After a bit of a break since the main competition season, we're at #WPI this weekend for an off-season #FIRSTRobotics competition. A good excuse for the students to visit the campus as well. GO OVERDRIVE #8410!

#FRC #FRCRobotics #STEM

After a bit of a break since the main competition season, we're at #WPI this weekend for an off-season #FIRSTRobotics competition. A good excuse for the students to visit the campus as well. GO OVERDRIVE #8410!

#FRC #FRCRobotics #STEM

What a wild ride. From last year (first year) of being lucky if our robot stayed together, and even our most recent competition 2 weeks ago where we ranked 9th from the bottom to finish our first day of this weekend's competition in 6 place!

#FRCRobotics #robots #NH #UNH

Being able to sleep in your own bed for a robotics competition weekend is severely underrated.

Getting to that bed before midnight remains a challenge.

#FRCRobotics #UNH #8410

Some last minute tweaks to the autonomous code before loading up tomorrow for the competition. Looks like we'll have an extra 4 points over our last competition's routine and a _much_ more reliable gripper. Very glad we were able to get the LEDs running on the robot as well. Competition at #UNH Whittemore Center with 40 other teams all this weekend. Free admission. Stop in anytime and say hi.

#FRCRobotics #Robot #NH

https://photos.app.goo.gl/r9UnL3YBaQbrGkW48

The competition this past weekend was intense and energizing. Day 2 led the team to adapting their strategy to essentially ignore the whole arm assembly since we couldn't get it working reliably and focus on our strengths of autonomous balancing and a combination of scoring by pushing and some defense.

Made it into the finals as a first pick in the second round of alliance selection (an improvement over last year) and getting one win in.
https://youtu.be/PKb_NcOLjOc

#FRCRobotics #Robot

Best part of robotics: scaring small children.

(Okay, not even close to the best, but it funny when there's a glowing head rolling towards you in a dark hallway)

#frc #frcrobotics

Day 1 in the books and I'm spent. The team just couldn't catch a break. Morale sunk pretty low. Learning some tough lessons on adjusting plans and expectations when you find yourself in a place you didn't plan on.

#FRCRobotics #Robot #EngineeringChallenges

In the final hours of practice/tweaks before everything gets packed up tomorrow and shipped to Rhode Island for our competition this weekend.

#FRCRobotics #FIRST #robot

It's all coming together! Competition in just a few more days. Still some work to do like mounting and wiring the gripper, but a lot of satisfied faces today seeing it drive for the first time and successfully (and easily) mount and balance on the charge station on the first attempt.

#FRCRobotics #8410 #STEM

One of the best part of robotics competitions is the badges. Almost every team has badges they put out, and it's fun to collect. Some people (me included) put ALL of them on, and everyone can hear us coming. I also enjoy collecting the pronoun pins to stash away, and one day I'll be able to wear them.
Overall, it's a fantastic experience, even if we are dead tired by the first day. Hope everyone has a great Week 1, share how your team is doing if you want!

#frc #frcrobotics #robotics #robot #FIRST #competition

So our original schedule of getting the #robot to software for a week before the competition got cut down to 2 days, and now we're supposed to get a foot of snow for one of them.

They said that #FRCRobotics would be tough, but come on already!

Now that stressful part of the project where it's inevitably proposed "hey, if we work 34 hour days, we can probably still get it all done".

#FRCRobotics #SleepIsNotOptional

Fun coding project for the day.

The strategy team found https://www.statbotics.io/ which calculates an "EPA" expected points added for teams in matches. I was able to add it to our team HUD discord bot to help provide strength and weakness data for alliance partners or opponents during competitions.

#FRCRobotics

Making a robot turn efficiently (i.e. rotating from 10 deg to 350 deg by turning back 20 degrees instead of turning 340 degrees)

TIL:
error = (heading - target + 540) % 360 - 180

#FRCRobotics #AlwaysLearning

Robotics drama was something I thought was an oxymoron. No, I'm learning that is isn't common, but when it does happen it becomes a shitshow.

#FRC #frcrobotics #robotics #FIRST

A disappointing day for my (non-existent) hope of goodwill in my robotics mentors.
Our team had planned on doing FIRST Impact, and our mentors submitted it late *after* telling us they would handle it, it would be fine, blah blah blah. The mentors then tell the business channel in Slack that there were technical difficulties but it was "now in the hands of FIRST." Which one would assume means it was submitted and it was all good.
Nope.
It wasn't submitted on time, the mentors knew they wouldn't get extra time, told the channel otherwise, and only told a few people in a private DM. One kid had raised concerns about it not being turned in on time, EST vs PST, and the lack of communication.
He hadn't shown up for a few days, I thought he was sick. No. He was fired. For questioning the mentors and "being out of line." Regardless of if someone was out of line or not, kicking someone from the team should only happen if they did something egregiously bad, not questioning a mentor.
I really enjoy robotics, but it's frustrating. When stuff like this happens, when a mentor expresses his disdain that *I* of all people am probably going to be a lead next year, and all the little things, it somethings makes leaving the team seem like a good idea. I'd love to hope that people can be trusted-ish, and then they make sure I know how mistaken I was. Sure, I'll deal with this plenty when I have a job, but for now we're highschoolers, and we just want to build a robot, not deal with all the BS that people seem to love.

tl;dr
Don't blatantly lie to people, and COMMUNICATE with others. It seems that's the story of my life given how many times I have to say it.

#FRC #frcrobotics #FIRST #robotics #students #communication #lies

This last month was a doosie. Layoff notice, multi day power outage, multi day heating outage (yes those were 2 separate events), caught COVID round 2.

Got a little normalcy back today. 6 hour build session for #frcrobotics team #8410. Fabrication is almost done. Electrical and software teams are chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. In the meantime some other well established teams are already in week 0 competitions today.

Here's the team's most recent update.
https://youtu.be/8nmY1t9oM4M

Another couple hours of #frcrobotics tonight. The team is really hitting its groove. Lot's of collaboration between subteams, great energy and encouragement, everyone pitching in where they can.

Came home after and needed to run on the dreadmill to ensure I'd be able to settle down for bed. Back at it again on Wednesday.

Escaped the no heat home for a few hours for an evening #frcrobotics session. Really impressed with the software team's progress. I was freed up enough to float between the teams to help out with wiring, game strategy, gripper design, and a few other odds and ends.

The business team finished up their first build season video. Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv3HydwHx5E