Authors: Andrew Georgioff
2021 Season!
As you have likely noticed, this is the first post of the 2021 season blog! Due to COVID-19 cutting the 2020 season short, FIRST is doing a different set of challenges for the 2021 season called Infinite Recharge at home, with several challenges. The full info can be found here. We are planning to use our 2020 robot for these challenges, but with some modifications which we were previously unable to finish before the 2020 season was cut off.
New Intake
To prepare for this year’s challenges, the main change we wanted to make on the robot was widening the rollers on the intake. This was a change we had previously planned to make after our competition in Duluth, but we were unable to complete due to COVID.
Most of the progress we made today was finding parts and some fabrication. Due to the long stretch of time since we had last accessed our workspace and worked on our robot it took a while to adjust, though we were still able to cut and tap 8 hex shafts, as well as cutting the plastic tubing for the rollers.
Above: Six cut and tapped hex shafts (two more were finished later)
Above: A lathe cutting a hole into hex shaft. .
Software/Field setup
One other focus for our time today was setting up any necessary software for the year. This included the 2021 version of WPILib and NI Game Tools, the new REV client, the 2021 Phoenix Tuner update, and several other updates. In addition to this, we set up the field for the Infinite Recharge at Home challenges.
Above: A field set up with power cells and markings.
Quote of the day: “The first four letter word that came to my mind was cat” – Ishan Shetty, 2020-2021 Business Captain