Accounting For Offsets And Launching In Motion By Mahesh
Task: Build A Forward Kinematic Model Of The Robot To Account For Turret And Muzzle Offsets, And Counter-Lead The Target To Allow For Launching In Motion
In the previous trajectory calculations post, "Derive And Translate Trajectory Calculations Into Code", we did not take into account how the length of the launcher would effect...
We wanted to setup FTC Dashboard for graphing, configuration, vision, and later on, odometry. FTC Dashboard enables graphing of numeric variables, which can simplify PID tuning...
Owing to the ongoing pandemic, our recruitment goals are not similar to that of previous seasons. One of our bigger concerns is that it will be harder to teach...
Instead of using a grip wheel to launch rings we went with the approach to make a custom flywheel. The key concept of a flywheel is to maximize rotational...
Task: Plan changes to our codebase for the new season.
This year's game saw a significant boost to the importance of the control award, now being put above even the motivate and design awards in order of advancement. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze...
Code Changes The Week Before Regionals By Mahesh and Cooper
Task: Assess Code Changes During The Week Before Regionals
Numerous code changes were made during the week before regionals, the most signicant of which were attempted two days before regionals, a costly mistake during competition. Firstly, three different paths were layed...
Wylie East Regional Qualifier Code Post-Mortem By Mahesh and Cooper
Task: Reflect On Code Changes And Choices Made During The Wylie East Regional Qualifier
Despite putting in lots of effort in order to pull off a working autonomous before regionals, small and subtle issues that surfaced only during testing at the...
Task: Create a poster encompassing all of our calculations from this season
From analyzing the friction coefficient of a variety of different materials, to calculating torque for our various robot sub-assemblies, and creating an equation for our tower-stacking abilities in our autonomous, Iron Reign has seen several different series' of calculations this season. Since these...
Task: Develop An OpenCV GRIP Pipeline To Detect Skystones
With this year's game awarding 20 points to teams than can successfully locate Skystones during autonomous, a fast and reliable OpenCV Pipeline is necessary to succeed in robot game....
Last night we installed the new Snapdragon gripper, which means we needed to re-work the gripper code. We started out by getting the positions the servo would...
During the STEM Expo, while also helping volunteer, we worked on auto. There were a series of cascading events that were planned and completed. The first...
Today we worked on driver optimizations, since Justin was here. We changed around the controls for the arm to be more like the drivetrain and the D-pad on controller 1, with...
As the design and build of the robot progresses, many components must be updated to be compatible with the current design. The logarithmic spiral, which was...
Task: Plan out potential robot articulations to improve game strategy
Getting back from the tournament, we were able to immediately start to think about what was the big problems and possible improvements to the articulations of...
Prior to updating the model, the model purely consisted of the chassis and the primitive turntable. Since then, both the turntable and chassis have been updated to...
This weekend, SEM sent four teams to the first qualifying tournament of the FIRST Tech Challenge 2019-2020 season. Iron Reign (6832) was a finalist in robot game and won the top award (Inspire) and has advanced...
Task: Design a system that could linearly reduce torque.
Since last season, we have conducted a significant amount of experimentation on our elbow and slide mechanism. We are using a similar design because we...
During today’s meeting, we were able to complete the mounting of the pinion motor assembly to the turntable. This included drilling out holes and routing out a...
Coding Before Scrimmage By Cooper, Karina, Bhanaviya, and Trey
Task: Finish the temporary auto and work with drivers for teleop
Tonight, the night before the scrimmage, We worked on making the depositing of the stone and parking of the robot more reliable. Or as reliable as possible, as we are planning to use...
Here is us testing the gripper we designed to pick up the blocks in this years SkyStone challenge. This gripper combines the Pivoting Accelerated User-Friendly...
While there are many different solutions and gripper designs, one of the most common is the parallel gripper. The purpose of a parallel gripper is to grip objects,...
This year, I started the role of project manager, and there have certainly been plenty of growing pains. Iron Reign had previously learned to embrace chaos, frequently pulling all nighters...
It has been a very long time since we have reconsidered our auto paths. Between my last post and now, we have made numerous changes to both the hardware and...
Earlier in the year, we posted an early version of the Gantt chart as seen in (T-17, Project Management). Since then, the chart has seen many changes, which can be seen...
UIL 2019
By Ethan, Charlotte, Evan, Janavi, Beno, Benb, Bhanaviya, Abhi, Arjun, Jose, Aaron, Paul, Cooper, and Justin
Task: Compete at the Texas State Championship
Today, we competed at the Texas State Championship, UIL Robotics, Division 5A-6A. We finished our robot earlier this week, so this served as a testing ground for our new robot and code.
Since our project manager is leaving for college next year, there has been an effort to teach the younger students on our team to take on this role and...
When attaching the hook to the servo, it was very important that the configuration gave the hook its widest possible range of motion. The open position...
Since the last post, in which we installed the Superman Arm, we've installed the second stage of the linear lift and the belt drive that accompanies...
In post E-116, I showed all the big wheel articulations. As we shifted our robot to Icarus, we decided to change to a new set of articulations as they would work...
With the birth of Icarus came a new job for the programmers: supporting both Bigwheel and Icarus. We needed the code to work both ways because new logic could be developed...
Task: Update the meetinglog template to more accurately reflect efforts
An essential part of the project management role is the meeting log, where the project manager records all progress made in each subteam during each session....
A big part of our redesign is improving our intake system. To see where some of the errors may lie, we took detailed videos of our robot intaking silver and...
Today we managed to get our robot to balance for 30 seconds after spending about an hour tuning the PID gains. We made significant progress, but there is a flaw in our algorithm that needs to...
Since our robot has two wheels and a long arm, we decided to take on an interesting problem: balancing our robot on two wheels as do modern hoverboards and Segways. Though the problem had already been solved by others, we...
Beyond the Gantt chart and meeting logs mentioned in (T-17, Project Management), another one of the biggest additions to the team with the project management role are planning sessions. Planning sessions are...
A feature that is essential to many advanced autonomous sequences is the ability to know the robots absolute location (x position, y position, heading). For our localization, we determine the robots position relative to the fields coordinate frame. To track our position, we use encoders (to...
Updating the Bigwheel model to the robot’s current configuration was a challenge. The new linear slides are not standard parts, so we had to model them from...
Throughout this season our team has completed various calculations from the torque of our robotics arm, to the speed of the wheels. Since these calculations are...
Task: Design a state machine class to make autonomous easier
In the past our autonomous routines were tedious and difficult to change. Adding one step to the beginning of an autonomous would require changing the...
The picture above is a representation of our work today. After making sure all the manual drive controls were working, Karina found the positions she preferred for intake, deposit, and latch....
Task: Assemble the V.3.5 latch and attach to the robot
We assembled the fourth version of the latch today. Some of the improvements on this latch include using bigger bearings and thrust bearings inside. This latch...
We need to add omniwheels to the intake arm to allow the arm to rest on the ground, while still maintaining the necessary height for collecting the minerals. If the...
Task: Calculate torque and other values of the Superman arm on our robot
We want to have our robot completely replicable through the journal. So, we found it necessary to include the power calculations of various subsystems...
Task: Detail last-minute code changes to autonomous
It is almost time for competition and with that comes a super duper autonomous. For the past couple of weeks and today, we focused on making our depot...
The other day, when running through Bigwheel's controls, we came across an error in the code. The motors on the elbow did not have min and max values for its...
One of our priorities this season was our autonomous, as a perfect autonomous could score us a considerable amount of points. A large portion of these points come from...
Early in the season, we made a hook, Although it was durable, it required a higher amount of precision than we would have liked to have, especially in the...
Regionals is coming up, and there are some driving issues that need to be addressed. Going back to November, one notable issue we had at the Conrad qualifier was the lack...
Today, we implemented our first autonomous path. Since we we still didn't have a complete vision software, we made these manually so we can integrate vision without issues....
We recently refactored our vision code to allow us to easily swap out vision implementations. We had already implemented TensorFlow, but we hadn't implemented code for using OpenCV instead of...
Iron Reign has been working on multiple vision pipelines, including TensorFlow, OpenCV, and a home-grown Convolutional Neural Network. Until now, all our code assumed that we only used TensorFlow, and we wanted...
On Saturday, December 15, Iron Reign hosted 30 teams at the Townview Qualifier tournament. As a part of hosting the tournament, we wanted to ensure that all teams...
Townview Qualifier 2018 - Setting Up By Bhanaviya, Ben, Karina, Kenna, Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Justin, Janavi, Austin, and Jayesh Task: Prepare Townview for SEM's qualifier on December 15th On December 15th, Iron Reign is hosting an FTC qualifier at Townview...
Task: Present to the Dallas Personal Robotics Group about computer vision
We presented to the DPRG about our computer vision, touching on subjects including OpenCV, Vuforia, TensorFlow, and training our own Convolutional Neural Network....
Our next tournament is a while away, in about two months. So, we have a little bit of time to redesign. And, our current chassis has plenty of faults....
Mentoring SchimRobots at Rice MS Tournament By Bhanaviya
Task: Mentor a middle school team at the RMS Qualifier
Earlier today, I attended the Rice Middle School Qualifier in order to mentor my middle school team, SchimRobots, as an alumnus. Last year, when I was a member...
So, Iron Reign is used to using off-the-shelf materials on our robot: silicone oven gloves, ice cube trays, nylon 3D-printed parts, and more. But, we've never actually done...
This weekend, SEM sent four teams to the first qualifying tournament of the FTC Robotics Rover Ruckus 2018-2019 season. Iron Reign won the top award (Inspire) and advanced. For reference, Iron Reign is last year's...
Today, we built mounts to attach both types of intake to the rack; the rack-and-pinion corncob intake and the red-flapped intake. We also created a new way of mounting the...
FTC released new code to support Tensorflow and automatically detect minerals with the model they trained. Unfortunately, all of our CNN work was undercut by this update. The silver lining is that...
For extension both into the crater and lifting our robot up to the crater we have decided test a linear slide system. We plan to utilize linear slide...
After seeing how well the robots that could latch onto the lander performed at the scrimmage, Iron Reign knew that we had to be able to score these points....
Historically, Iron Reign has used a class called "Pose" to control all the hardware mapping of our robot instead of putting it directly into our opmodes....
Bigwheel’s intake arm is one of the most important parts of the robot. Since our scrimmage, we have learned how to make this arm much more efficient,...
Over the summer, we designed many robots for the North Texas Chassis Project, including one based off of last year's Worlds robot, Kraken. The robot chassis had 6" mechanums. But, based on...
BigWheel has gone through a few major changes. First and foremost, it now has a flipper arm, AKA Superman. Since the robot itself is the lift mechanism, we...
Task: Improve Iron Reign's team organization and time management
Iron Reign sometimes struggles with our team organization and time management. There have been many instances where we have fallen behind in different subteams...
So, our dream this year is to create a static robot. Last week, we found out about a rule change that would prevent our mining robot from staying within the...
Task: Upgrade our code to the latest version of the FTC SDK
FTC recently released version 4.0 of their SDK, with initial support for external cameras, better PIDF motor control, improved wireless connectivity,...
At one point, we were thinking about creating a "mining facility" robot that stays static within the crater and delivers the blocks into the mining depot. In our...
Last week, we decided to take up the task of creating the team marker, a simple project that would surely be overlooked, but can score a significant amount of points. We...
To increase the efficiency of our robot, we looked into ways to passively sort minerals during intake and deposit. It is important to sort because it requires...
We've been toying around with the idea of using BigWheel, our Summer Chassis Research Project bot, in this year's competition with a few modifications. The idea for this robot is that...
With the high point potential available in this year's autonomous it is essential to create autonomous paths right now. This year's auto is more complicated due to potential...
At the moment, we've used the same chassis base for three years, a basic mechanum base with large wheels. However, we don't really want to do the same this year. At...
In our last post, we created a chart where we listed each task asked based on point value and the level of difficulty, separated by autonomous and teleop. Our goal is to...
In our first practice, we brainstormed some intake and other robot ideas. To begin testing, we created a simple prototype of a one-way intake system. First, we attached two...
Task: Present in the Inviational Presentation Series
Today, we participated in the Chassis Presentation workshop for teams all around the North Texas region; the project was to design robots and perform various tests with them,...
As a new freshman on Iron Reign, I took on the responsibility of a robot we called Bigwheel. Karina and I worked on getting the robot into something that could be...
Hopefully, you're here because you heard our announcement or saw our flyers. Even if not, welcome! We are team 6832 Iron Reign Robotics. We've been a FIRST team since 2010 and currently compete in Read More
Hello all! You might have been wondering where I went the entire summer while Iron Reign was busily working on tasks. Well for those of you interested,...
In our last post, we thought that we had finished Garchomp. However, as we came back to the next practice, we realized that Garchomp's chains were incorrectly linked.
Task: Recruit members for the upcoming robotics season
At the end of last season, we had two members graduate, Austin and Tycho. Their upcoming "goodbye" posts will be posted here, the same as last year. So, we...
This summer, we're working on creating unique chassis that are outside of our comfort zone. Often we choose safe bases - opting for ones that we have tried in...
Over the past week, I worked with Christian and another member of Imperial to prototype a drive train. Due to the limited resources. we decided to use Tetrix...
Last season, we saw many robots that utilized a swerve drive rather than the mecanum drive for omnidirectional movement. To further expand Iron Reign's repertoire of drive bases, I wanted...
In this post, I would like to thank Mr. Cuban for supporting Iron Reign. Today, we received a message from Mark Cuban's assistant stating that he would be contributing $2500...
After sending a small email to Cuban, he replied very soon asking for more details (shown above)! With this, I felt more confident I could make things happen. In...
At the World Championship this year, Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, talked about getting celebrity involvement in the robotics program. Very few celebrities support FIRST (will.i.am being...
Iron Reign earns FTC World Championship Motivate Award
Last week at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics World Championship in Houston, Team 6832, Iron Reign, from the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas ISD earned the Motivate award which ranks them at the top in the outreach category.
After a season of work, Iron Reign has the final version of Kraken ready for Championships. With it comes a video showing off its features. We filmed...
It is almost time for Championships and that means scouting time! Thank you everyone for contributing to the scouting sheet. The combined effort of all teams made this...
Task: Determine the acceleration and max velocity experimentally
To find the acceleration and maximum velocity of our robot we decided to use a method we have learned in our physics class at school: video analysis with...
At super regionals, we saw all the good teams having multi glyph autonomi. In fact, Viperbots Hydra, the winning alliance captain, had a 3 glyph autonomous. I believed Iron...
With FIRST Champs right around the corner, we needed to update our CAD model to match our current Kraken. After all, Kraken can't be lackin' any features. I decided to reopen...
As explained in a previous post, we were having many issues with git commits and fixing our errors in it. After a lot of the merging conflicts, we had...
At this point, we are training the next generation of the drivers on our team, and since we have so many buttons with so many different functions it can often...
Two words describe the picture above: "Oh dear". The wires shown above are connected to our jewel thief on the bottom of our robot. The reason the wires are so...
Task: Write a summary page for the engineering journal
The generic engineering journal rubric given to teams by FIRST heavily recomends having a season-summary intro page at the front of the journal. As well,...
We always struggle a little with describing our robot to the judges. So, this post will be the third in a series of posts describing the physics of our...
By this stage of Relic Recovery, we have finally discovered an efficient strategy for the glyph game. At this point, it is important to get consistent driver practice. While...
So, its Supers time again! And that means its time to design our tents and pick a theme for ourselves. Last year, when Iron Reign went to Supers for the first time, we...
Task: Make team informational posters for South Super Regionals
Last year, we didn't spend that much time on the poster/aesthetic side of things for Supers, and we ended up getting the Judges' Award. While we can't really...
Recently, we've been having an issue with our gripper in that the shielding for the sides of the intake have been bending torsionally, so that they deform and interfere with...
Meeting with Advanced Waterjet Cutting By Tycho and Austin
Advanced Waterjet Cutting
Today we visited the Advanced Waterjet Cutting office and spoke to Sal Copado and Chris regarding our side shield designs. We had called a couple days in advance...
We've talked to REV before about our unique REVolution system that we've detailed in other posts, but for those who are unaware, its a system that we've personally designed...
Our grabber is good, but it isn't achieving 100% of the potential it could. One thing we're doing is creating the Grabber V.5 previously blogged about, but we...
Now that we had developed a glyph game and a stable autonomous, it has come time for Iron Reign to conquer the true challenge of the 2017-2018 competition: Relic Recovery.
In the past few months we've made a lot of improvements and updates to our robot and code. For example, we changed our gripper system again; it now includes an internal which makes it easier...
Robot Drive Team By Charlotte, Tycho, Karina, and Evan
Task: Build a solid drive team.
One of the leading problems Iron Reign faces is our ability to allot time to effective driving practice. Driving practice is essential for our success in...
After analyzing the lack of speed from our last competition, we decided to continue the journey of attaching the gripper arms to a conveyor belt as previously designed. To...
In the week before the Wylie east north Texas qualifier, Iron Reign was going about our normal development schedule when we received a request for assistance from a...
Over the course of this past season, I have been learning how to use Creo Parametric to learn 3-D modeling. Since this is Tycho's last year on the team...
One of our issues with the previous iteration of the gripper was the fact that the material that coated the actual pincers weren't even and would often lead to
When we designed our new grabber with the octopuckers, one of the variables we neglected was the width of the new grabber once assembled and resting. After the grabber was completed
Meeting Log January 06, 2018
By Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Kenna, Tycho, Austin, Abhi, Karina, and Janavi
Meeting Log January 06, 2018
So, today's the last Saturday before the Wylie Qualifier, and we're pretty unprepared. We're a little behind on our blog posts by about a week, we still haven't added our octopucker attachment, and we need to finish our 3D model of our robot.
On an excursion to the Rev Headquarters located conveniently in North Dallas, to pick up a few extra servos and other miscellaneous parts we decided to...
We have finally completed assembly modeling Kraken, Iron Reign's Relic Recovery robot. Named after the sea creature due to the robot's OCTOPUCKERS, Kraken stands as a fierce competitor in FTC....
The world advances on innovation. We strive to make the most efficient devices and aparati to complete jobs for us. There’s a hundred different ways to work a task, but only one will be the best at functioning in the areas of efficiency and timeliness. Just as America runs on Dunkin, advancement runs on efficiency.
Alumni Meeting
By Ethan, Abhi, Karina, Austin, Tycho, Kenna, Charlotte, Janavi, Darshan, Jayesh, and Omar
Task: Talk with our former members
Since we're in the last weeks of December, our schools are legally obligated to let us out. And, while colleges aren't legally mandated to let their students out, they tend to do so
Townview Qualifier 2017
By Kenna, Abhi, Ethan, Austin, Evan, Charlotte, Karina, Tycho, Janavi, and Jayesh
This past weekend, Iron Reign hosted a 28-team qualifier at Townview Magnet Center.
Many of us attend the School of Science and Engineering inside Townview, so it was familiar territory
and made the whole experience a little easier.
We were lucky enough to host a Scrimmage as practice for our actual qualifier.
Weeks of preparation and anticipation paid off when the FTC Affiliate Partner for North Texas told us it was "the best run qualifier this season,"
and the North Texas Judge Advisor, Freidrich Elliot, called it the "best judging panel he's ever seen."
Unlike most posts in our blog, this post's purpose is not to give a play-by-play. You can take a look at how the day went on our
instagram. We want to use our experience as an opportunity to help out other teams who may
be hosting a qualifier.
Iron Reign (team 6832), The School of Science and Engineering and the Dallas ISD STEM Department are happy to welcome you to the FIRST Tech Challenge qualifying tournament at our Townview campus on December 16th. Twenty-six North Texas robotics teams will
Qualifier Preparation
By Kenna, Abhi, Karina, Charlotte, Tycho, Janavi, Ethan, Austin, and Jayesh
We have been preparing to host our own qualifier since November when we hosted a DISD Scrimmage.
Now we have to prepare our school for 26 teams to compete tomorrow. Most of our team was there to help construct the fields. The highlight of my Friday night was
Version 2 of our gripper arms worked much better than our original. Due to their silicone material and trianglular shape, we definitely had more control over the glyphs...
Iron Reign (team 6832), The School of Science and Engineering and the Dallas ISD STEM Department are happy to announce that we are hosting a FIRST Tech Challenge qualifying tournament at...
Oklahoma 2017 Post-Mortem
By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Austin, Janavi, Kenna, Abhi, Charlotte, and Karina
Task: Recap what went right and wrong in Oklahoma
Even though we did very well in the Oklahoma qualifier, we still encountered several problems, that if not addressed, could lower our chances of getting to Super-Regionals. So, we had a team discussion
At the end of the first regular practice since putting up our tent, the field is populated with 4 separate projects. Evidence of a lot of great work going on....
At the Oklahoma qualifier, we saw numerous teams with similar systems to that of ours. However, since we had the mobilized gripper arms to stack with auto alignment,
we were able to collect glyphs easier. In spite of that
On Nov. 17, we went to the Oklahoma Mustang HS qualifier. Our strategy for this tournament was to attempt to qualify in multiple regions so that we have more chances to get to the South Super Regionals. For this tournament, the DISD STEM Dept. funded
Last Saturday, after our qualifier, we had a team meeting where
we created a list of what we needed to do before our second qualifier
this Saturday. One of the tasks was to create the control award
Building the Garage
By Ethan, Evan, Austin, and Kenna
Task: Build a cover for our field
Since Iron Reign is hosted in our coaches' house, we only have so much space. Even though we've basically taken over their house, a consequence of that is that we don't really have a place to put the field...until now.
So, we can't include all the code changes we made today, but all of it involved cleaning up our code, removing extra functions we didn't use, refactoring, adding comments, and making it more readable
The task today was simple. We replicated the prior work with the first gripper, as stated in the prior post, so we can begin connecting them.
The biggest problem was
Today we tried to drive the robot on the practice field for the first time since the qualifier last Saturday. However, we couldn't get in very much quality drive practice because
the robot kept breaking down.
Greenhill FTC Qualifier
By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Charlotte, Austin, Abhi, Tycho, Karina, and Kenna
Task: Compete at our first FTC qualifier
So, we were absolute failures. There's no way to get around that. We got 14th place out of 14, and our presentation flopped. But, its not the end of the world
BigThought and Dallas City of Learning Sponsorship By Ethan
Task: Recount our sponsorship with BigThought
We have two kinds of sponsorships, money-based and programmatic. Our partnership with BigThought is the latter. For those who don't live in the greater Dallas area,...
Task: Determine building strategy for Relic Recovery
Any well-versed team understands that, depending on the competition for the year, a robot will either be modified to compete or be built from the ground up. In any case, however, a robot often
The jewel thief, the mechanism for knocking off one of the jewels, was going to be one of the tougher parts of our bot to integrate, based on the chassis we began with. But, with a little engineering
DISD Scrimmage
By Charlotte, Janavi, Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Austin, Karina, Kenna, and Abhi
Task: Run and compete at the DISD Scrimmage
Today we helped run and participated in a scrimmage at the Davis Ellis Field House. Iron Reign will be hosting a qualifier in December at Townview, our home school. This scrimmage served as a practice
Building the Field
By Janavi, Charlotte, Ethan, Abhi, Karina, and Austin
Task: Build the field
Today we started the task of building the field, which we received
for free, thanks to DISD and their generous donation.
The first task Charlotte, Austin, Karina worked on was assembling
Iron Reign has been a team for 8+ years now through multiple competitions. We started as a wee middle school FLL team at W.B. Travis, and we've grown exponentially since then.
Meeting Log November 03, 2017
By Ethan, Evan, Tycho. Austin, Charlotte, Karina, Janavi, Kenna, and Abhi
Meeting Log November 03, 2017
Today is one of the last full meetings until our tournament, so we need to get everything ready for judging. This post also includes the objectives for the next week.
As referenced in another blog post, we recently went to a DISD Coaches' meeting. Shortly after the meeting, we were confirmed to be the host of the DISD Townview Qualifier. So, DISD was able to send us
We attempted to create an autonomous for our first scrimmage. It aimed to make the robot to drive forward and drive into the safe zone. However, we forgot to align the robot and it failed at the scrimmage.
Refering back to the design of the wheel guard, we decided it was time to actually mount it on the robot.
At first, it seemed like the part was perfect for the robot
We’ve been using machine vision for a couple of years now and have a plan to use it in Relic Rescue for a number of things. I mostly haven’t gotten to it because
Travis High School Night
By Tycho, Charlotte, Ethan, and Karina
Encourage students at Travis to enroll at our School of Science and Engineering (SEM)
Today we went to Travis Middle School for their high school night where they have many high schools competing to enroll their graduating 8th graders. Travis is a Talented and Gifted school and about half of our team came from there.
Task: Create a seperate class for the grabbers on the robot
Today, we created a new PickAndPlace class to isolate the code that controls the current gripper and lift system. I also added new methods to send the lift to max, min and stacking heights with manual override.
MXP at UTA
By Kenna, Abhi, Austin, Charlotte, Ethan, and Janavi
MXP at UTA
Today, we brought the Dallas City of Learning MXP (Mobile Learning Lab) to 4H’s Youth Technology Explosion in coordination with the
Black Society of Engineers. Our role in this event was to offer a hands on experience for those interested in a career in engineering.
In Texas, a government labor agency called the Texas Workforce Commission gives a yearly grant to people who apply through FIRST in Texas. We got it last year...
Because our robot at this point has merely become a collage of prototypes that we compete with, there are often subtle improvements that need to be made. Starting with the wheelbase
Today we continued our work on the second grippers. We talked about this in another post, but the gist is that we iterated through various materials to find something that would securely grip the block, without damaging it. At the beginning, that got rid of most of our options, but we tested various sprays, materials, and pressures to find the right material.
We were tearing up our glyphs like this because our wheels had no guard for their screws:
More specifically, we had multiple issues with damaging the glyphs. First, the exposed screws on the mechanum wheels (Fig 1) tended to cut into the glyphs as seen in the above picture. As well, you can see relatively sharp edges on the wheels where the block could also be cut
DISD Coaches' Training
By Ethan, Abhi, Kenna, and Tycho
Task: Present at the DISD Coaches' Training
On Monday, we went to the DISD Coaches' Meeting in order to present our robot to the FIRST DISD coordinator and other coaches in the district. This presentation was one of the reasons we got our robot working so quickly. During the presentation our coach talked with other coaches and the coordinator about funding and tounaments
With our single degree of freedom lift fastened to the robot we focused on the appendage that would grip to within an inch of its life any glyph we fed it. We initially toyed with simple tetrix channels to form a make shift rail that would hold axels for pivoting points, however we found tetrix to be a bit too cumbersome and decided to use rev rail instead.
Task: Design the grabber design and make future plans
The grabber has been evolving. A column made of a turkey baster and a wooden dowel attached to servo has come into fruition. The first drawings and designs are coming along, and some 3D printed parts have been thought up to allow the square dowel to become a hexagon. An adapter of sorts.
Though our current gripper is working sufficiently, there are some issues we would like to improve in our second version.
The mounting system is unstable and easily
comes out of alignment because the rev rail keeps bending. Another issue we've encountered is
the cervo pulling the grippers so that they begin to cave inwards, releasing any blocks being held at the bottom.
By far the biggest problem is our intake. Our drivers have to align the robot with the block so precisely to be able to stack it
The games have begun and it’s time to build. So that’s what Austin and I did. A war had been declared. Legions of the indentured collided on the battlefield. Millions were slaughtered during this new age armageddon. Austin had his army. I had mine.
After determining that the treaded channel was much too buggy to perfect with the time we had, we shifted attention to other scoring systems like grabbers, however before finding the right grabber we decided we needed to get the track for it completed first.
In an attempt to get a working lift system before the coaches meeting we will be presenting at, a linear slide has been attached to the robot, along with a pair of grabbing arms. They work surprisingly well and aren’t as complicated as my idea. Plus the importance of speed has really taken hold on me this year.
Meeting Log September 23, 2017
By Charlotte, Kenna, Tycho, Austin, and Evan
Meeting Log September 23, 2017
We started the day by volunteering at LV Stockard MS, another DISD event. During our practice, we planned to work on robot design, blog updates, and code testing.
MXP Event at LV Stockard Middle School
By Charlotte, Kenna, Tycho, and Austin
STEM education for children and their parents at a DISD event
Earlier this morning,
we drove the Mobile Tech Experience RV to LV Stockard Middle School and participated
in a DISD event. We served around 250 kids, ages ranging from preschool to
middle school. The morning started off slow, but as the day went on, the MXP
became more and more crowded. Our spot was near the food and snack
area, so lots of families came through after getting breakfast or lunch.
Over the past couple of days we’ve experimented with a horizontally mounted track system that we had hoped would serve to move blocks through the entire length of the robot and into the crypto box. Immediately we noticed a few issues
MXP at Conrad HS
By Ethan, Evan, Karina, Tycho, Austin, Charlotte, and Kenna
Sharing STEM opportinities with kids and their families at Conrad HS
Today, we brought the Dallas City of Learning MXP to Conrad High School to support Dallas ISD's parent outreach fair call PrepU Super Saturday. The focus for this Super Saturday was making parents aware of extracurricular activities available to their students in DISD. So this was a perfect event to let parents know about the robotics programs available in Dallas ISD, including Jr. FLL, FLL, FRC and FTC.
The sun came out and it was back to the field. We got started right away, both of us building our designs. Since the cryptoboxes were wider than the 18 inch sizing cube, we started by designing a fold out for the conveyor belt.
Meeting Log September 16, 2017
By Ethan, Evan, Karina, Tycho, Austin, Charlotte, and Kenna
Meeting Log September 16, 2017
Today we had a major outreach event at Conrad HS in DISD which served around 450 people. We also planned on continuing our building competition, working on strategy, the blog, and the robot teardown.
After the game reveal video was released we had some ideas on how to
have our robot grip onto the blocks, but we couldn't test it without
a makeshift glyph to hold onto.
Task: Compare build designs for the cryptobox intake system
The block scoring system is going to be an integral part of the competition this year, and it will have to built sturdy. It’ll have to be reliable for us to have any shot of winning any matches. So we got to brainstorming. We spent a while at the whiteboard, drawing up various mechanisms and ways to pick up blocks.
Meeting Log September 09, 2017
By Ethan, Evan, Abhi, Tycho, Austin, Karina, and Kenna
Meeting Log September 09, 2017
Today was the first meeting of the Relic Recovery season. Our main focus today was strategy, then organization and getting the robot ready for this year's challenges
FTC Kickoff and First Meet
By Ethan, Abhi, Kenna, Austin, Karina, Tycho, and Evan
Task: View FTC Kickoff and plan for the year
Welcome to FTC Relic Recovery! For those who don't know, this year's challenge is archeology themed,
and it certainly will be a challenge. The goal of this challenge is to stack 6X6 in blocks (glyphs) in
certain patterns to gain as many points as possible. The are also side challenges such as balancing the
robot and hitting a specific field element to gain points. Due to the vast number of methods to score points,
a robot must contain multiple mechanisms which are extremely accurate as well as quick.
Together with BigThought, we were able to find another programmatic sponsor: the US Government. For those of y'all who don't know, AmeriCorps is a federally run program that encourages civil service. Most...
Task: Allow user to change PID coefficients from the controller
To allow each user to create their own settings, we're designing a way to allow the user to tune PID to their own liking from the controller. This also enables debugging for our robot.
REV Robot Reveal
By Tycho, Austin, Charlotte, Omar, Evan, and Janavi
Argos V2 - a REV Robot Reveal
This video was pulled from Argos visits to: The NSTA STEM Expo in Kissimmee FL, in the path of eclipse totality in Tennessee, and in North Texas at The Dallas Makerspace, The Southwest Center Mall, Southside on Lamar and the Frontiers of Flight Museum. We hope you find it interesting:
Task: Test and improve the PID system and balance code
We're currently testing code to give Argos a balancing system so that we can demo it. This is also a test for the PID in the new REV robotics expansion hubs, which we plan on switching to for this season if reliable. Example code is below.
8 years ago, when I walked into Mr. Schulte’s room after school, I didn’t realize my life was about to change dramatically. I’d heard there was a robotics club which was attempting to be started. I’d had sparse experience with the subject, through extraneous events like the annual Engineering Saturday at UTA, so I decided to give it a shot.
layout: Do not touch.
title: Title of your article (you can't use hyphens or colons.)
tags: Enter as comma seperated list, case insensitive. Try to use one award and one normal tag
Tips - tips and tricks for other teams.
Journal - working on the journal, blog, and posts like this one.
Outreach - volunteering and special events. Ex. Moonday, NSTA
Mechanical - work on the robot, parts, building, ect.
Moon Day at Frontier of Flight Museum
By Abhi, Charlotte, Austin, Janavi, and Tycho
Task: Present at the MoonDay Event
Today, Iron Reign was invited to the Frontier of Flight Museum by Dallas Love Field Airport for a day of STEM knowledge for
its annual "Moon Day". It was time for us to bring in the LEGO robotics kit, 4 laptops for kids, ARGOS, and Juggernaut, our
competition bot from this past season.
NSTA 2017
By Ethan, Evan, Lin, Jayesh, Omar, Tycho, and Charlotte
Task: Expose our MXP to teachers nationwide
Background
For readers who don't know what the MXP is, here's a quick description. Our coach had been floating the idea of a mobile STEM lab for a while, and he was finally given the go-ahead and some money by his company, BigThought. Originally, he planned for buying a van and loading it with tech, but like all true Iron Reign projects, it grew quickly.
Hooray for graduation! Sort of. As we seniors write our farewell blog posts before we head to college, we have a lot of years to think about. In my case, I only have my 4 years of high school to pull from, but that's more than enough to express my gratitude for being on this team.
Well... this is somewhat of a bittersweet moment for me. All of us seniors are leaving for college in hopes of spreading our horizons and making something of ourselves, but we're leaving this team that has become almost a second family.
Turn Up! 2017 at Frontiers of Flight
By Janavi, Jayesh, Lin, Tycho, Omar, Evan, Charlotte, Ethan, and Darshan
Task:
Each year the Frontiers of Flight Museum hosts the Turn Up!, an event that contains STEM exhibits and demonstration to teach kids about the wonders of Science and Math. We brought the Mobile XPerience (MXP) complete with laptops, 3D printers, and LEGO SumoBot to help teach.
UIL Robotics 2017
By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Charlotte, Austin, Omar, and Janavi
Task: Compete in the UIL Robotics 2017 State Tournament
The UIL Robotics State Tournament is a Texas-only invitational based upon a team's performance in Texas qualifiers and regionals. Since we preformed so well in the North Texas Regionals, winning
YouthSpark with Microsoft
By Lin, Jayesh, Ethan, Evan, Charlotte, Omar, Max, Tycho, Austin, Darshan, and Janavi
Task: Mobile Tech XPerience's appearance at the Meyerson
The Meyerson Symphony Center hosted a Microsoft YouthSpark event this Saturday with activities from robotics to VR to 3D printing. We set up the sumo laptops up in the atrium and the 3D in the MXP outside, right next
South Superregional - Day Three
By Jayesh, Tycho, Omar, Max, Darshan, Austin, Charlotte, Lin, Evan, Ethan, and Janavi
Task: Reminisce on our last three Superregionals matches
Our final competition day began with the driver team rushing to the pits because of a warning given by the game officials for the first match's teams to reach the pits earlier than expected. We reached in time
South Superregionals Day Two
By Max, Tycho, Omar, Jayesh, Darshan, Austin, Charlotte, Lin, Evan, Ethan, and Janavi
Task: Reminisce on our first six Superregionals matches
After a decent night's rest, we began Day Two at around 7 AM. A lot of our tools and materials were still on our RV, so we first moved them over to our pit. Our match schedule said that
Super Regionals - The First Day
By Ethan, Evan, Tycho, Max, Jayesh, Janavi, Lin, Darshan, Omar, Charlotte, and Austin
Task: Go to super regionals, set up, and present
Way too early in the morning, on March 22nd, the Iron Reign team gathered in darkness. It was approximately 65 Farenheit and gusts around 12 mph were blowing in from the South. Under this cover of darkness
We use Vuforia and Open CV vision to autonomously drive our robot to the beacon and then click the button corresponding to our team's colour. We started this...
Task: Create a video outlining Iron Reign's outreach
We have had a lot of interest garnered towards the STEM outreach the team has committed to. When we found that FTC encouraged the creation of a video outlining...
One of the things we're weak on this year is scouting. Dylan did some amazing scouting work last year that got us to regionals, but he is no longer on the team. So, for regionals this year, we want...
The Great One, Aqui'la, has slumbered for too long. Since the deity lost Its battle with the accursed Gravitae a year ago, Its physical form has crumbled to pieces, leaving It powerless to bend the world to...
For the past year or two, we've brought along a big vertical banner to our competitions to help boost our presence and make it easier for judges, other teams, and even members of our own team to find...
Task: Create a backer rail to guide the particle as it fires
Our work on the flywheel design has been an effective proof of concept, and now we need to work it in to the rest of the robot. However, just like with...
Bake Sale By Darshan, Lin, Evan, Jayesh, Omar, and Janavi
Task: Plan Bake Sale
During our winter break, we worked on our robot, but we also planned to gain funding for our continued progression. We had applied for multiple grants...
Cap Ball Lift By Omar, Jayesh, Darshan, Evan, and Max
Task: Build a lift to try cap-ball scoring
Although we're confident in our robot's ability to shoot balls and press beacon buttons, we decided that in order to be competitive, we should try to score the cap ball. The lift...
Chaos reigns as the world is thrown into peril; whole nations are thrown into anarchy by the second; and the superpowers of the world, once bitter enemies, have no...
Today, I combined the autonomous and teleop so that we can demo both more easily. As well, during testing, we now can switch between them seamlessly so that our...
Today marks six days until Doomsday (AKA Little Home, Arkansas), so we needed to finalize everything. For the catapult, Jayesh and Omar fixed my catapult Read More
Autonomous is one of the things that we tend to be weak on every year, and this year, we really want to get to super-regionals. So, to start off this year's...
Task: To bring the catapult within size limits and improve it
What Actually Happened: Abject failures
So, the original catapult, when not stuck, performed pretty well at the scrimmage. However, since we opted not to measure our robot at the scrimmage, we didn't realize that our robot...
Today, I wrote the whole code for controlling our mecanum wheels. It is entirely fron scratch, and works perfectly right off the bat. This code allows us to strafe, move backwards...
Task: Make a conveyor shaft to guide particles to the catapult
We’ve thoroughly proven that the tread of rubber bands is an effective method of ball collection, but as of yet it can only move the balls along the ground. We’ll need a...
First and foremost, we now have one completely functional, terrifying, catapult. The motor mechanism is cannibalized from our sister team's attempt at a catapult,...
Task: Design a bowl for our upcoming catapult system
We've been experimenting with catapult systems for a little while now, but we're still sorely lacking one of the core ingredients of any catapult system: the ability to throw things. I mean, technically we're lacking the ability...
Task: To build a launching mechanism for the particles
For the 2016-2017 season, particle scoring is really important. During autonomous, balls that are launched into the center vortex earn 15 points each, and balls that are launched into the center vortex earn 5 points. If done quickly...
As the season begins, we have started to apply for grants. Grants are important to us because 68% of students in our home school receive free-or-reduced lunch, and we are...
Task: Make a case for the ZTE Speed controlling the robot
While we are still in the early stages of design and it's not wise to make a permanent decision about where the robot's controlling phone will be, we...
I remember, vaguely, that someone on our team wanted to add a post counter for all the posts people appear in. And, today, I did it out of sheer boredom. And, here it is.
Budgeting With Team 3734 By Ethan, Evan, and Austin
Task: Create a Budget Sheet for the 2016-2017 Season
As always, Iron Reign needs more money. We are a title 1 school in a cash-strapped district with over 60% of students qualfying for free lunch. So, this year, we decided to *actually*...
Planning Meeting By Janavi, Max, Tycho, Jayesh, Omar, Darshan, and Lin
Task:
This week we met to discuss the origination of the meetings for the upcoming year. We decided that for the first fifteen minutes of the meeting we would outline our plans for the meeting. Then during our lunch...
Robotics UIL 2016 By Ethan, Evan, Lin, Darshan, Jayesh, Janavi, Trace, Max, Tycho, and Omar
Task: Compete in UIL Robotics in Austin
A bit of background: UIL is a Texas-specific organization that hosts competitions in both academic and athletic pursuits. This year, they ran a pilot program for Robotics, using...
LEGO (Plastic Fastener) SUMO Workshop and Competition, Coming April 24th and May 14th By Tycho
LEGO Sumo returns with a free Sumo Workshop on Sunday April 24th followed by the Dallas Personal Robotics Group's Roborama Sumobot competition at the Dallas Makerspace...
Let's assume you are building a LEGO Mindstorms or Vex IQ based Sumobot, but you want to skip some of the basic mistakes beginners will make. Here are some tips and tricks.
Nolan Qualifier By Ethan, Lin, Jayesh, Darshan, Max, Tycho, Evan, Alisa, Trace, and Dylan
Task: To review our last tournament
Beginnings
Due to the team taking a bus with Imperial Robotics, we arrived to the competition a little late. However, due to an organizer running late, the competition itself was...
Today, we realized that the tape-measure attachment that's supposed to push the buttons on the beacon could have multiple functions instead So, we designed an attachment to the tape measure that can push...
The Double-Wide Experiment By Jayesh, Max, Dylan, and Evan
Task: Strengthen our tape-measure climber against folding and sideways forces
Our tape measure is constantly under stress, which usually isn't a big problem if the driver is positioned with a straight 90 degree angle, but when twisted can result in cracks.
It's a Bloodbath By Ethan, Alisa, Max, Darshan, Jayesh, and Tycho
Task: To dye all our nylon parts red
Today, we took every single 3D-printed part off our robot to dye them. We used RIT clothes dye, which worked because our parts are nylon. The purpose of dying all...
Since we have a semi-reliable form of going up the ramp (which we are working on to make closer to 100% efficiency), a priority for our team robot-wise is to establish an effective...
So as I've made changes to the blog I've realized that not everyone understands the little rules or guidelines I've made, but never quite explained. Following is a mock post, the content is a guide on what to put in each section.
A Presentation for the Ages By Ethan, Jayesh, Max, Tycho, Lin, Omar, Evan, Alisa
Task: Work on our presentation to the judges
Our main weakness in previous years had been our presentation. This year, we plan to change that. When our team was solely FLL, we practiced our presentations beforehand,...
Functions of our controller By Alisa, Ethan, Trace
Task: Listing out the functions of our game controller
In order to find a button for our argos mode drive, we made a rough draft of our game controller listing the functions of each button. For example, the 'X'...
Task: Implement color blob detection on the robot for detecting beacons
Even though this was very long overdue, we now have a way to turn towards a certain color similar to what Argos does. What we're basically doing is calculating the angle that the...
Prototyping and Making the Flipper By Jayesh, Omar, Darshan
Task: Design an apparatus to deposit the climbers in the beacon bucket.
One of the methods to score in this year's competition is depositing the two climbers in the bucket behind the beacon. This being relatively simple, we decided to concentrate this practice...
Rebuilding the Churro Climber System By Omar, Darshan, Max
Task: Fix bending axle on churro climber permanently
After further testing of the churro climbers, we noticed that the axle the gear is rotating on had been bent severely due to the strain on it of the arms pulling. If we left...
Improvements to Churro Catcher and Ramp By Jayesh, Lin, Omar
Task: Make improvements to Churro Catcher and Ramp and make blog more accessible
Iron Reign held our first of two meetings before the New Year season to concentrate on improving our main designs to ensure they worked as expected. Starting with...
Optimizing the Churro Catcher By Jayesh, Omar, Darshan
Task: Improve and fix our Churro Catcher + finalize design for trough
The team met up on Sunday and we focused our meeting on finalizing our trough design and making our churro catchers usable. Beginning with our trough prototype, we put in an angled...
Task: Prototype the trough using materials such as cardboard to give us a baseline
'
The team had a meet before the busy Christmas period to focus on the main part of of our scoring mechanism: the trough. We discussed possible courses...
Improving the Catcher Design By Dylan, Darshan, Omar, Jayesh, Evan, Alisa
Task: Add Improvements to the Catcher Design
Today our team worked on improving the methods of capturing and holding blocks and balls. Our first design involving zip ties had major difficulties including that it had little strength to pull objects...
General Improvements By Jayesh, Omar, Darshan, Max, Lin
Task: Perfect and improve multiple of our main characteristics of our robot
Iron Reign held its first Christmas break parade today and we decided to focus our time on making multiple small improvements, rather than adding one big part on our robot. Omar, Darshan,...
Scrimmage at Greenhill By Darshan, Alisa, Omar, Lin, Max, Tycho, Evan
Task: Practice with other teams and see
This past Friday, the team tried to get the robot working in a small scrimmage with seven or so other teams. At the scrimmage, we managed to get our cow-catcher working, even...
Task: Think about our robot's design both for now and for the future
Today, I decided to list our different options when it comes to design and on how much effort they would take on a numerical scale from 0 to 7. 0 means no...
Design and prototype a churro latch mechanism By Lin, Darshan
Task: Design an alternative churro climber mechanism
Currently Max and Tycho are working on a beater bar 3D part that is stiff enough to pull in blocks, and will hopefully double as a churro catcher when spinning. However, since the parts take 4...
I worked on making a rough draft of a sponsorship template. This template will be used to email companies to ask for their sponsorship. I have a list of companies that have a high chance of sponsoring us. I found...
Starting September 10th and lasting through today, I went to our old middle school, William B. Travis, to help their newer FLL team with robot design and programming. There were also some one on...
As the point values make clear, managing to get the robot to hang on the end of the "cliff" is likely worth the effort. As such, we've worked on making a strange grappling-hook type contraption to pull the...
We rarely prepare enough for awards, usually hoping the practice before that we've done enough to be in the running. Last year we won the PTC Creo award at one competition, but that was a one time deal. This year we...
Today we continued working on the code involved for the first ten seconds of motion in the tournament known as autonomous. In this period we hope to reach the other side of the field towards the Res-Q...
Task: To try out the robot in a competition setting
Last weekend Darshan and I tried to drive the robot in a small scrimmage with eight other teams. Even though we hit a few bumps along the competition...
We needed to create bumper shields because the debris on the field interfered with the tread. We had a prototype on the left, Evan and I cut the bumper shields out of polycarbonate with two...
Beater Bar Launch Mechanism by Omar, Darshan, Evan, Max
Task: Design deployment mechanism for beater bar
Similarly to last year, the beater bar on our robot needs to be deployed in order to stay within the size limit. Using motors would make the robot heavier, and potentially too...
Starting up our Autonomous Code by Jayesh, Tycho, Max
Task: Get started on autonomous coding
We spent some of the time at the scrimmage today starting up our autonomous code in android studio. The main basis of our coding was put around climbing the ramp, which is our main function of our robot...
Addition of Beater Bar to Robot By Omar, Ethan, Darshan, Lin
Task: Fix and alter robot to include sliding beater bar
Since the robot's last run, several fixes and adjustments had to be made in order to make the robot operational again. All we had to do was tighten a couple of bolts,...
Task: Teach Travis Team how to Use Previous Team's Code
After retiring from FLL at Travis, we decided to share our code library with the other team from the school. We set up a meet with Clay, one of the main programmers of the team,...
Coding for Autonomous Pilot Program By Tycho and Dylan
Task: Program Pilot Code
Our task was to begin programming for our first version of the Pilot class of the robot using other classes for our angle, position, and controller that we created. The controller class known as PID controller used part of...
A few weeks back, I designed a new chassis. It was a combination of the rocker bogey and a tank to make the rocker boogie tank! With the advantage of sturdiness from a tank and the ability to adjust...
Before Scrimmage basic tests By Lin, Tycho, Omar, Max, Darshan
Task: make sure the robot can run
There's a scrimmage next Saturday that we may or may not be going to based on Dallasisd technicalities with our team. Our goals for today were to get a basic autonomous going to dump climbers and...
Dylan, Ethan, and I decided to watch videos to see what other teams were doing to build and improve their robots during the Circle Meeting outside. We wanted to see if any of the designs were successful so...
Task: Improve our 3D Printable case for the Adafruit BNO055 IMU
Last week I designed a case for our IMU sensor in Creo and wrote up how it could be improved. I've fixed most of those issues and we are ready to share the results....
We've been tagging each blog post as we write them according to topics we think they fall into, but there's been no standard for what to choose from. For example, what I tag as "Mechanical"...
Task: Make a 3D Printable case for the Adafruit BNO055 IMU
We're used to having gyros to help maintain heading, but we've never been fans of the Hitechnic gyro sensor. Now we have more options and the BNO055 looks pretty good. But our testing has been off...
Arrangement and Rearrangement of Motor Controllers By Omar, Darshan
Task: Find better configuration of motor/servo controllers and power distribution module on the robot
Today, we tried to figure out the best possible way to stick all the motor controllers and the PDM together to minimize the amount of space they take...
Task:Discuss multiple possible solutions to climb steep incline on field
We held a team meeting outside on the field discussing multiple possible solutions to the problem of the robot ascending to the top of the ramp. While we are already able to climb...
At the strategy meet we had, I brought up how we need money to get sensors so we can detect our heading and position. At the current moment we spend about 3000 dollars a year on parts and sensors and we only get a 1000 dollar...
Building the 2015 Field By Evan, Dylan, Alisa, Trace, Ethan
Task: Cleaning and building the Field
Today we were charged with the task of building the FTC field. There was one problem. The tent we were setting it up in was in a state of decay. We cleaned out the...
Post Kickoff By Jayesh, Omar, Lin, Ethan, Alisa, Evan, Max, Tycho
Task: Build FTC field and begin tank tread mirror side
After the 2015 kickoff, Iron Reign conducted a meeting to construct our game field and also construct our mirror side for the tank treads. Taking turns on placing the grips on our...
Task: Insert grips into alternating treads to boost traction of driving system
I am so done with these treads. For the past three hours I have worked to soak the treads and tread inserts in dish soap. *takes deep breath* The process...
Task: Design a new build platform more suited to this year's challenge
Since the robot game for this year came out about a week ago, we were thinking about which kind of drive system would work best for the challenge, which mostly...
Meeting After Game Reveal By Dylan, Darshan, Alisa, Ethan, Evan, Lin, Tycho, Max, Trace
Task: Discuss robot design
Now that the game has been released, we as a group discussed the different amount of points per each possible game strategy that would give us the most ample amount of points during the...
Labor Day Meeting By Lin, Jayesh, Darshan, Alisa, Omar, Max, Tycho
Task: Learn about OpModes
Today, we reviewed opmodes in the FTC API and how to register new opmodes. We also learned about the differences between regular, linear and synchronous (from SwerveRobotics) opmodes.
Season Startup Team Meet By Max, Tycho, Omar, Lin, Trace, Evan, Darshan
Task: Discuss the upcoming FTC Season
This meet we discussed topics concerning the upcoming FTC season. Our sister team, Imperial Robotics, was also over getting their robot working with the new motor controllers. We went over basics that we...
Task: Determine necessities of this year's field navigation code
Today was our very first meet of the year, and as such, not too much got done other than planning and experimentation. For the greater part of the meeting, I worked...
Overview of new hardware and software By Max,Tycho,Lin,Alisa,Ethan,Trace
Task: Getting a first glimpse at the new motors and controllers with Imperial robotics
We continued our meeting at the Dallas Makerspace after the GitHub tutorial. We unpackaged the new motors and motor controllers for the first time and took out the phones...
Learn About GitHub by Max, Tycho, Jayesh, Lin, Ethan, Trace, and Alisa
Task: Learning more about Git and GitHub.
We've been using GitHub to host this website and to version our robot code since last year. Max, Tycho, Jayesh, Caitlyn, Ethan, Trace, and Alisa attended. Steve Edwards, a member of...
Task: Get some pre-season experience with Android controlled robots
We've been experimenting with Android controlled robots while we wait for our ModernRobotics modules. Argos is a chromovore - it seeks an identified color using OpenCV4Android machine vision processing....
Regional Tournament By Max, Lin, Darshan, Jayesh, and Omar
Task: Perform somewhat successfully at the regional tournament
Due to numerous issues having to do with the design flaws of our robot and with poor luck, we sucked. We were not able to win any matches that day. Also unfortunately, we were...
The previous versions of the beater bar were too bulky and big for the front of the robot, so initially we had just taken the mechanism entirely off. However, we needed something to push the balls towards the...
The two new servos, one for the backboard, and the other for the autonomous small ball, are placed in relatively high positions and needed to be wired. The problem was that the wires needed to be positioned at a...
Our old backboard was very nice in structure, however, as it was made out of paper and plastic Legos, it wouldn't have lasted for very long on the field. Our new design is...
Task: Prototype a backboard for scoring in the 90 cm goal
Since our ski lift sort of launches the scoring balls when they reach the top, we had to create a backboard for the balls to bounce off of and aim at the tube ...
Task:Create Autonomous deploying from ramp utilizing gyro
A simple idea for autonomous was to use dead reckoning, with command such as motor[leftWheel]=100; motor[rightWheel]=100; wait10Msec(100); motor[leftWheel]=0; motor[rightWheel]=0; However, the problems included an inability to correct movement if one side of the wheels had less power than...
PID is useful in many ways, such as setting an arm to a certain position, going straight based on a gyro or following a line. There are three parts to a PID control program : Proportional, Integral and Derivative.
Control Scheme By Darshan, Lin, Tycho, Max, Jayesh, and Omar
Task: Test Autonomous and debugging
Today we were refining our ramp autonomous by debugging the gyro code. We found that our "goYonder" and "goBackward" method were affecting each other which was making our robot work incorrectly and just going...
Mansfield Competition - Off to Regionals By Darshan
Task: Compete at Mansfield successfully
This past weekend the team was at the Mansfield competition hoping to make it past the qualifier. Although we were more prepared by packing early, as the competition was far away, we were still rushed the next...
Task: Assign control scheme to actual competition controller
Referencing the earlier article explaining robot functions needing to be assigned buttons, we had a meeting to get the control scheme actually implemented into the controllers. The picture above displays the majority of the control scheme. Some values...
Task: Have success in tournament despite incomplete robot
The team spent the weekend at UTD at a qualifier. We were not able to complete the scissor lift before competition and had a very simple game plan for each match. Our robot was (is) basically a brick,...
With the scissor lift elevating with the screw-motor system, and the drive chain-claw system for scoring the balls all in place, our robot is now officially ready for competition next week. Our advantages lie in the stable,continuous driving chain of the...
Improve Scissor Lift (V3) - Wiring Guide By Jayesh
Task: Improve Scissor Lift beams
The primary circular based beams were deemed unfit for use because of the constant folding and unstable support it gave for the scissor lift. We have switched to an L-shaped design that gives us greater...
Task: Tear down temporary base frame and begin mounting scissor lift
We will be extending the scissor lift by using two drawer linear slides. We had to mount these on the side so that the two scissor lifts would be stable. Max cut notches into...
We know that we are using a scissor lift, but we needed the actual dimensions. We are using 4 sections/ X's (maybe five if the lift is unstable) and we have about enough space for a...
Our robot has been experiencing issues that the guide mentioned, such as the Tamaya connections shutting off mid tests. We've seen how catastrophic the Samantha shutting off mid match can be, with robots charging into walls and...
Our method for elevating the platform for optimum height has been decided. A simple scissor-based design with support on either side seems the best option. Supporting each opposite side and also lifting the platform, the scissor...
With the new design, we will be using a drive chain with "chairs" placed periodically along it. There will be a basket at the end of the ramp which will be catching the balls. The drive chain will...
Task: Make emergency scoring mechanism for competition
With competition only a week away, the team has decided that the rolling tube will not be able to be completed by the competition. We are now switching to a elevator based design with a drive chain. This...
After finishing about 2/3 of the drive train, I came across the first custom part. We sliced a small chunk off of the inner beam so we could install our goal catcher. Getting the alignment on the...
A Solution we have produced for the placement of the tube was to place to long beams to opposite sides of the robot and connect with a third beam. This addition grants us more surface area...
Placing the lift tube for elevating the balls By Jayesh
Task:Place lift tube
Now that our rolling goal clamp system is working, we have the task of placing the lift tube to elevate the balls to the correct position. First we have to reconstruct the back end of the...
Today I started building the model of the Robot in an assembly in Creo. As I only had some experience with parts, which is not the proper tool for this job, I decided to watch some videos on the...
Our first version of the scissor lift had an unstable structure that was too heavy and often collapsed upon itself. Relying on a lighter, more flexible design, the new version of the scissor lift fixes many of...
Task: Code the servo for the toggle + finalize remote settings
While our scoring tube mechanism for the balls to be placed in the rolling goals is being finalized, our simple task of capturing the rolling goals has finally been coded and...
The first version of the Scissor lift was a basic prototype that wasn't meant to be the final design due to the flimsy, flexible design of the beams. The new version uses heavy steel beams and are...
Task: Test the controller connection with Samantha
With the scoring mechanism gradually coming together, today was devoted to the testing of the sync between Samantha and our robot. The drive control system has given us a weird bug, where on startup, the robot starts moving only...
Our main mechanism for capturing the balls for scoring are now in place. A simple 3D printing of two triangle-shaped items are nailed opposite each other, allowing for a perfect diameter to contain both the balls...
The ideas we have come up with for scoring the balls in the rolling goals have undergone many changes throughout the year. The basic plan was to somehow stack adjacent tubes on top of one another and...
Our goal today was to code for the servo, utilized by the goal clamp, to have a basic toggle to switch the open/closed mechanism. This was accomplished with a boolean value switch within an if/else group. Our boolean...
Task: Find a control scheme for the needed actions
We've mostly been focusing on mechanical aspects on the robot recently, including the 3D printed parts and positioning, so we discussed which actions should be used on what buttons of the controller. In past competitions we've always...
Task: Build a mechanism to hold a rolling goal so we can drive with it
Since we've already cut away part of the beams making up the robot's base to accommodate a rolling goal's shape, we now have to put down a hook to hold it...
For a long time now, one of our problems has been to figure out how to mount the tubes that will function as the lift system onto the robot, and where to mount them. Today,...
The team had an extra meet during the ThanksGiving holidays and we used the extra time to start building the adhesive chain that will bring the balls up for scoring in the tubes....
Task: Make our adhesive strap sturdier and more durable
Today the team had an experience that most of us haven't had before: the art of sewing. The reason is that our adhesive strap needs extra support so the durability is sustained...
Today we visited the Dallas Makerspace. They have moved their building though, and now have much more space. Their facility has great tools for us to use in future endeavours. Also, they are...
Task: Showcase robot to possible future engineers and scientists
On Tuesday we presented our Team's accomplishments, future goals, and basic robotics knowledge in a room full of kids and parents thinking of attending a school of...
We know that we are using a scissor lift, but we needed the actual dimensions. We are using 4 sections/ X's (maybe five if the lift is unstable) and we have about enough space for a...
While looking around on the internet, we found that some teams were trying to grab the bottom of the Rolling Goal to pull it around. This, however, is not what we plan to do right now. What our idea is...
Task: Gain more sponsors to make the work of producing a robot easier
On Saturday, November 8, 2014 a new Microsoft store was opened at NorthPark Center where Big Thought was one of four beneficiary organizations at the opening ceremony. Big Thought, as they...
William B. Travis High School Night By Omar Most of our team went to a middle school named William B. Travis, so when we heard that we had the opportunity to visit our old school again, we jumped on the chance. The school placed us in our 4th grade math teacher's, Mrs....
This week we finished updating the ball collector. This is a major accomplishment, since this is a very important part of the machine, and is the first step towards the ability to score. Our...
Today we came up with a new attack angle for the beater bar. This new angle allows for greater accuracy for picking up the the large balls but missing the small ones. We also added a temporary mounting area for our...
The ball intake mechanism of the robot has finally been given a mostly working design. The plastic ramp and the dual-row system of twist ties has been pretty effective with moderate power driving both rows....
Today we attempted to fit our tubes into our newly-printed Tube Joints. The tube joints, however, were at least 2 mm too small in the inside diameter, so we had...
Today we set out to build an upgraded version of the beater bar. We used square dowels from home depot to prevent the twist-ties from changing their orientation on the bar. We down the...
Last night we went to the Dallas Makerspace to build our ramp for our capture and intake system. Lin had already done the mockup in cardboard and the rest of the team...
Last night we went to the Makerspace to 3D print our second version of the Tube Joint (link in the related articles section). We arrived with a Sketchup file on a...
Task: Create blogs to showcase our ideas and help share our design updates as they go
Blog production will be our main asset to showcase a journal to the judges on competition day. Github is the blog provider we have so today was the day we...
Task: Produce essay to convince EKOCYCLE® to gift us 3D printer
Iron Reign Robotics has been a successful student team that has obtained multiple awards across multiple competitions. FTC (First Tech Challenge), and Google Lunar X-prize are only a few of the competitions and events we have been a part of....
Nature's Fury comes to FTC By Tycho Fig1. Everything in the foreground was inside the tent last night
Yesterday, October 2nd, a storm blew across North Texas, wreaking havok on trees, backyards and many a robotics field. At least our robotics field. Our field was...
Task: Produce ideas for scoring and helping our team-mates win each game
First meet of the season. We brainstormed ideas for retrieving the golf ball and soft ball sized balls while watching the challenge video. We came up with three starter...
Hello, I am Lin Rogers, and I have been a part of Iron Reign since 7th grade, about 4 years. Robotics has provided me with a focus for my education at SEM, so I know that what I'm learning matters.