Crazy Time! Competitions are Starting Soon!

This week, we got the dates for our league competitions. If you aren't exactly sure how the league-level competitions work, there are several qualifying meets that take place over the first few months of the competition season. During these meets, teams earn points that accumulate until the league tournament. Qualification meets do not include elimination rounds, judging sessions, or awards. The top 10 scores from the matches during the qualification meets carry over to count for qualification for elimination rounds in the league tournament. The league tournament is very similar to the qualification meets that precede it, but there are a few key differences, namely the presence of elimination rounds and awards. The points teams score during the tournament qualification matches must count towards the team's total points, which previously included the top 10 scores of the qualification meet's matches. The league tournament also includes alliance selections and elimination rounds. There is also a judging session and award ceremony associated with this event, unlike the qualification meets that come before. More information about the competition process is available in Game Manual #1 for this season (https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/ftc/game-manual-part-1-traditional-events.pdf)

The dates, locations, time, and audience restrictions for each of the events we will be competing in can be found on the FIRST website (https://www.firstinspires.org/team-event-search#type=teams&sort=name&programs=FTC&year=2021) As a quick disclaimer, we don't yet know how public audiences, including parents, will be able to view the competition. It is likely that spectators will be allowed to watch in-person (with preventative measures in place for the spread of COVID 19, of course) or through an online livestream (the league used both Twitch and YouTube last year).

Now what do these dates mean? Well, with only three weeks left until our first meet, a typical team should have a completed robot, built and programmed, and be testing and having their drivers practice different strategies on the field. If you've been keeping up with our team in any way, you know that we only have about 30% of our robot built and about 10% programmed. So yea, we're miles and miles behind, which means the next few weeks are going to be crunch time for us if we want to get a robot built in time for our meet!

A couple notes in our defense: this year is our second year of competing, so we are still very new to the whole process, especially considering the situation with quarantine and everything last year. That's our only experience with competition schedules, and last year, we didn't have our first competition until January (and it was virtual)! We have no idea what to expect our progress should be at this point for a normal year or how fast our team works. The point is, we are still in the learning curve, which is a little scary, but hopefully we get past it this year.

Now, this is where I get to what you probably clicked on this post for: the updates on our robot.

This week, there wasn't much visual progress, but I assure you, we've been working (well, the 3D printer has been putting in the most effort, but we've all done a few things this week). We began 3D printing our giant rotating platform for our lift system. It took almost all week; it's so big! We are going to start assembling the lift this week (hopefully) and get it working.

3D printing the bigger of our gear platforms (sooooo BIG!)

In the meantime, we are nearly done with the claw. Last week we had the fiasco of attaching the servo to the claw, but we got that part figured out. This week we were able to mount the two "fingers" (I'm still not sure if that's what you'd call them) of the claw onto an extrusion. At this point it's nearly ready to attach to the lift (when we get it built). Here are some pictures of the claw all put together. We added some better quality rubber bands and tested the grip strength with the different pieces of freight. It lifted everything except the team game piece, but that was without the servo's powered, so hopefully it works when the servos are pushing against it. That's one of our things to do this coming week: test the claw and program the servos.

Our claw "fingers" are attached to an extrusion

The claw can pick up the blocks, balls, and ducks

Our progress at this point is impeded by the 3D printer and the parts we keep having to order for our robot (sometimes I wish we had big stashes of parts like older veteran teams, but it is what it is). I think, with a definitive deadline down for our first meet, we are going to start picking up the pace the next few weeks.

We appreciate seeing all of you read our blog posts and all of our posts on Instagram. Remember to follow us on Instagram (@batteriesnotincludedftc) for a whole bunch of pictures and posts from our team (we even remind you to read the blog posts after we send them out on our website).

Good luck to all the teams competing this season, and especially those competing very soon! Hopefully, you're further along than us ;)