Day 36: Programming, Friends, and Fundraising

We did a lot of work on programming today.

We added in our IR sensor to detect the ball. This allows us to automatically stop our collection and catch commands once the robot sees that we have the ball. This makes catching and collecting much easier. It's extremely simple code; basically if the sensor sees something within a certain distance it just stops doing the commands. Very simple but should be very beneficial.

We added in our PID position control for the launcher arm. We have added about 60lbs of constant force springs to our launcher so it no longer rests in the down position. We might be removing a couple of those to fix this but we still needed a way to force the launcher to return down after we fired. We do have a potentiometer on the arm so that it know how to return to the stowed position.

We finished turning several of the pieces for the real robot, mostly just standoffs and spacers but they're very crucial for proper alignment.

We had a few friends over today. Team 4280, N-GEN from Sam Houston Math, Science, and Technology came by and we helped them with some electronics and worked with them to get their bumper frame built. We had team 3666, Bolton Bear Bots, from Alexandria, LA come by to get in a little bit of practice on real FRC carpet. We have been working with them on several items this season and generally just sharing ideas. It was very cool that they had the chance to drive all the way out here work with us today.

At the end of the night we got to do some shooter tests in our gym. It's working very well. Our 18 ft shot still needs a bit of work but we're confident we can get it consistent soon. Here are a few of our test shots over the truss.

On a different note Team 987, The High Rollers, have started putting together an absolutely amazing video series on how their team operates. They have been consistently one of the best teams in FRC on a robot and organizational level. Here is the thread about the series and the first video is below about fundraising. Thank you 987 for putting these together, many teams will benefit.

- Spectrum


"Synergy — the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously." - Mark Twain