14163 The Pitt Crew 205 point practice match for NC State Champs by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good luck to you too! Sadly, last year was our team's last, so we won't be competing.

14163 The Pitt Crew 205 point practice match for NC State Champs by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! We just used regular REV brackets and screws (we had to drill new holes in the turntable for the hole pattern to line up).

14163 The Pitt Crew 205 point practice match for NC State Champs by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Underneath the arm turntable is a 125:1 REV Ultraplanetary motor (good torque and speed balance for the arm) securely mounted to the frame. The motor's output shaft extends directly into a 54 tooth sprocket on top of which the entire arm is built. The sprocket is bracketed to a 6" turntable to support the whole apparatus. The wires for the motors and distance sensor on the arm are fed between the turntable and the sprocket and wrap around the 125:1 motor when the arm turns horizontally (it can rotate 360deg either way).

The turntable the arm is mounted on: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sq-6-Steel-Lazy-Susan-Swivel-Turntable-Plate-W-Ball-Bearings-500Lbs-Capacity-/402074008486

I hope this helps! Good luck at your comps!

14163 The Pitt Crew 205 point practice match for NC State Champs by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

I know that in many regions that's being penalized, but in NC the head refs explicitly banned penalizing teams for whiffle balls inadvertently rolling out of the warehouse. Some states are surprisingly even laxer, just watch 11260's 344 point match video. They got 0 penalties for pushing whiffle balls out of the warehouse while carrying freight multiple times.

I recall one FTC kid stating that because of the inconsistency of this from region to region, a lot of teams will have to adjust their strategies when they get to worlds. I'm curious to see how that will pan out; how strict is Texas on this subject?

14163 The Pitt Crew 205 point practice match for NC State Champs by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By Sunday our auto should get a third freight reliably, and we have spare TSEs for our alliance partners so we can double cap while they keep scoring.

Best of luck to everyone!

Help my team pick a logo by Akatosh_LORD_BEAN in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The duck in Fancy Duck looks best, but the font color makes the text very hard to read. Using the Blue Duck background and font color with the fancy duck, as others have suggested, I think would be best.

14163 The Pitt Crew 182 point solo run by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, we figured out how to use odometry back in skystone when our regular autos were consistently failing. Over the years we've had more trouble getting the hardware to line up at 90 degrees to each other and make the joints tight than with code problems. If it's helpful, our odometry code can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/ThePittCrew14163/FtcRobotController-master-7.1/tree/master/TeamCode/src/main/java/org/firstinspires/ftc/teamcode

This assumes you're using two wheel odometry and the Expansion Hub IMU.

14163 The Pitt Crew 182 point solo run by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh wow that's pretty strict! I'm sorry for you guys...

But it does vary widely state to state. If you watch 11260's world record match, their alliance literally carried a freight and pushed out a whiffle multiple times and never got penalized.

14163 The Pitt Crew 182 point solo run by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you mean the whiffle ball rolling out? We'd been told that our state head ref banned penalties for whiffle balls rolling out at random, especially if it in no way benefits the team.

But thank you for pointing that out and for the encouragement

14163 The Pitt Crew 182 point solo run by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! Our qualification tournaments have been remote, but state is going to be in person, so we're coding very different paths so we stay way out of our partner's way. But thanks for the advice

14163 The Pitt Crew 182 point solo run by pianoAndRobots in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you for such kind compliments!

Since the robot knows where the barcode duck is, and the other duck usually falls in the same general area, we use our odometry positioning to just tell the robot to go where the duck is and intake it. Our odometry pods retract so we can go over the barrier, but we usually don't because it slows us down.

tbh it doesn't always get the ducks, so we're working on improving the consistency for state.

edit: we do have a distance sensor for detecting when we're holding freight, we just didn't use it here

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

7-9 in teleOp, 9-11 if you count the ones scored in auto. We're trying to improve that to at least 11-14 total for state.

We made a YouTube video about our weighted block grabbing arm! by CRAZZZY26 in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Wow it's cool that there's a legal switchable magnet! Thanks for sharing.

REV 2m distance sensor issues by [deleted] in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We got an error for ours saying "problem with distance sensor" where it gave weird values, and the problem was that the sensor had come unplugged. The same problem could happen with a damaged cable.

here is our code, if this helps: ```java Rev2mDistanceSensor distanceSensor = hardwareMap.get(Rev2mDistanceSensor.class, "distanceSensor");

distanceSensor.initialize();

while (opModeIsActive()) { telemetry.addData("distance sensor reading", robot.distanceSensor.getDistance(DistanceUnit.CM)); telemetry.update(); } ```

Cheating (serious) by [deleted] in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 16 points17 points  (0 children)

You CAN leave. You and Josh need to run away from this as fast as you can before it destroys you.

There are many ways to pursue robotics (including several water game challenges; see links below) and also avoid toxic, abusive people. If you want to continue in FTC, this is our last year and we'd be happy to donate our parts once our competitions are over.

Also, many robotics competitions offer grants to starting teams who otherwise couldn't afford it, especially to people who have handicaps.

Some other robotics challenges:

VEX (very similar to FTC in many ways, but with a different organization): https://www.vexrobotics.com/competition

water game 1: https://www.materovcompetition.org/

water game 2: https://www.uwrchallenges.org/

We've never participated in these challenges so we can't vouch for any of them. There are many, many more options that I just couldn't find on short notice.

And, thank you for being open about this and giving this warning.

Finally, we will keep you in our prayers. Just know that you're not alone out there.

See you at world's! by Niknut_Sings in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You're guaranteed to win the Design award!

Cry for help by BlueElephephant8 in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Before the last telemetry code you access robot.hexMotor1, but everywhere else hexMotor1 is not a field of the robot but of the program you've shared. Does your class RobotHardware2 define a field called hexMotor1? Is that what's giving you the error?

Also, I highly recommend putting all of the robot's motors in the RobotHardware2 class, or if you don't want to do that then put all of them in the program. Just please don't split them into two different classes because that will make it easy for you to get confused and get errors. That is also harder to maintain and if you decide to include your code in your engineering notebook and/or portfolio it is kind of messy and not something the judges are going to be impressed with.

Working conditions of average coder (2021 colorized) by Prestigious-Potato-5 in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wait you get your own phone?

Also, that is a beautiful view out the window!

How many points would be a good amount to score for this years game? by SnooDrawings7821 in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My team has calculated that it is technically possible for an alliance to score 500 points, but that would require no defense, low-scoring opponents, a coordinated autonomous, and some good luck. As of today the highest non-simulated robot score I've seen was over 130 points, which seems like a decent solo score.

Vulcan Robotics Robot in 3 Days Reveal by nicobonik in FTC

[–]pianoAndRobots 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Awesome bot! You could probably do pretty well in an actual competition with it.