Once More Unto the Breach

Ready to put the wheels to the carpet for another weekend.

Week 2 competition crept up fast, especially as it was a Friday-Saturday event, 4.5 hours away. We have never had the best of luck on the far side of the mountains - always joking that gremlins entered our robot as we drove through the pass. With only two real days between competition to work on the robot and a pretty extensive tear down, we were somewhat anxious for the first match on Friday, to see if the gremlins had found us once again.

How Preparation Went

Our two days were very busy. We used Trello to track our backlog, must do, in progress, testing, and complete tasks. (I love kan-ban boards, and visual boards in general. I want to try and get Trello more used but specifically more visible to the team next build season.)

We also finished assembling our Wheel of Fortune mechanism!

My personal goal, which aligned well with the development goals, was to have a nice boring weekend for pit crew. We took the indexer off, took the shooter off, replaced a few bearings, remade a few brackets, added some shields to protect wires, and zipped the top half back together. On the chassis side, we cleaned up all the wiring and moved the pneumatic manifolds to the side bays, allowing much easier access for maintenance and repair (if necessary). On the climber side, we made updates to the biggest pain point in the system - the brakes - modifying the mounting frame for easier access and installing newly designed and printed brake teeth. Late (quite late...) Tuesday night, we bolted the indexer back onto the chassis and ran a very simple systems bring-up sans our software team. Wednesday the robot belonged to software for continued shooter tuning and autonomous pathing.

Want to have a shop like the pro's?
Put tape on questionable electronics, write "bad?", and throw it right back in the bin!

We did have one fun story - speaking of auto pathing. Remember the end of Glacier Peak, we mentioned issues with the chassis finally? We unpacked the robot and ran a full software shakedown. All the wheels were pretty well aligned, and overall we couldn't find anything specifically wrong with the drive. We did this with the robot up on the stand, wheels off the ground. (You can probably see where this is going...)

The chassis sat on the stand for the entirety of the mechanical and electrical changes. Then sat on the stand once more for bring-up tests, and the next day's software shakedown. Finally, the software team brought the robot to the practice field, and set the wheels on the ground.

It didn't drive quite right...

The chassis ran "rough", bouncing and shuddering while driving. We were all baffled, no idea what was happening, and how or why it was happening. After some inspection, and discussion with some other local swerve teams, we found that the new wheels we had swapped in (during Glacier Peak competition no less...) had been built up incorrectly. For this season we are using billet wheels with the blue tread bolted into it. This may sound strange - but did you know that if the bolts aren't all the way tight, you can actually drive on the bolt heads, instead of the tread the bolts are supposed to be holding down?

The more you know! (I personally was relieved to hear this was the issue. More training to capture and promote to all the mechanical students for next time!)

Anyway - with all that out of the way, Week 2 Competition, over the mountains to West Valley. Once more we loaded in, once more we prepared to execute our tasks, once more unto the breach.

How Competition Went

In a word - quickly.

Pit crew had a much more relaxing weekend.
More time to socialize, share our robot with others, and a few moments of rest!

I think almost half our matches were 2-or-3 match turnarounds. The organizers did a great job spreading time out, so while we had a lot of "get off the field and go straight into queue", we didn't feel completely overwhelmed with the lack of time. We always got our bumpers changed and a fresh battery installed. In general, this competition was a lot kinder to our pit crew - no major additions happening between fixes, and rather mechanically solid all weekend.

Some good triple climb action!

One bigger failure point was unfortunately the pneumatics once again - the fitting on our PTO loosened up just enough to slow leak through a whole match - our intake dawdled to lift and lower, and it caused our only missed climb all competition. Also, once again, we had Limelight issues, and resolved to swap back to a previous firmware version after our 4th match of the day.

Following qualification match 25, our 7th match of the day, we ran into another real hiccup. Field side, we had been noticing an odd sound coming from the drive train. The bot looked okay, but follow your nose, and ears. There was a problem. Fortunately, this was also during one of our longer breaks (6 match break!) so we prepared a spare swerve module top-plate - 2 motors and pinions that we could replace with 4 bolts, in just a few minutes.

Another funny testing story. Maybe not testing, more... general book-keeping. That Wednesday before the event, when software had the robot on the practice field back home, alongside the driving issue, they also had an issue with one of the CAN-bus connected encoders that we use for steering. These are... rather important, as they hold the zero position, so that all he wheels line up straight with one another. Given that we had one suspect electronic, the fastest swap was to just replace the module before competition. So we did, and off we went. Going further back into history - in the week before Glacier Peak, we took extreme care given all the feedback on Chief Delphi and other sources, to make sure all our Falcon motors were modified and competition ready. (Essentially - the first production batch had issues with the set screws and main shaft falling out of place.) We took specific care to modify all the motors that were on the robot, and then went to that competition.

We... may not have adequately (or at all...) prepared our spares. So, yep. Just before West Valley, we installed a module with insecure Falcon shafts, and 7 matches later, we could hear that something was amiss. Fortunately, the replacement, for that replacement, had been fixed, and no further noises or issues came from... that part of the drive train. Lesson: if there's a known issue - make sure you really know which items you have updated, and which you haven't.

This drawer is labelled "Sworve".
Always pack plenty of spares for mission critical parts.

Friday was a long-short good day for us, and Saturday, as with the previous week, our main focus for the morning was two solid matches to keep a solid rank, and an Alliance Captain spot.

Morning software shakedown is usually pretty boring. This is a good thing. An exciting shakedown means something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Sunday we had a pretty exciting shakedown! Uh oh.

Clean, tidy wires and pneumatics make diagnosis much easier - especially in cramped quarters.

That morning, our indexer simply refused to operate. No software changes, no mechanical changes, but, it wouldn't spin. We activated the climber, PTO engaged and whoosh we were off. Try to run the indexer once more, and nothing. That's not good. After some investigation, once again, a simple fix (fortunately!). Our PTO went on rather late, and our pneumatics went on even later - so we installed them with the fittings we had on hand that would work. For the pancake cylinder, and 1/4" tube - we had some flow-control fittings. Sure, lets just crank them open, then install them.

Wait, wait, wait. Ha! I know exactly what happened now (days later..) It's obvious! It's the gremlins. Obviously. So, what the gremlins had done - was cranked one of the flow control valves all the way closed - our PTO was never disengaging, and we couldn't drive our indexer past the hard stop of the climber. Once identified, a simple fix, and another item added to the watch list. Thankfully, this was caught in the shakedown, and never impacted our on-field performance.

Our last two matches were great. Heck, most of our matches were great. The robot was running well, software making their updates, mechanical keeping the clocks wound, and drive team making it look easy. Somehow, for us, the stars aligned, and we found ourselves first in the rankings at the conclusion of the final match. Once again, our scouting team collected, visualized, and poured over the data from the weekend. Our second team had some of the highest cycles, and strongest autonomous at the event. Our third partner was also pretty special. (The following is from the hidden files kept by my wife, who helps the scouting team. What you are about to hear hasn't been said outside our teams strategies meeting - until now!)

Actually - I'm going to go on another tangent here. Scouting and pick lists, and chatting up high ranking teams. For the most part, these teams scout matches, and for the most part, these teams have a known list of teams for their first and second picks. For CyberKnights, our scouting team owns this list. For most events, that list is finalized at the conclusion of the qualifying matches. While a hand full of students and mentors may participate in the scouting meeting Saturday nights (or, Friday night in this case), literally, only three people on the team actually know the pick list. Don't get me wrong - we love have teams visit our pits see our robot and talk about theirs! But quite literally nobody in the pit knows the pick list, and because we're in the pit, without the list, we can't really do anything about that. If you do come by, and want to talk robots, let's just talk robots! If you're looking to get picked - show it on the field, not in the pit! Back to our story - our third partner!

We had them well-placed in our pick-list, and were continuously, pleasantly, surprised when we had to opportunity to snap them up. 6076 Mustang Mechanica. They had the bones for a solid autonomous, and a solid climb. Over lunch, we chatted with them, supplied them with some tools and parts, and found a solid, consistent 36 points for each of our matches (11 autonomous, 25 endgame). Couple that with a fun drive team engaged in our strategic planning - they were awesome to work with! Small wonder they have blue banners from this event in 2017 and 2018...

Never did get a picture of all three robots together...

One last fun note from our bot though - as we've gained confidence, and started running more, faster, cycles, we've found ourselves sharing the trench, and zooming over the Rendezvous Zone more and more. We've also started eating those billet wheels. I don't really have any lessons learned or "here's a takeaway" from this. Just, we eat wheels. They're delicious.

Robot noms.
Cheddar wheels and teriyaki flavored bevel gears.

Once again, with our amazing partners, 2910 and 6076, we found victory this competition, and were recognized by the judges with the Excellence in Engineering Award. Huge congratulations to our friends 4089, 3663, and 4104 and thanks for the fun matches in finals.

Our seniors enjoying a moment with this incredible machine.

Many congratulations to 4980 for Engineering Inspiration, and 4125 on Chairman's. I actually want to add - I adored Confidential's Chairman's video. It does such a great job describing who the team is, the depth and breadth of the outreach, and the overall value of their FRC team. I imagine (and hope!) that they use that video to introduce new students and parents to the team, share their team with their school district, and line up potential sponsors and philanthropists. Great work, and once again, congratulations.

Confidential's mascot - they are a lot of fun to watch with their energy, spirit, and well, some antics!
I really like this mascot - keep doing what you do!

Afterthoughts

Over the course of the weekend, our message to the students was the same - do your task. Focus on what you can control. While we had another good weekend, the truth is, there was a shadow across the weekend as we learned of the cancellation of both Auburn Events in our district.

Even as a mentor, more than a decade older than the students (even a decade older than some of the mentors now...) this is a new experience for me. Work has made changes - making isolation efforts through enforced work-from-home policies. Costco is... well, pretty much the same, except all the toilet paper is gone. And FIRST recognizes that they too have to make tough choices given the best information they have at the time.

I guess no matter what I say, it will be hard to write about unbiased - we've played two competitions already, and many teams have yet to put wheels down even once. This will be a very strange FRC season, and a very strange year. I guess at the end of the day those few borderline cliche statements will be the best way to close out this post.

Stay healthy.

Have fun. Make friends. Chase excellence.

This is fine.

We're going full speed ahead for our next district meet in week 4, until or unless we are told otherwise. We wish all of you the best with your competitions.

-B