Event Recap: Houston District 2023

Results:

Awards: Winner, Gracious Professionalism Award, and Dean's list semi-finalist (Photon 8515).

This weekend Spectrum competed at the Houston District Event. We would first like to thank our alliance partners: 118 Robonauts, 2585 Impact, and 9121 Wild West.

Spectrum went 15-4 overall at the event, finished ranked 3rd, and was invited by the 1 seed, 118, to join their alliance. After inviting 2585 (and later 9121) to join this alliance, we lost our second match in the upper bracket and made it to the finals through the lower bracket, winning 2-0.

Our development subteam, Photon 8515, also competed. Photon went 5-9-1 overall at the event, finished ranked 21st, and was the first pick of the 5th alliance captain, 2587 alongside 7691. They lost match 2, won match 5 and were eliminated in match 10.

Failures and Fixes:

Failure: flange on the metal launcher pulley came off.

Fix: Added a 22-tooth ~1/2 in 3D printed pulley as a temporary spacer to keep the flange from coming completely off.

Failure: sponsor panel zip ties breaking and flapping around as we move

Fix: bent sponsor panel behind 1x1 REV max tube; future fix is to add rivet nuts for sponsor panel.

Failure: rollers not going at correct velocity (motors would stall and not intake cubes well).

Fix: change velocity control to percentage control.

Failure: we experienced out of memory errors during practice matches. 

Fix: loaded fewer path planner paths.

Failure: bumper mounts broke.

Fix: replace bumper mounts and rivet to the back (note: this was a bad idea, don't do it again, takes too long to drill out); to be done: metal brackets?

Failure: limelight field pose estimates off by 10-20cm.

Fix: none, turned it off completely. :(

Failure: cable carrier broke.

Fix: zip-tie cables to carriage.

Failure: swerve steering belt tooth sheared off.

Fix: temporary: spam reset swerve to absolute the button during the match to keep the wheel pointing the right way even when the belt skipped. Permanent: replace belt; check how much belts have worn on the swerve

Failure: improper strain relief. Wagos got tugged and came undone because they were under stress.

Fix: to be done: redo wago configurations with better strain relief, more zip ties.

Failure: lower intake rollers not spinning; belt partially dislodged.

Fix: we discovered after the match that pressing eject would fix the problem. A more permanent solution is replacing the 3D printed pulley with a version with a larger inside flange so that the belt cannot possibly slip over it.

Controls Update:

Autonomous:

We ran a three-ball and angle/balance for the first day of the event. Autobalance was too slow sometimes, and the auton period would end before it got itself balanced. We fixed autobalance in time for matches on day 2 and ran a three ball and balance sequence for the rest of the event.

Planned Improvements:

• Improve cable carrier

• Raise launcher wheel to reduce angle and reduce accidental cube launches.

• Improve bumper brackets

• Software improvements

• Make our stick-steer command only turn to the cardinal directions

• Make our cone scoring button start a full routine that brings the elevator down

• Add a pilot button to shift the robot left or right roughly ½ a cone distance for easier alignment to cone nodes.

• Ensure that slow mode and FPV mode work with heading lock

• Get basic limelight alignment to cube nodes working (no longer trying to use field pose estimation)

• Work on making sure our 3 cube autons actually score all 3 cubes.
  
  

Strategy and Scouting Recap:

• Scouting data was better at this event than Waco. The strategy and scouting team did an excellent job gathering robot photos and match data for each robot. We also were able to have good match preview data for all our matches to better plan strategy with our partners.

• Our scouting meeting was relatively short: about 2 hours to get us a full 24 team list with tiers to prepare for alliance selection.

Thank Yous:

• Thank you to Robonauts 118 for selecting us to be a part of the #1 alliance. It was great working with you again; good luck this weekend at Space City District.

• Thank you to our other alliance partners 2585 Impact and 9121 Wild West; you all were excellent to work with and we hope to work with you in the future.

Houston Photos