2024 Team Blog

2024 Team Game

Weekly Build Season Updates

Week 1 Recap: 1/8/24 - 1/13/24: Kickoff Week! The majority of this week was spent brainstorming ideas for how we would approach the given tasks in CRESCENDO. At our meetings this week, we mainly discussed what was most important and would result in the greatest amount of points for our team and alliance. Additionally, we talked about what we wanted to focus on and how we would distinguish ourselves from the other teams. Near the end of the week, we started assembling Kitbot and finished building our swerve drive mechanism. Next week, our goal is to start prototyping and start finalizing what our design is going to be. - Nikhil V.

Week 2 Recap: 1/15/24 - 1/20/24: This week, we started building both of our robots, one tank and one swerve drive. Their names are Taylor and Freddie, respectively, named after the theme of this competition, Crescendo. Throughout the week, we simultaneously worked on constructing the chassis for both robots, while also brainstorming what kind of manipulator to use and finalizing game strategy. - Nikhil V.

Week 3 Recap: 1/22/24 - 1/27/24: This week, we essentially finished constructing both robots and are onto the task of programming them. While our priority is using Freddie (Swerve bot) for competition, we have faced difficulties throughout the week on coding it. However, we continue to persevere and innovate by looking to new sources available to try to fix our problem with coding swerve. Additionally, we were able to add bumpers and it looks perfect. Next week, we will try to fix our problem with the code in order to progress further into the building and strategy of our robot - Nikhil V.

Week 4: 1/29/24 - 2/3/24: This week, we re-loctited the gears for our swerve modules. Additionally, we also started construct the materials needed for the arms/manipulators. We used the milling machine to drill the majority of the holes into the metal bars. We also started experimenting with the code and started testing it on swerve bot. Our goal for next week is to finish the manipulators and progress further on finishing the design for swerve bot so that we can practice driving it. 

Week 5: 2/5/24 - 2/10/24: This week, we started manufacturing our intake system and our manipulators. We ended up taking apart part of the chassis in order to make it sturdier. We also started an engineering notebook, something new for our team so that we can record our progress. That way, it will be easier for us to reflect on our build season. By next week we are to aim for our robot to be completely build and start testing our code so that the drive team can get practice and we can finalize our strategy. 

Week 6: 2/12/24 - 2/17/24: Our robot is really starting to come together! This week, we started assembling our climbing mechanisms which consisted of spring loaded arms to help us reach up and hang from the chains. On top of that, we continued progress on our main chassis. Next, in terms of theme, we finalized our robot as T. swerve and made our theme Taylor Swift related. That allowed us to get started on making buttons, continue progress on T - Shirts, and start making posters related to our theme. Next week, we will try to finish building the robot completely by mounting electronics and the climbing mechanism.

Week 7: 2/19/24 - 2/24/24: With this week came tons of unexpected difficulties. First off, we lost over 2 days of building time because there was no school. Next, the climbers were difficult to construct which resulted in us having to take them apart many times. Additionally, one of the climbers was getting stuck, which eventually led us to fix the issue with WD - 40. On a separate note, we finished our T - Shirt designs for this season and got those out as well. Our goal for next week is to finish building T - Swerve and start testing code on the robot along with the Drive team practicing. 

Week 8: 2/26/24 - 3/2/24: This week, we continued with progress on our chassis and started to get the few remaining pieces onto the robot. Also, we started our button-making campaign as well! In order to further develop our theme as our robot being "Taylor - Swerve" we made friendship bracelets so that we could pass them out to other teams throughout the competitions. On top of that, we also began finalizing our code and making different autos as well. Next week, we hope to start testing our code on our robot to get ready for Waterbury!

Week 9: 3/2/24 - 3/8/24: Final week before the first comp!! We ran into some technical difficulties when the metal bar holding our motor for the intake arm began bending, so we were able to innovate to provide further support for that bar in order to make sure it didn't bend during the competition. We were also able to test code on the robot (finally!) in the latter half of the week as well. I think we're in a good position for Waterbury this weekend!

Update 10 - Waterbury Competition: This competition was an emotional rollercoaster. We started off with a barely functioning robot on Friday, where we just finished uploading our basic code to it. Starting off the day on Saturday, our intake got damaged in a practice match with the churro bending. While our pit crew was panicking to fix the intake arm, we played our first 2 qualification matches as a defense bot, slowing down many teams on the opposing alliance from scoring. When we finally did get the arm working, there were several other complications such as our auto not functioning and speaker shot breaking. Despite these complications, we were picked by the third alliance, with 195 (The Cyberknights) and 3146 (Granby Grunts). We ended up making it past the first round but eventually losing to the first alliance. Overall, we had a pretty decent competition and hope to do better at Springfield!

Update 11 - 3/11/24 - 3/21/24:  In this two week period, we've worked on repairing our robot and learning from our mistakes at Waterbury. For example, we've changed the churros/axles in our manipulator arm because during our competition our motors spin at different speeds, causing the aluminum rod to twist, and disable our robots function. We also worked on testing our autos and rewiring our robot, on top of adding LED's to our robot. We also finalized our Taylor Swerve theme with a poster. We are looking forward to Springfield this weekend!

Update 12 - Springfield Competition: Our improvement from last competition was extremely impressive, but it came at its own costs. First off, halfway through our first day of qualification matches, another robot broke our intake arm.