallas)1. 7179 was an absolute blast to watch, very sad they won't be at champs. If anyone isn't happy with their robot and wants to rebuild I think this is the model. The thing weighed less than 60lbs, you could probably strip the COTS and carry the whole thing in as withholding. If every 3rd was like this robot, this game would be crazy. They scored 16+ cubes in at least one match. That number is breaking scouting sheets.2. 3538 Robojackets (played at Southfield district) built an awesome robot, we had sketched the side lift, with 180 degree wrist, early in the season and just didn't think we could build it. I'm very glad someone did and got it working well.

- Spectrum

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress." - Barack Obama

March 25, 2018

Practicing and FIRST $10,000

We have been getting in a lot of practice with the practice robot. The arm is faster now and we are getting better at controlling everything and stacking.

Practicing our Switch Game

Getting Better at Stacking

New Organizers from Amazon

AmazonBasics Tool Organizer - 10 Compartments

AmazonBasics Tool Organizer - 25 Compartments

We are very excited that Amazon now has these, so that we can stop buying green and yellow organizers. These seem to solve multiple of our problems with some of the other cases, and don't appear to come with any annoying stickers on the clear covers. We will be buying many of these throughout the year. 

FIRST $10,000

We have began working on improving our FIRST $1000 document by adding on a FIRST $10,000 which is the idea of what tools would we buy if we were starting a new team and had $10,000 to spend on equipment.

Spectrum FIRST $10,000

Hopefully this will help some teams find tools and equipment to get them started. This is still a living document so it may be updated regularly. 

- Spectrum

"Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest." - Chanakya

April 9, 2018

Alamo Regional Champions

Gold medal awarded to Spectrum 3847, the St. Agnes and Strake Jesuit engineering team, at FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Alamo Regional Competition in San Antonio. Team advances to Championships.

Houston, TX, April 9, 2018 - - Spectrum 3847, the St. Agnes and Strake Jesuit engineering team, FIRST Robotics Team Spectrum 3847 won the Alamo Regional Competition held in San Antonio. The team is now heading to the World Championships for the fifth year.
Spectrum 3847 competed against 51 other teams from across Texas and some from Oklahoma and as far as away Beijing, China. The competition was fierce and intense, but the students did an amazing job. Of the 52 teams competing, Spectrum 3847 was ranked 1 with a record of 15-2-0.
As the #1 Alliance Captain, Spectrum chose San Antonio’s Team 3481 - Bronc Botz and Team 5726 - RHUMBOTZ. The alliance remained undefeated through the quarterfinals and semifinals. They went on to win two of three matches in the finals, crowning them Winners of the 2018 Alamo Regional competition. The regional win is the first for Spectrum. Also, Spectrum was awarded the Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors. The award celebrates form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively addressed the game challenge.
“I am so proud of our team for winning the FIRST Alamo Regional Competition. They worked so hard on our robot Infrared 2018. We look forward to the global competition at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston from April 18 to 21, 2018. It’s free admission. Over 30,000 people from around the globe will travel to Houston for the world's largest robotics competition, celebrating STEM and innovation.” said Spectrum 3847 Coach/Mentor Allen Gregory IV.

 

Upcoming Competitions

• FIRST World Championships is April 18 to 21 , 2018 at the George R. Brown Convention, Houston, TX.
• Texas Robotics Invitational - Jun 28 - Jun 30, 2018 Spectrum 3847 will be hosting the off season tournament.

About Spectrum #3847
Spectrum is a FIRST Robotics Team #3847 from Houston, Texas. The team is made up of high school students from St. Agnes Academy and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory two Catholic college preparatory schools in southwest Houston, Texas. St. Agnes is all-girls, and Strake Jesuit is all-boys. www.st-agnes.org and www.strakejesuit.org. They work together to spread engineering to others, build robots, and have fun. The team is recognized for their hard work, community outreach, teamwork, and promoting Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) through robotics workshops, service, & mentoring in Texas and China and their use of social media: Instagram, Blog, Tumblr, Flickr, You Tube, Twitter & Facebook. http://www.spectrum3847.org

FIRST ROBOTICS The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting Mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. FRC is a six-week competition program for high-school students to build 120 pound (54 kg) robots with help from their mentors, both teachers and engineers from a variety of companies. The students learned about engineering, programming, marketing, media, teamwork, cooperation, and much more. Each team is organized like a small business with many different tasks for students to do in addition to robot construction. Teams have only been working on their robots since January 6, 2018 when the game was revealed to all the teams.

It’s a gold medal! Congratulations to Spectrum 3847, St. Agnes Academy and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory high school students, for winning the Alamo Regional Competition. They are advancing to the Championships at the George R. Brown Convention Center, April 18 to 21, 2018.

Spectrum 3847’s “Infrared” robot for the 2018 FIRST Robotics Competition

FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION 2018 ALAMO REGIONAL WINNERS - Spectrum 3847, Bronc Botz 3481 and RHUMBOTZ 5726

June 16, 2018

Projector Speaker Stand Mounts

As we prepare for our off-season event we are updating part of our AV system. One of the things we really like is being able to easily mount our projectors on to speaker stands so that we can adjust their height and angle quickly. We make custom mounting solutions to be able to do this.
We start by CADing the whole pattern for the mounting screws on the bottom of each projector.

This mounting pattern also includes holes to mount it to a TV Wall Mount. We route the pattern into a piece of 1/2" plywood using our CNC router. We use the TV wall mount to give us some angle adjustment on the projector.
TV Mount
Here is the TV Wall mount that we use.

Peerless ST630P Tilt Wall Mount for 10 to 29 inches Displays

https://amzn.to/2JTAisW

It has worked well for us for the past 3 season of events.

We secure the small mounting plate of the mount to the wooden plate. The large portion of the mount is bolted to a speaker stand mount. 

Speaker Stand Mount

Here are the ones we use.

Neewer NW-001 Exterior Speaker Mounting Bracket 

https://amzn.to/2JHyg34

This lets us quickly put our projectors on to speakers stands and adjust their height and angle. With some lens shift and keystone adjustment we are always able to be get a good angle to the screen using this setup.

Here are the 3 projectors that we own.

• EPSON PowerLite Pro G6070W - Main event projector
• JVC Professional Series LX-WX50 - backup projector and live stream projector
• Epson EX7240 Pro WXGA - portable projector for events, scouting meetings, and rankings display.

We mount them on large speaker stands so that they have a stable base and get extra height if needed.

On Stage LS/SS7770 Universal Lighting/Speaker Stand

https://amzn.to/2LWsNC1

Here is the projector mounted for the 2017 NTX Off-season

Here is a picture of the complete setup in action at the 2017 Remix event.

- Spectrum
"Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity." - Arnold Bennett

July 11, 2018

Spectrum - This Fri and Sat - FRC All-Star Game

Indiana Robotics Invitational July 13-14

Watch the action live: www.twitch.tv/FIRSTinspires

Event Results and Matches: The Blue Alliance

Spectrum is heading up to Indianapolis for the 2018 Indiana Robotics Invitational, 70 of the best teams from around North America will be attending. This Spectrum's 3rd appearance at IRI and we are excited to see and compete with so many great teams.
The action will start at 9am Friday and Saturday and wrap around 5pm both days. 
Follow along on social media (links below) for updates, photos and videos from the event. 

Follow us on social media

Website = www.spectrum3847.org
Blog = Blog.spectrum3847.org
Photos = photos.spectrum3847.org
Twitter = twitter.com/spectrum3847
Facebook = facebook.com/spectrum3847
Instagram = instagram.com/spectrum3847
Youtube = youtube.com/spectrum3847

Service/Outreach Opportunities

Getting students excited about Robotics is one of the most important things we do! 
Summer is the perfect opportunity for new students to join the team. If you know someone who might enjoy being on the team, have them come help out to TRI and our outreach activities. Great time to learn!

Sign up for the Summer Events Here a great way to get service hours for NHS, etc: https://goo.gl/bmtLFJ

• Solarcraft Tour and Demonstration: June 19th Sign Up
• Collaborative Partnership between Microsoft & Spectrum 3847 -  Throughout the summer. The Championship judges recognized our work with Microsoft. This year, the students will help teach programming with an Ohbot, a programmable robotic head,  that encourages children to experiment with making, computer programming and interacting with their environment through technology. 
  • Microsoft Sign Up: https://goo.gl/forms/WyAOVgOvENZt9EHA2

• SPECTaculaR - First two weeks of August (tent) Two week free summer camp benefiting the Boys & Girls Club. Since 2012 our students have designed and implemented a curriculum for SPECTaculaR, a summer robotics program at the Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club that teaches engineering principles to children in the third to eighth grades.

2018 Season Highlights

Summer Tournaments:

• Indiana Robotics Invitational - IRI. The 2017 Indiana Robotics Invitational is Friday and Saturday, July 14 – 15. Leaving Jul 11 (wed) returning Jul 15 (Sun). Trip will be $350 please pay as soon as you can. It's possible that it ends up being $400 if we don't fill out the bus with enough people.

Need for Summer Socials:

If you would like to host a bbq/pool party, please let us know. We have done these every summer but we need a host for this year. We could also have a parent plan some type of activity like bowling/paintball/ice skating, etc.

Thank you!
If you have any questions, please contact us.
Sincerely,
Allen Gregory IV
Spectrum 3847 Engineering Coach/Mentor
Jacob Walker
Spectrum 3847 Mentor
Suanne Bouvier
Spectrum 3847 Marketing Mentor

July 24, 2018

Scouting Tablets and Storage

Amazon Fire HD 8

Spectrum is moving to a digital scouting system next year. We purchased 9 Amazon Fire HD 8 tablets on Prime Day for around $420 total.
We worked on a quick system to get all the software installed on the tablets and configured and a storage solution for them as well.

Install Script for APKs

We wrote a quick batch script to install all the APKs located in a folder using ADB (Android Device Bridge).
Here is the link to our folder of APKs, the necessary ADB files, and our script.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MxfJFbN3rsMKVT2xSXu0Qg_1lGFUl3F6
You can download any other APK and have it install on your device as well. For us we installed the Google Play store and necessary dependencies, several FRC scouting apps, Google Drive, Excel, etc. We also installed launcherhijacker and Nova launcher to make them feel more like stock android tablets. You will need to make sure you enable USB debugging in the developer options of your table. 

Building the Dividers with the new laser cutter

You can download the CAD model for this assembly here.
Grabcad link
We laser cut the wood on our new ThunderLaser laser cutter and assembled it. The parts fit nicely together and we didn't even need wood glue since it won't be under much load.
We spray painted it black and we also laser cut some carpet/felt to line the dividers to protect the screens.

We used spray adhesive to keep the fabric on to the sides of the dividers.
The dividers all fit inside a 15 Qrt Sterlite bin

Charging

We are going to add a 10 port USB charger that uses an external 12V power adapter so that we can charge the tablets using that power supply or by making a cable to connect it to a FRC battery while we are in the stands at competition.

The charger we are going to test first is this one.

August 10, 2018

What we bought - July 2018

We often get asked what we purchase to prepare for the season, etc. So we thought we would run down some of our July 2018 purchases.

WEN 3410 3-Speed Remote-Controlled Air Filtration System
This was added to go along with our laser cutter to cut down on some of the smells from cutter plastic and wood on the laser cutter. It should also help with some of the 3D printer fumes and the general dust that is generated in the lab.

IWISS Crimping Tools for Dupont

We needed a new crimping tool for crimping PWM connectors and the latching PWM connectors that we use for our CAN cables. This seemed to get very good reviews and was reasonably priced.  Countersink Drill Bit Set 6 Pcs 1/4'' Hex Shank

We need some extra countersinks and this set seemed go enough for what need it for. A few different sizes and enough that we can some lend them out or lose some and not worry about it.
Mophorn 1800W Electric Brushless DC Motor Kit 48V

This one isn't FRC related at all. The plan for this is to start testing it for using it for the Power Wheel Racing Series. The idea is to build a couple small Go-Karts as a fall project to prepare the team for building FRC robots. We can use a lot of the same build techniques that we need for FRC in a fun way.
OTG Safety Glasses and Cleaning Wipes
Just some restock for the coming the year.

Fire HD 8 TabletWe already mentioned these in a previous post but we bought Fire HD 8s to use for scouting next season.
We also purchased a USB Charger Station for that them as well.

Aibecy Intelligent Biometric Fingerprint Password Attendance Machine

Simple way to keep track of team hours. It has a learning curve but we were able to get all the names loaded in and then start loading finger prints. We also made a quick google sheet to take the text file we can download off the machine and view everyone's hours. You do have to pull the data off with a thumb drive every time.

TinaWood SSR-40DA 40A Solid State Relay DC to AC 40A

This is for a project that will likely get it's own blog post. We converted the heated bed on our Airwolf 3D printer to us an AC Heater. That lets us dramatically reduce the time it needs to heat up letting us print parts faster.

A couple other items from that project  - 5 PCS SF214E SEFUSE Thermal Cutoffs

- 10 Amp Glass Fast Blow fuses 5 X 20MM

We want to be able to have better photos and also back grounds for when we do event casts. So we purchased.
- LimoStudio 10Ft Adjustable Backdrop Support System Stand
- Green Screen
- White Screen
- Black Screen

Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1050 Ti OC Low Profile
The computer we use for streaming events and sometimes for CAD work needed a new graphics card. It's in a low profile rack mount case so we went with a Geforce 1050 TI low profile. It's enough power for what we need at a reasonable price, we got it as an Amazon Warehouse deal which are normally just damaged packaging or returned items but usually work well. 
Aurum Ultra Series - High Speed HDMI Cable (50 Ft)

At some point this year we lost our other two 50ft HDMI cables so we needed to get replacements at around $20 each these seemed like a good price for a well reviewed cable. DJI osmo mobile 2 Handheld Smartphone Gimbal

We have had some issues with shaky video footage in the past and wanted to help solve that. The DJI gimbal is pretty cheap and with the quality of smart phone video now its easy enough to use one instead of a DSLR on a stabilizer or a much more expensive gimbal.  CORSAIR VOID PRO RGB USB Gaming Headset

These will be used when we have commentators on live streams or when doing any other skype calls or shows. Also used for recording voice overs.

- Spectrum

November 25, 2018

FIRST Choice and KOP Vouchers

The Kit of Parts (Collection of Parts?) includes a lot more than just the totes each team receives on Kickoff.
The FIRST Choice system and KOP vouchers allow teams to have the flexibility to choose what they get from a wide selection of options. This can often be very daunting for new teams.
We've put together a list of items for FIRST Choice and your vouchers that we recommend teams selecting. You don't have follow are recommendations but it should give you a starting point if you are struggling to figure everything out.
We want to thank Andrew Hartnett and Pearadox FRC#5414 for putting together the full spreadsheet of FIRST Choice items and figuring out a lot of the items value.
The full document can be viewed here and it will be updated as the season goes on. We have also embedded it below.

December 7, 2018

Protopipe: Rapid Prototyping System

We have been working on creating a system to allow us to quickly and easily design mechanisms that let us solve the problems given to us in the FIRST Robotics Competition. This past season our prototypes worked well but they took a long time to modify and adjust and that led to our design process taking more time than we would want.
We listed some goals for the system.

Goals

• Rapid iteration
• Easy to remove and add parts
• Easy to reuse parts in the next prototype if needed
• Inexpensive
• Try to avoid using expensive parts such as bearings, etc.
• Use a cheap base material that is locally available
• Easy adjustment
• Clamp systems for small adjustments of spacing and belt and chain tensioning
• As few unique parts as possible in the generic system
• Easy to make custom parts for each unique application if needed.
• Able to quickly make rotating parts such as intakes, ball paths, etc.
• Powered by a hand drill or by a Versaplanetary (or 57 Sport if you like)
• Able to quickly attach to pneumatic cylinders for making wrists, small arms, catapults, etc.
• Able to make a rough linear slide system for prototyping stackers / elevators (2015)
  

Basic System Explanation

We decided on using 1/2" PVC pipe and 3D printed connectors. 1/2" PVC is widely available at most home improvement stores for very little cost (a few dollars for 10 ft lengths). 3D printers are becoming very common among FRC teams and the filament is getting much cheaper as well ( <$20 / kilogram). So these parts seem like they would work well. 

The connectors allow you to connect the pipe to flat parts as well as hold 1.125" bearings for making systems with hex shafts, etc. To connect the pipes to the connectors you can either use short self-drilling screws or hose clamps to clamp them on. The clamps allow you to easily adjust certain parts to move items and figure out the best measurements for your system.
The full system is described in the google doc explanation here.

Link: Full System Explanation, Examples, and Notes

CAD Files

We have uploaded all of the Solidworks part files, STLs, and STEP files for the different parts as well as a few STEP files of the example prototype/bench tests that we have designed. 

Link: CAD Files

Examples of the System

December 10, 2018

FRC Powder Coating Guide

We have released a Powder Coating Guide for FRC teams. It shows you how we powder coat our parts in our lab and all the equipment you need to do the same.
Download it from Chiefdelphi here.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/paper-frc-powder-coating-guide-spectrum-3847/182157

December 18, 2018

Guide to the FRC MCC

We have been asked multiple times to put together a list of items teams should have on hand to build their robot. That is a hard question to answer because there are so many different goals and build methods for FRC teams and robots.
We decided to approach this problem by thinking about an average team trying to build a competitive robot with a limited budget a few tools (possibly the list of tools from 1000.Spectrum3847.org). From there the goal is to figure out what that robot would look like and what items do teams building it need.
We decided that the concept of the Minimum Competitive Concept (MCC) perfectly fit the goals of the team we were imagining. MCC is a concept first put forward by Isaac Rife, IKE on CD in 2012. Isaac describes the challenge of the MCC as such "It is often easy to identify all the possible tasks you could have a robot do. Prioritizing those tasks, and realizing it in the form of a competitive robot is in my opinion much more impressive. Assumptions are that one of the primary goals of the MCC is to play in elims (not necessarily win on Einstein), and you team has mid-pack to lower fabrication resources."

We identified examples of MCC robots from the past and found qualifies that they all shared. We then looked through the wide array of possible build items and techniques to find the most useful for teams on a limited budget and with limited fabrication resources.

Our complete guide can be found on CD or at 

MCC.Spectrum3847.org

Please let us know what you think.

- Spectrum

December 22, 2018

What we bought - Fall 2018

A lot of teams ask us where we buy stuff, so occasionally we'll just post about the things we bought and where to get it. 

Amazon

• Snap Ring Groove Cutters .043" - These are for cutting heavy duty snap rings on 1/2" shafts or regular snap rings on 3/4" shafts
• 4 AWG Wire - New Battery wire, flexible 4 AWG.
• White and Black 12AWG Silicone Wire -  Similar to what comes pre-installed on Talon SRX speed controllers. This is our go to wire for motors.
• Allen Wrench Folding Set - Very useful during the season and reasonably priced.
• Gallon of cutting fluid - Used in our horizontal bandsaw we also have some squirt bottles with a very diluted mixture in them for other cutting and drilling tasks. The gallon container will last you multiple seasons.
• Bob Smith 103 Super Glue - This is really good super glue
• Cheap Needle File Set - great for fixing up 3d printed parts, or getting into hard to reach places
• Double Stick Polyimide Tape - Used for sticking 3d printed build plates your heated bed
• Nice 3D print removal tools - We have a couple $1 store paint scrapers that work okay but these are better but cost more.

McMaster.com

• 1/2" Snap Rings
• 9/16" Snap Rings - Useful for going on hex shaft without first turning it down to 1/2"
• Tubing Connector for 7/8" tube - 7/8" aluminum tube is a similar OD to 1/2" PVC so we can use it for stronger Protopipe mechanisms.
• 5/16" O-Ring - These can go over 1/2" thunderhex shaft and work similar to VEX IQ rubber shaft collars. This is useful for quick prototypes or places where you might need to adjust often or you just don't have shaft collars. 
• 1/2" OD - 1/4" ID Aluminum Hex Tube - This is 6061 hex shaft that for us at least came in slightly undersized so it fits in bearings and hubs easily. It also comes with a 1/4" hex hole so you can you it as a spacer for 1/4" bolts or an adapter down to 1/4" hex if you need to make a small mechanism. The 3/4" to 1/2" is also useful if you need a bigger hex profile.
• High Flow Solenoids 1.0 CV - These are the high flow solenoids that we used on our 2018 cube launcher mechanism

Zoro.com 

• Tstack Big Drawer - Stackable tool boxes that we use at events
• Tstack Double Drawer
• Tstack Large Top Box
• PETG Sheets 2'x2'  - 1'x2' - PETG is a great plastic for the laser cutter, it's 70-75% the strength of Polycarbonate but a lot cheaper and works with the laser cutter much better.
• Acetal Sheet 1'x2' - Acetal (or Delrin) is an engineering grade plastic that cuts very cleanly on a laser cutter.
  

This is just a sample of the items we purchase, hopefully this will give you an idea of some of the things you can buy to help your FRC team.

- Spectrum

December 28, 2018

90 degree adapter prototype

We purchased a Milescraft 1303 Drive90PLUS right angle drill adapter from Amazon to see if it would work as a 90-degree adapter for FRC applications.
This FRC#33 instructable inspired us to look at other adapters.
The Milescraft adapter is slightly more compact than the DeWalt, and it uses bearings instead of bushings.
We unscrewed the main handle form the miter gearbox and pulled the snap rings to get to the internals of the mechanism. They appear to be sintered gears which are weak under impact, but for many FRC applications, this should be acceptable. There aren’t any thrust bearings in this device so you shouldn’t be pushing against either in the input or output features either.

 This is the main assembly with the bearings held in with internal snap things.

Here is one of the gears and bearing pulled from the housing.  

Here is a picture of both of the gears and one of the bearings.

Here we drilled a hole in through the input side of the housing to allow for perpendicular outputs. 

Here is the final output with a 1/4" hex shaft going all the way through the input.

Also in this photo is a 1/2" hex tube with 1/4" hex internal bore from McMaster.

You would likely need to 1/4" hex broach the output of a gearbox for this to work in many applications but some application may only need hex to hex on both ends, and the McMaster tube can be used in those applications. 
We haven't used this on a robot yet, but it's a useful tool to have in your design toolbox.
- Spectrum