Wednesday, April 1st

What an emotional rollercoaster of an event. At first it was going kinda poorly because we lost a lot of matches, then we were first pick of the 8th alliance, then we lost both elimination matches. We didn’t have enough district points to qualify for districts. Then, we won the Impact award and we’re going to Cheney!!

I am so excited to go to Cheney again, especially after last year. Our lead mentor says that while we’re there we will have a celebration thing like we did in 2023, with cake and stuff :D

While I hope we make it to worlds, I doubt it will happen and I will be completely satisfied with making it no further than Districts (but that doesn’t mean I won’t try). Before districts, we are going to make some more autos (ones that start from the center, mainly) as well as do lots of drive practice with passing. The drivers seem to all agree that if we get very good at passing we could be a good second pick.

This isn’t an April Fool’s thing btw, this is all real (I wrote most of it yesterday)

Meetings until DCMP: 6

Relevant Links:

Clackamas 2026 TBA Link

Monday, March 9 (4:00 PM - 8:00 PM)

This Friday and Saturday was the Oregon State Fairgrounds competition. A few people on the team have seemed very pessimistic about the outcome, but I am hopeful.

The data: After qualification matches ended, we were ranked 9th. During alliance selection, there was a lot more picking between captains, so we ended up being captains of the 6th alliance, picking 4125 Confidential and 2926 Robo Sparks. We ended up being eliminated in the playoffs, but we won our second match. According to Statbotics, we had a total EPA of 77.4. During Qualification matches, we played against 5468 Chaos Theory 3 times in a row, which led to us missing out on a lot of ranking points. We won the Creativity Award (mainly due to not having a hopper-based design) which gave us an extra 5 district points, so we now have 32.

My take: Going into this season, I knew there was a very low chance of going to world championships. In the years that we did, we had had a lot more members and (more specifically) lots of very-experienced seniors in charge of everything. I initially thought that this year would be similar to 2023, but now I am seeing how similar it is (so far) to 2022. In 2022, we had nearly the exact same performance in our first competition as this year, but in 2022 we did slightly better in playoffs in terms of district points and didn’t get any awards. I think 2026 will go very similarly overall. In 2022, we were using tank drive which was our main disadvantage. We completely redesigned our shooter before our second competition in order to shoot from further away, and at that competition we got the GP award. This year, we are planning to add an adjustable hood (maybe?) to our shooter before Clackamas, our second competition. In 2022, we made it to district champs, but got no further since we weren’t picked during alliance selection. I predict that the same thing will happen this year, and I don’t really see us going to worlds. Of course, I will try my best to! but I don’t think it’s the most realistic thing, and I think it will be better to focus our energy on improvements for Clackamas and district championships.

Adding to things about 2022, that year was very important to SERT. Since it was immediately after Covid, we didn’t have many members and a lot of learning had to be done. In that year we prepared new members a lot, which is what made us so successful in 2023 and 2024. I think that this year is going to be very similar to that, with lots of rebuilding of the team, in order for us to do very well next year. I’ve talked to a few students who seem interested in being co-captains next year and I think next year will go incredibly well, these members are incredibly smart and care so much about the team.

Speaking of improvements, I have a few ideas. CAD designed an adjustable hood for the shooter to make it pass more reliably (and be able to shoot from a further distance), but I don’t know if that’s the best idea. While it would make some things better, it would also (most likely) make the shooter itself less accurate. I think a better idea would be to fix the intake roller so that it doen’t get broken aymore (and more importantly, be more direct to the driver to make that not happen). Also, we are able to pass very well, but for some reason the driver decided that it was too annoying to do because the balls bounce sometimes, which I don’t think is an issue because they stop bouncing by the time that it’s an active period.

Meetings until Clackamas: 17

Team Goals for Next Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Unpack from OSF
• Clean robot of any lemon zest (fuel shavings)

Software:

• Come up with more auto concepts (passing?)

Strategy:

• Consider different scouting solutions (scouter schedule would be amazing but might be too complicated?)

Media:

• Look through the rest of the photos
• Make progress on robot reveal

Relevant Links:

Oregon State Fair TBA Link

Tuesday, February 24 (4:00 PM - 8:00 PM)

I didn’t attend the award meeting, but from what I can tell it went well. The business and media and strategy teams discussed awards and how to achieve them. We decided that making pamphlets for each of the awards to give to the judges is a good idea, so the media team is going to work on that.

The winning robot name is: Wasabi!

I really like this name, I think it was my third pick out of the 19 that made it to the RCV section, but I think it is very good. It fits our robot because our robot has tons of sushi rollers on it.

The scrimmage debrief also went well. We have a lot of things we need to do before then!

Meetings until OSF: 6

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Reassembled intake/wrist

Electrical:

• Reassembled intake/Wrist
• Cleaned

Software:

• Tuned flywheels/shooter

CAD:

• 3D-Printed some parts

Strategy:

• Awards/judging meeting
• Scrimmage debrief meeting

Business:

• Awards/judging meeting

Media:

• Awards/judging meeting

Monday, February 23

Meetings until OSF: 7

I am technically writing this on the 24th, but I want to talk about scrimmage before the debrief meeting. I also don’t have a picture of the Scrum board, so I can’t update it (I believe it’s very out of date anyway lol). While there was a meeting on this day, I took a break.

Scrimmage was fun, generally. I drove the kitbot for a bit, but the flywheel kept jamming with fuel or the flywheel motor would disconnect in many ways. More importantly though, the main robot did well. It could shoot the fuel all at once and pretty accurately (especially with a different way of revving it), but the intake had some problems. While it was very good at intaking, there is a pully that needs to be replaced with a metal one (we went through 4 3d-printed ones because they kept breaking). It was actually too good at intaking, and would fill the indexer too quickly. Software found a solution I think. All of our autos worked perfectly, they were pretty simple but they could score very well!

I got to try being driver (my ideal drive team position) as well as human player (I made 1/24 shots lol, not doing that) and gunner. I really liked driving, and this robot drives very smoothly. The only problem was that the software lead forgot to correct the turning speed back to normal after testing so it turned incredibly slowly, but it was tolerable enough.

At our next meeting, we are going to have a Scrimmage debrief and name-choosing ceremony. We’re going to do Ranked Choice Voting again, but with a period of time beforehand to let people explain what the names mean (which we forgot to do for bunnybots). I will make another log after that at some point. I suggested the names Miku and QB (or Q.B.) (our robot is a cube pretty much). I don’t especially like the name Miku for this robot though, I think that QB and Voxel are very good suggestions. We will see which gets chosen!

Name Suggestions:

Miku, Cerberus, Teto, K.I.T.T., Zenith, Khaos, Louise, Poppy, Firework, QB, Karl, Lester, Hexter, Q*bert, Voxel, Gumi, illi_, XL, Bubbles, Ob2se, Rex, Fajiた (Fajita), Rouboboros, Evil Mariah Carey, Wasabi, 皇帝 (Koutei, Emperor)

Thursday, January 3 (4:00 PM - 7:00 PM)

Today, we had a very long discussion about the architecture and prototypes, which ended with us deciding on this architecture.

It has a wide fixed-hood shooter (which could be modified to be adjustable) and full-width tetra-style indexer, as well as a over-bumper intake. Through our prototyping, these seemed like the most reliable mechanisms. Though some mentors are upset about it, we decided not to do an above-level-1 climb, but this robot is able to have a level-1 only climb.

I voted for the expanding-hopper architecture, but I was really torn between that and this architecture, so I am completely happy with this decision :D

Meetings until Scrimmage: 31

Log update:

I have decided that rather than updating this daily, I will update it when either big things happen (like the architecture decision) or when I have noting better to do (I’m actually typing this on the 23rd).

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Cleaned Foundry before strategy meeting (while subteam leads were preparing for discussion)

CAD/Strategy:

• decided robot architecture

My Goals for Next Meeting:

• Update Scrum Board
• Talk to (interview?) some new members to see what leadership can do to make them more engaged and come more often

Tuesday, January 13 (4:00 PM - 7:00 PM)

At this meeting, the mechanical people working on the KitBot got the drivetrain fully (mostly?) assembled. I helped cut and drill holes in the plates for the hopper (in the instructions they’re made of polycarb, but we are making them out of some MDF thing that we originally used for practice game elements for BunnyBots. We also made significant process on the indexer (?) mechanism. It hasn’t been mounted to the drivetrain yet, but the belts and stuff work.

I am the person who volunteered ot program the KitBot in Kotlin (that’s just the language we use), which is a pretty easy project, I just had to learn more about how Git works lol.

1 other mechanical member (a freshman who’s actually interested, yay!) finished the tube prototype. The mentor who got upset about the prototype being weird or something wasn’t there today, so we finished what we had and it seems to work very well (exactly how I had expected)!

The CAD lead showed me the a Ri3D robot (Cranberry Alarm) and was talking about how it was a good design because it had an expanding hopper. I didn’t really understand until I watched a video of it in action, and now it’s my personal favorite architecture. It works so smoothly and I really like how consistent it seems.

Meetings until Scrimmage: 40

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Mechanical:

• KitBot Drivetrain ~90% Done
• KitBot Intake/Shooter/Hopper ~60% Done
• Tube Prototype Finished
• Over-Bumper Intake was Assembled & Tested (works well)

CAD:

• Designs for all prototypes were finished

Media:

• Spirit Meeting (I did not attend (I was working on other things) so I don’t know what was decided)

Scrum Board:

Team Goals for Next Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Finish KitBot Drivetrain
• Mount Mechanisms to Drivetrain

My Goals for Next Meeting:

• Finish KitBot Code

Mon, January 12 (4:00 PM - 7:00 PM)

At this meeting, work started on prototypes. Since the CAD lead already finished designing the over-bumper intake, it was cut on the CNC by the end of the day. Our mechanical lead (Link) helped some other mechanical members (and Kylie) assemble the KitBot. Unfortunately (after the meeting) they realized that instead of building the square drivetrain, they accidentally are building the standard one, so some work will have to be corrected on Tuesday.

My prototype (the tube indexer) was actually almost completed. I put holes for bearings and woodscrews to hold a piece of polycarb into a piece of plywood. A mentor tried to explain to me how this was actually a bad prototype because it didn’t test the effects of balls pushing against each other, even though that wasn’t originally the point. We decided that we will design and build a different prototype that is much longer (5-8 fuel long?) and goes at a 180-degree angle rather than 90, and with a belt in the center.

Meetings until Scrimmage: 41

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Started assembly of KitBot Drivetrain & Tube Indexer

CAD:

• Started CAD of Spindexer & Hooded Shooter
• Finished CAD of Over-Bumper Intake
• CNCed Over-Bumper Intake

Media:

• Progress on BunnyBots robot Reveal/Recap Video

Scrum Board:

Team Goals for Next Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Make more progress on KitBot (fix drivetrain to be square)
• Assemble over-bumper intake (~80%)

CAD:

• Finish CAD for hooded shooter & spindexer
• Come up with plan for climber, make progress with CAD (at least 50%)

My Goals for Next Meeting:

• Either explain to mentor how my prototype is good or design new one which will be CNCed

Sunday, January 11 (10:00 AM - 5:00 PM)

At this meeting, we reviewed our decisions on what robot actions to pursue, and brainstormed mechanisms. After we drew the designs in groups and presented them to everyone, we sorted them into the MOSCOW chart and determined which to prototype (some with just wood/cardboard and some with CAD) and which to ignore. We also accidentally got a KitBot because our lead mentor forgot to opt out of it. Originally, I thought this was annoying, until we realized that we can prototype multiple of the ideas using it, some without even modifying it!

Here’s the list of prototypes that we’ll do

• CAD:
  • Climber
    • Note: We did not decide on a specific mechanism. We decided to find a group of people who were especially interested to design/test a climber, but we decided that a Level-1 climb would be easy.
  • Turreted Shooter with Adjustable Hood
    • Testing: Accuracy of shooter at various hood angles, turret passthrough
• Rough/KitBot:
  • Tube/Zig-zag/Tetra-style Indexer
    • Testing: how many Fuel can be stored, how best to move around curves (belts or “bumpy wheel”
  • Hopper (KitBot)
    • Testing: Hoe many Fuel can be stored, how often does it get stuck (and if it gets stuck, how effective is a spinning agitator at the bottom?)
  • Fixed-Hood Shooter (KitBot)
    • Testing: Accuracy/firing angle with 3d printed hood extension, flywheel deceleration with multiple shots per second (and test max firing rate), see accuracy
  • Bumper Cut-Out Intake (KitBot)
    • Testing: How reliable is the default design, how does it work with Mecanum wheel flap-down aligner (ex: Orbit 2020)

I am the lead of the Tube Indexer prototype, and I plan to get started on it next meeting.

We also talked a lot about the schedule for the next few weeks. Scrimmage is on February 22nd, and we plan to have the robot mechanically and electrically finished by then. We also hope to have some drive practice, as well as at least 1 auto by then. In order to meet these goals, Kylie (the other co-captain) and I decided that the robot must be mechanically and electrically finished in 4 weeks, so it really is go time!

Meetings until Scrimmage: 42

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Mechanical/CAD:

• Decided what prototypes/mechanisms to pursue/ignore

Strategy:

• Students brainstormed and presented mechanism concepts
• Sorted mechanisms into MOSCOW chart

Team Goals for Next Meeting:

Mechanical:

• Start progress on my prototype (Tube indexer) and have the KitBot ~30% completed by the end of the meeting
• CAD for prototypes are 50% (or more) done

My Goals for Next Meeting:

• Find 2-4 people who are interested in helping to prototype the tube indexer

Relevant Links:

MOSCOW Sort

Prototype Decisions

Mechanism Overview Google Slide

Saturday, January 10 (8:45 AM - 5:00 PM (I left at 4:30))

First day of kickoff meetings! We watched the livestream and made the MosCoW sort for robot actions and archetypes.We also brainstormed “dream alliance” concepts for what we might see at worlds, that way we can think ahead and make predictions about how the game will go and design around that. I think that the game this year will be incredibly fun compared to the other years that I have been doing FRC. Charged Up was not too boring, but I didn’t really know what was going on since it was my first year. Crescendo ws a very exciting game, I liked how fast-paced it was. REEFSCAPE was terrible. It was so slow and boring, and I felt like there was only ever 1 type of match strategy. There was also only 1 general robot architecture, like there was some variation but not anything too major. I think this year will be much more exciting because it’s kinda like 2022 (Rapid React), where you can make the game as complicated as you want. For example, if you want to just make the kitbot, you can do that and honestly you won’t do too poorly at week-1/2 competitions, but you won’t get much further than that. BUT, if you design your own robot (ex. swerve and stuff, or maybe a turret), you can practice doing that and get much better throughout the season.

I’m excited to see how this game progresses throughout the season!

Meetings until Scrimmage: 43

Things Completed at This Meeting:

Strategy:

• Watched Kickoff Livestream
• Came up with list of robot actions/alliance roles
• Sorted roles/actions into “Must,” “Could,” and “Won’t”

Relevant Links:

Kickoff Stream (Replay)

Game Animation

MOSCOW Sort Google Sheet Note: this has been updated with mechanisms

Game Overview/Dream Alliance Discussion Notes