Oregon State FTC Championship 2022

 State was amazing! We practiced our presentation again Friday night and Saturday morning before our judging session Saturday afternoon. We dressed in our team shirts and went to the venue. We found our booth and decorated and got the robot on the practice field to test autonomous. Our SOAR League trophies were waiting at our table so we got photos of all of us holding them!

Our alliance picks were challenging and in one round we faced the top two teams, but we were consistent and did our best until the plastic piece on the arm that held the spring broke. We scramble and repaired it over our lunch break and just in time for our next round. We ended the weekend ranked 13th out of 38.

We met and talked with some great teams and saw some fantastic robots! We are inspired to keep learning and be even better prepared next year and go after the Inspire Award to go tho Worlds!

Here are are Championship photos.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #42

 Meeting 42

DATE : 3/2/22

Agenda: Wall Runners and adding the Wrist

Attendees: Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Skyler Firestone, Zeke Humber, Nate Humber, Coach Cynde and Mentor Dan Killeby

Notes: We finished attaching the Arm spring and the wiring for the linear servo. We may need to tighten the string on the arm a little. Sean worked on resetting the claw settings and programming the claw servo.

We all stood up and did a run of the presentation, we need to run it frequently to get the order and wording down. We will re do the presentation boards this weekend.

We learned from the school today that the School Board has agreed to buy our second robot! We may go ahead and buy the Control Hub because of the problems with ours. That way we can get the original repaired or replaced. We are using the second Drive Hub and it is working so we can send the first one for repair now.

Coach has ordered new fogless glasses for the championship and we talked about scheduling and meals. We may try to go to OMSI Saturday afternoon!

Freight Frenzy Meeting #41 Wall Runners and adding the Wrist

 Meeting 41

DATE : 2/21/22

Agenda: Wall Runners and adding the Wrist

Attendees: Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Skyler Firestone, Zeke Humber, Nate Humber, Coach Cynde and Mentor Dan Killeby

Notes: Dan came to the start of our meeting and brought some tools to show the team how to file the holes for the bearings using rat tail files and how to round out the tips of the brackets using flat files. We laid out some paper towels to catch the filings. Dan showed Skyler and Jessica the proper way to file and they got the job done and fit the bearings in. We set up the wheels in the bearings and they looked like they would work well. We need to move the side wall and reattach the electrical board to give the brackets room on that side of the robot and then we can measure for mounting holes.

We took a break for lunch and thanked Dan for coming to help us!

Zeke came in and took over the brackets and drilling them while the rest of us moved on adding the wrist to the claw and getting it mounted.

Sean wasn’t feeling well and we decided to end the meeting early. Zeke and Nate stayed with Ed and they finished attaching the wall runners and tested them.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #40 Wall Runner Brackets

  Meeting 40

DATE : 2/20/22

Agenda: Wall Runners

Attendees: Sean Pakros, Mentor Dan Killeby

Notes: Zeke shared an idea for Wall Runners to Keep the Mechanum wheels from catching on the gaps in the wall when we bump it, but we needed to create some brackets to use with our small Rev tires. We showed Dan Killeby what we were thinking and he made measurements and worked with Sean at his shop to get them started by cutting and drilling the metal L brackets.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #39 - The Claw and Meeting the Prickles

 Meeting 39

DATE : 2/19/22

Agenda: Claw wrist development & Meet thr Prickles #16837 from Alaska

Attendees: Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Skyler Firestone, Coach Cynde

Notes: Since we had to fix the claw servo, it gave us a chance to look over the whole structure and see if something was binding and causing strain. It turns out that the servo plate was rubbing on the hex attachment that we glued in to the claws. We added a couple of spacers to prevent this and it functioned much better. We completed the rebuild and ran some additional tests. Sean will need reprogram the claw settings when he adds the programming for the linear servo.

We took some time to rewrite our presentation lines so they include some information that the judges asked us. We will redevelop our presentation boards to flow better with the speeches.

Jessica connected with one of the first teams who liked us on Instagram to see if they would like to set up a Zoom meeting. Are hope was to connect with more teams out of our region and build friendships and support for future success. We introduced ourselves and talked about our teams and shared our robots and their development. It turns out their school is even smaller than ours with only 100 students! They struggle with mentorship just like we have. We explained that this year we questioned all of our family and friends for possible mentors in engineering. We explained that it may just be a one time half hour session that can help us grow and succeed. We told them about our meeting with Bob Smith about motors and ratios and they desperately need that information. We explained that we are reconstructing the meeting for our notebook and will send them a copy with the science and the math. They shared with us that their success has been in outreach and presentation and that’s how they won the Inspire Award, and they are willing to help us with our presentation. We will set up a meeting after their state championship and be for ours to share our presentation and get their feedback. It was great to share our stories, make friends and plan to help each other! We all felt great about the meeting and are excited to meet again!

Freight Frenzy Meeting #38

 Meeting 38

DATE : 2/17/22

Agenda: More Planning for State Championship

Attendees: Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Coach Cynde

Notes: This was an after school meeting. We spent a large part of the meeting resetting the field because we took it to the Grade School for our meeting with the School Board.

We made some plans for Saturday’s meeting. We are hoping to have the build changes done by Monday. We have decided to go ahead with installing the wrist for our claw. We have all the parts needed to proceed. We will need to remove the plastic plate that holds the spring and create another stop and holder so that the plastic does not interfere with our arm retraction. We will contact Dan Killeby again to see if he can help us with some fabrication. Zeke would like us to create wall runners with the small Andy Mark tires we have because the mecanum wheels sometimes catch on the walls. he is working on a design for that.

We discussed that one of the robot tires is sluggish and pulling when turning. The wheel gears have picked up a lot of dust from being greased with silicon grease. Jessica will bring a toothbrush to clean them.

After our meeting with Aidan, we discussed reaching out to other FTC teams out of our area for outreach. Jessica contacted one of the first teams to like out posts on Instagram, The Prickles #16837 and we have scheduled a Zoom meeting for this Saturday.

At the end of the meeting, the claw started making a crunching sound and we realized that the servo was not functioning right. We had discussed concern for using the Rev servos vs the GoBILDA servos because of brass gears vs steel gears. We will change out to the GoBILDA servo next meeting.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #37 Seeking Sponsorship with Precious Firestone

Meeting 37

DATE : 2/16/22

Agenda: SOAR League Debrief and Plan for State Championship

Attendees: Parent Precious Firestone, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone

Notes: Parent Precious Firestone offered to pick up and take the team members to businesses in Sutherlin and request additional sponsorship for the team. They brought home a $250 donation from Brown State Farm Insurance and others have said they will donate, too. Thank You to Precious for helping our team!

Freight Frenzy Meeting #36 - Presentation for the Elkton School Board

 Meeting 36

DATE : 2/14/22

Agenda: Presentation for the Elkton School Board

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber

Notes: We sent a letter to the school requesting a meeting with the Elkton School Board to advocate for FIRST Robotics by showing what we have learned this year and how we are succeeding. We are hoping to have a dedicated work space for our work in the future and additional funding for a second robot base for prototyping. The Board members were very supportive and will consider our request.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #35 Zoom Meeting with Elkton FTC Captain and Alumni Aidan Smith

 Meeting 35

DATE : 2/12/22

Agenda: Zoom Meeting with Elkton FTC Alumni Aidan Smith, Prototype the Claw Wrist and test the linear servo

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone

Notes: We had a great meeting with Elkton FTC Captain and Alumni Aidan Smith. He is currently a Junior at Oregon State University studying Mechanical Engineering. We discussed our goals, challenges and the robot build. We told him about the issues we have had and asked for his advice on making changes with only 5 weeks until State Championship. We spent the afternoon working on updating our blog that's connected with the school web page, planning more outreach and strategizing about how to improve our driving.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #34 - Tournament Debrief

 Meeting 34

DATE : 2/8/22

Agenda: SOAR League Debrief and Plan for State Championship

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone

Notes: We have 5 weeks to prepare for State Championship in Hillsboro!

The claw worked well and great driving by Zeke and Skyler. The scouting by Zeke, Nate and Jessica really paid off and helped us understand the best ways to work with each alliance. Autonomous Programming was successful every time. Our Judging was good but out of order, too quiet and nervous. We answered questions well. We scored our highest matches yet at 170, 177 and 238. We were ranked Second. First Winning Alliance Pick and we won the Connect Award! We progress to the State Championship!

We discussed how we can improve for State:

1. Presentation

    Add outreach numbers - The judges asked how we know we are reaching people and we need to give some quantitative answer.

    More presentation practice with live audience!

2. Technical Drawings - we need to show more of our CAD drawings in the Notebook and on the display boards

3. Our Notebook needs to include the math equations we did for the motors and any other calculations.

4. Programming - Notebook section, Page for Portfolio, Control Award, Road Runner

5. Display Board Improvement and Trifold for our table

6. More Sponsorship

7. More Outreach and Mentors, SWE Connection for Jessica?

8. The Robot - What Improvements?

   We talked about the possibility of changing to a roller intake like other teams had, but, it’s too much design and re-engineering work in 5 weeks. 

One of the biggest problems was being delayed from getting freight because of a larger robot blocking our path over the barriers. If we could fit around the barrier, we would be able to continue gathering freight for the alliance shipping hub regardless if the other larger robot. We would need to decrease our robot width 3/4”. It would mean cutting 2 of our GoBilda Beams to make them fit correctly. We discussed it and decided this was workable and would not have dire effects on the programming. Ed offered to work with Nate and Zeke to disassemble the center of the robot and trim the back channels before our next meeting.

    For weeks, we had discussed that a wrist for our claw would be helpful and make it more accurate to place blocks in the Shared Shipping Hub and to cap with our team element. Coach found a linear servo and we created a prototype of what we had been discussing by using a hinge and a pair of channel pieces.

    Sean also wants to try a hexagonal shape for the team element. We need to recut our plastic sides and reprint numbers and marker holders to glue onto them.

    We noticed that one of the wheels is not strafing and is pulling a bit to one side. Ed said the carriage might be off balance. We also have a lot of debris in the wheel gears from dirt on the mats. Jessica will bring a toothbrush to the next meeting so we can clean them.

We have a list of tasks and set a time line plan: 5 weeks total

2 weeks for any build changes

2 weeks to update our Presentation and start practicing

3 weeks for any programming changes and improvements

4 weeks for additional outreach, mentorship and sponsors

4 weeks to improve our display boards for presentation and create our trifold

4 weeks to improve our Portfolio and update our Notebook

4 weeks to improve the Team Element and reprint the details for our robot sides

4 weeks of Driver Practice

Freight Frenzy Meeting #33 SOAR League Championship

 Meeting 33

DATE : 2/5/22

Agenda: SOAR League Championship at Roseburg High School

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber

Notes: This was an amazing day! We were allied with Roseburg team Aries and together we scored the high score of the SOAR League Season of 238! Our Judging presentation was not perfect, but we did our best. We finished the day ranked #2 in the League! We were Winning Alliance First Pick! We won the Connect Award for all of our outreach and advocacy! And we are one of the top six teams going on to state!! Great Day!!

Freight Frenzy Meeting #32 Meeting with Elkton Mayor Dan Burke

 Meeting 32

DATE : 2/3/22

Agenda: Meeting with Elkton Mayor Dan Burke for FIRST Advocacy and Government Outreach

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber, Mayor Dan Burke

Notes: We invited Elkton Mayor Dan Burke to come visit with us so we could share why FIRST Tech Challenge is important to us and to advocate for FIRST Robotics. We want to show the value of FIRST for educational purposes and for future vocational knowledge.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #31

 Meeting 31

DATE : 1/29/22

Agenda: Scrimmage with Calapooia and Sutherlin Teams

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber

Notes: We sent an invitation email to the Calapooia teams to invite them for a scrimmage before our league championship. To make it a full field, they invited Sutherlin Robotics to join us. 

We plan to collaborate more with our local small teams to help build equity and share knowledge so that we are able to compete on the same level as the larger funded schools in our League.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #30

 Meeting 30

DATE : 1/28/22

Agenda: Autonomous improvements and Driver Practice

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber

Notes: We've been working on strategy and driver practice to get ready for our League Championship!!

Sean has been working hard upgrading the Basic autonomous programs that we have to meet all the tasks for each of the four areas and to include Open CV to read the barcode.

Freight Frenzy Meeting #29

 Meeting 28

DATE : 1/25/22

Agenda: Meeting with Alek Skarlotos and FIRST Advocacy

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber, Dan Killeby, Alek Skarlotos, Ross

Notes: We invited Congressional Candidate, Roseburg High School Graduate, and National Hero Alek Skarlotos to come visit us so that we can share why FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics is important to us and the value for all Oregon students. We showed Alek what we have designed and constructed and the challenge we need to meet to succeed. We talked about how FIRST encourages innovation, creativity, teamwork and community outreach. It is hands on learning to engineer, create, test and Re-engineer to improve. Alek was impressed and supportive and even drove the robot and scored elements. It was a terrific visit and he promises to visit us at the League Tournament. 

Freight Frenzy Meeting #28

 Meeting 28

DATE : 1/22/22

Agenda: Mentors Dan and Madalyn, Robot re-engineering improvements

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone, Ed Humber, Dn Killeby

Notes: We had a great Zoom meeting with Madalyn. We showed her our robot and discussed our engineering process. She told us about experiences with her FTC and FRC teams, Dean’s List, and how to present to the judges. We had a great conversation and are grateful for the mentorship! Madalyn is available to help more if we need her.

Dan and Jessica looked over the robot to find why the arm was loose. They found that one of the worm gears were not attached to the motor and under closer scrutiny found that the set screw was missing. Jessica and Dan worked on replacing the set screw and tightening everything down by adding a couple spacers. There’s still a little play in the arm when it goes over the rails so we looked at adding surgical tubing to have flexibility for motion but stabilize the arm. It seems to work better.

We looked at how the claw was grabbing the blocks and it is grabbing too close to the top of the block. Looking over the claw, the base plate is bent and angled upward from hitting the ground too hard. We have already decided to reconstruct the claw and lower the profile. We will change out the plate, too. We deconstructed the claw and looked at how we could compress it by imbedding one of the shafts into the claw itself. Ed helped the team drill a hole and set the shaft with glue..

Freight Frenzy Meeting #27

 Meeting 27

DATE : 1/21/22

Agenda: Robot Improvements, Notebook and Profile, presentation, Demo for Sarah Billings

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Coach Grace, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber, Skyler Firestone

Notes: Photos of our team work were picked up for our display boards. Our meeting notes are all entered in to the computer so that we can add pictures and get it to the printer. Now we just need to go through the notes and pull out the Engineering points for our timeline.

We have an outreach meeting scheduled with Madalyn NGuyen tomorrow at 10:30. She is FTC and FRC Alumni, FTC Dean’s List Finalist and FRC Dean’s List Winner 2020. She is an advocate for FIRST and young women in FIRST. 

The team believes past of the reason for dropped blocks at Meet 3 may have been the strength of the servo and would like to try to change out servos. We also discussed that lowering the height of the claw mechanism would make it easier to get between the layers in autonomous. We also changed out the silicon tape on the claw.

Mentor Sarah Billings stopped by for a demonstration of the robot and challenge, She has helped mentor some of our teammates in CAD and donated our Makerbot 3D printer and filament to the team. She was impressed with what we have accomplished and we can contact her any time we need assistance.