The Coach's Desk
About Me
@Randy Huegele
Coach, Mentor
A Study in Chaos
Links to Get You Started
First Tech Challenge
FTC http://www.firstinspires.org/ Go here to learn about FTC, to form a team, volunteer as a coach or mentor, and use your dashboard.
Florida FTC http://www.flfirst.org/index.php Floridians also look here.
https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/ftc/robot-building-resources?utm_campaign=ftc-team-blast-022&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=173389778&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8xAlBDhSyud_rOvxwzgFQsIBDdYaG_gsKCLe9No3lWkpdv8lgdX9AyK0upzzxhyfLsQRaS4kLWr3POXLynY3R8rqeZrnKakl9blIUIqizVGLHFmAA&utm_content=173389778&utm_source=hs_email Get started building a robot.
Get started programming a robot.
Learn more about the game.
Electronics
Programming
Robot Hardware
For Our Team
More Advanced Topics
Machine Learning and Machine Vision
3D Printing
3D Modeling
Great for beginners!
My favorite for building parametric models.
3D Design Share Sites
Wheels
Springs
In progress.
Gears
In progress.
Learn some of the basic terminology.
The Tensor Flow tool beta test I signed up for starts on Monday so it would be nice to have the team ready for that. It only lasts for two weeks.
The baseline robot (aka Liberty Ship) is still incomplete and now has the drive train removed. Valus Valoo has been learning a lot in a short time.
We decide to skip the competition because we didn’t have a robot or a course and we needed the time to catch up.
Things to do
159
complete
Clean garage Randy Huegele and any helpful volunteers.…
download (1).gif
We’ve been so busy the past week, that there was little time for blogging. The team, Valus Valoo, an army of one, has been working on the crash robot, as I call it. Its just the fastest thing he can throw together. I’ve been trying to teach him to plan it more, draw it, or mock it up in some way, but he is stubborn. He does have fun building though and doesn’t get discouraged when he has to tear it all down again because it doesn’t quite work.…
222
complete
Present Remote Programming Best Practices https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/ftc/rtr-remote-programming.pdf
223
complete
Assign roles to team members, define the responsibilities of each role
224
incomplete
Explain how to use the team web site and templates for documenting and sharing Crater Cruncher
225
complete
Encourage early development of a notebook,…
After manufacturing a few frozen parts, we had to take a closer look at our processes, to find out what was going wrong. Valus Valoo's cad designs were excellent and the sliced models had good line spacing. The simple section of track we were printing should have had moving parts like our earlier experiments but everything was frozen together. The latest parts did not look as clean and were slightly warped and distorted. There had to be something wrong with the printer setup.…
The FTC Freight Frenzy competition inspires a few distinct functional requirements: moving to an object, grabbing the object, lifting the object to its required height, driving to the destination, and releasing the object. Some other tasks may be required from each of these. For example, in autonomous mode, object recognition is an important prerequisite to moving to an object. I encourage the team to brainstorm, discuss,…
If you just have too much time on your hands and want another robot building project in addition to FTC, there is a contest sponsored by Instructables https://www.instructables.com/contest/robots/.
image-20211014-182638.png
I urged Valus Valoo to move his models from Tinker CAD to OpenSCAD. I showed him how the models can be defined with parametric values and easily modified for rapid prototyping. He caught on quickly and completely rebuilt his track model. I also showed him how to use a line width parameter in the model to have adequate spacing to allow the printing of fully assembled moving parts. I’m eager to see how his latest test print comes out.
pattern-changes-20.gif
I’ve been reading the documentation on REV Robotics now that their pages are active again. It turns out, we might need a USB hub that can provide additional power to elements like the camera. I purchased one at REV because its legal for FTC. They also sell a 1 meter long, LED strip with addressable lights and a Blinkin https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-t3eo8vwp22/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/286/1163/Blinkin_Lone_Tilt_FRC_FTC__21151.1531258001.png?…
I purchased the game play elements for the team. I should have done this earlier, but I wasn’t sure what I needed to buy. The equipment may take 6-8 weeks before its shipped. They also mentioned the shipping hub production is delayed and may not arrive until mid-November, the other stuff may arrive earlier. The parts I bought included only one side (red) and did not include a barrier wall or floor covering.
It seems unlikely the supplies will arrive in time for the first competition.
We got together to start programming but all the documents linked from REV Robotics to GitBooks was returning 404. Since we didn’t know how to go any further at this point, we decided to wait until tomorrow, expecting the problem to be resolved on Monday.
Maybe Tomorrow
disappointment-statue.jpg