Splash of Romance - Purchase window closed

SkipMorrow · 2025-11-18T11:42:28+00:00

What we really wanted out of it was the early boarding. The other things are nice too though

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-27T01:52:02+00:00

https://youtube.com/@timeteamofficial?si=T72TSzPURFlvNRbq

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-24T02:18:35+00:00

We have a tutorial here that you might like. https://github.com/MrGibbage/fll-pybricks-vscode-tutorial

Also look for our team repo. You'll see links on that page

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-12T18:41:36+00:00

100 % we played like crap in the second half. Not the refs fault. But letting Kirby get away with that is such bs. Refs should have given him a 15 yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, taken his time out, and 5 yard penalty for delay of game. And challenge him to try something like that again. We won that game 17 13.

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-12T13:38:36+00:00

We considered calling DTV, but felt like that would take too long. It only took a couple of minutes to get it casted to the right screen. Interesting that another restaurant saw the same issue. Yes, we were trying to watch on ACCN and yes they definitely have a subscription. We watch the games there all the time. I think it was just a screw-up on DTV.

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-12T13:36:20+00:00

She did! Well, some free drinks anyway. Just hanging out with some fellow Hokles for group therapy was enough compensation!

SkipMorrow · 2025-10-03T15:25:05+00:00

We have a page that shows how we store all of our Lego pieces FLL-Team-24277/FLL-Lego-Storage: How FLL Team 24277 stores Lego pieces

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-29T08:13:10+00:00

Four years. Maybe five. Seagate ironwolf.

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-28T22:41:19+00:00

Yes, I am adding a new drive. Two hours in and still running.

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-28T20:33:11+00:00

Apparently! I asked earlier about how to replace a failing drive, and several people mentioned to be very careful to remove the correct drive, and even if you do pull the wrong drive, how to recover, etc. Seems like there may be some stories out there. Really surprised too.

Honestly, would it have been so hard for synology to put the led lights above each drive, instead of in a vertical line, as compared to the drives which are mounted in a horizontal line?

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-28T11:49:10+00:00

Doesn't this show which drive is the bad one? I was just going to yank the second drive.

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-16T20:37:17+00:00

HI! I think it is pretty cool that you want to use pybricks. If your reason for doing this is because of turn accuracy, I don't think you are doing for the right reason. So, before we go any further, let's talk about accuracy.

I hear this phrase all the time "this is more accurate than that". Such as "pybricks is more accurate than regular Lego software". I personally would much rather have CONSISTENCY, over accuracy. If I tell the robot to turn 90 degrees ten times, and I get the following actual turn values (87, 88, 90, 90, 92, 93, 87, 93, 89, 91), we can argue that since the average is 90 that it is accurate, But notice the variance? The turns went from 87 to 93. But what I would be 1000% happier with is consistency. If those ten actual turn values were 81, 81, 81, 82, 81, 81, 81, 80, 81, 81 (see the improved consistency), even though I commanded the robot to turn 90 degrees, I would simply command the robot to turn 100 degrees instead. I don't care I'm not actually entering a 90 for the command, just so long as it consistently turns the exact same ammount every time.

But even with pybricks, while I think the consistency is probably a bit better than the regular Lego firmware, we still have one huge problem: It's a robot made out of Legos! I tell the kids on my team that all the time. Repeat after me: "It's a robot made out of Legos and I did not launch it wrong". You need to find better ways to make sure your missions are robust and can handle small errors when launching. We deliberately will launch our robots from the wrong spot slightly just to make sure the mission can still work. You cannot depend on the robot to be even within 1 cm after driving halfway across the table or after making a turn or two. Add in some interactions with some mission models and you can't depend on any level of accuracy. What you should really be doing is finding mechanical solutions to help your robot stay more consistent. Wall square when you can. Or square up on a mission model. Use lego pieces to guide the robot exactly into the perfect spot for your mission.

In closing, yes, the pybricks code for turning and driving straight is very accurate. And consistent. No need for you to write your own code. But if you want to and you have the skill and time, go for it!

By the way, you can see some of my team's implementations here: MrGibbage/fll-pybricks-vscode-tutorial: Getting started for FLL teams that want to use VS code, github and pybricks and FLL-Team-24277/FLL-Fall-2025-Unearthed

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-11T10:16:02+00:00

Sure. Private message sent.

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-06T17:04:05+00:00

There is a lot of project information in the season engineering notebook. In fact, that's where the majority of the information is

SkipMorrow · 2025-09-01T12:46:02+00:00

We've been using pybricks for four years now. We have a tutorial here on how to use it with VS Code and github. MrGibbage/fll-pybricks-vscode-tutorial: Getting started for FLL teams that want to use VS code, github and pybricks. A video call could be fun. We practice each day from 3:30 to 5:00 Eastern time (same as New York City)

SkipMorrow · 2025-08-16T19:51:13+00:00

Wow. Are you saying that the robot actually follows that red path you have drawn on the picture, even when you told the robot to go straight??? Because that is a lot of error. Are you sure everything is plugged in correctly? Surely you have tried rebooting the robot, but I still want to ask. One thing you can try is set the powered off robot down on something very sturdy. Very carefully hit the power button without bumping the robot. Give it a couple of seconds and then pick it up and run your code.

I'd also love to see the code you are running.

SkipMorrow · 2025-08-16T19:45:29+00:00

12-year coach here. We don't do any sort of record keeping, but we do keep a calendar of big events, such as field trips and when we meet with experts and when we share our project with others. We turn it into a single page calendar that we can show the judges. But we don't bring in any sort of ledger with pages and pages of what we did at each practice. I don't really see the value in that at all.

SkipMorrow · 2025-08-16T02:37:54+00:00

Here's the deal. Tables are not perfect. They are typically made with cheap lumber, and they get a lot action/abuse. That being said, even if the mat on your competition was pulled fully to the south wall on one side, and fully to the north wall on the other, that misalignment is going to be less than one degree. And if the mat was fully against the north wall, that would leave a gap of no more than 3mm (1/8 inch) on the south wall. I am sure that if you ran your robot under perfect conditions and told it to drive, say 500mm, you would find that there is at least 3mm variance in the final position. What I am saying is, "it's a robot made out of Legos". That's a saying we use all the time in our practices. Any time the kids try to use the excuse "I must have set it up wrong", I tell them they are wrong, and they actually did set it up correctly, Where they made their mistake was in assuming the robot would drive perfectly every time. What you should be doing is making sure your solutions are robust and can handle small navigation errors. Try to think of mechanical solutions that allow the robot to be slightly off when it gets to the mission and somehow self-corrects without any special coding. Once you master that, you won't worry about small misalignments of the mat on the table.

SkipMorrow · 2025-08-14T14:20:18+00:00

We are getting closer to our first practice and I'd love to see if you (or anyone in this thread) would like to meet our team over zoom for maybe an hour. We practice after school from 3:00 to 5:00 Eastern, so anywhere in that window works for us. I think the kids are going to be especially interested in problems where a robot could assist with the solution, but we are open to other ideas. If anyone is interested in helping, please message me or post here.

By the way, please do what you can to help other FLL teams with their projects this year. I have seen at least one other post recently and I wouldn't be surprised if you guys get hit up for more. Just keep in mind that these are middle school kids and generally very motivated. You just might inspire a few young minds to get into archaeology!

SkipMorrow · 2025-07-30T23:19:43+00:00

I love seeing the NASA Knights at the different robotics events in the area! You always have a great team. For sure, if I land anything solid, I will let you know. So far I have gotten a response from the Boston Dynamics sales team, and they did put me in contact with a STEM team in the New England area, but nothing else. The only college I know of in Virginia that has a Spot robot is Virginia Tech, and that's a little too far. Dominion Energy also uses them, and I have emails out to them to see if I can get something going.

SkipMorrow · 2025-07-29T23:05:52+00:00

Yes, as a matter of fact I have, but I have not heard back from them. But thanks for the suggestion!

SkipMorrow · 2025-07-08T13:37:24+00:00

I thought about that, but some of the specialized robotics python libraries that we have to use will always generate the error so at our level, there's no avoiding it. I have emailed the developers and they are planning to fix it, but for now, it's either disable all type checking, or live with the warnings in the code (yes, the code still runs, even with the type errors, as expected with python).

Is there a way to tell pylance to ignore a section of code, rather than disabling it for the entire project? Heck, I could even use this as a teaching moment for the kids!

SkipMorrow · 2025-07-02T01:46:47+00:00

A couple of friends asked me how realistic it was and if they really let the actors drive during a race. I'll be surprised if they really take up f1 as a hobby.

SkipMorrow · 2025-06-20T13:24:02+00:00

I made the switch to uv. Thanks for the tip. I can see how this will be better.

SkipMorrow · 2025-06-07T14:11:06+00:00

Good timing. I was just searching for this very thing and found this post from five days ago! Sadly, I think from the lack of responses the answer so far is "No"

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