Written By: Audrey T
Getting our Robot Ready!
There was quite a bit of work to do before we went to our first competition. Northern Lights was a week one, meaning we were in crunch time to get our robot done. Despite a parts delay setting us off schedule by quite a bit, we were able to get our bot ready and moving for comp.
In more fun bot news, it has a name! Much to the dismay of the poor media lead who has to remember how to spell this, our robot is named Diplodoculus. All jokes aside, pretty peak name. Additionally, we have named the batteries after different dinosaurs. This has been a great season for the dinos; they even made it into our IMPACT video!
On the Topic of IMPACT
For those who don’t know, IMPACT is one of, if not the, largest awards in FIRST. It honors teams that give a lot back to their communities and make a big impact by spreading FIRST’s core values. This award is the only non-robot-based way to get into Worlds. The award includes an essay, a series of executive summaries, a presentation with a question segment, and a video!
This year, our team went in with a big focus on our sustainability, community, and inclusion core values. Some major themes were our mentorship of FTC and FLL, as well as our Inclusivity subteam and the work that they have done. There was a unique challenge this year, as two out of the three presenters for this award were freshmen due to conflicts with our drive team. Many questions targeted past events and experiences on the team that they had not been present for. Luckily, they were incredibly locked and studied our Business Binder in the days leading up to the event to get as much team knowledge as possible.
(If you cannot guess, I am on the IMPACT team. There will be more IMPACT than ever seen before in a blog post.)
Talon business binder SORTED BY SUBTEAM by MediaOur Practice Day
The Thursday of every regional is a practice day, allowing teams time to get the problems with their robots worked out and get everyone ready for competition the following day. Our team also used the practice day to get all of our pit scouting done!
Pit scouting is when you and at least one buddy (because safety is lovely) go around to your assigned teams in the pits and ask them some basic questions about their robot. This helps us know what each team is capable of, which helps us plan for our upcoming qualification matches. Some interesting observations from Thursday were that barely any robots attempted to climb and that many teams had large amounts of glitter involved in their team spirit prep.
Non-Robot News
Along with the robot, Thursday was also our practice day for IMPACT. This was the day we knew one of our presenters balancing both the drive team and presenting was impossible due to the many robot issues we were encountering. This meant our backup presenter had around 24 hours to learn all the needed materials. Thanks to loads of practice and an emergency drop-off of our presentation board (which we totallyyyyy remembered to pack), we were able to be ready for our final presentation on Friday.
Something great about Thursday was the variety of activities offered by the other teams there! Our team attended a breakthrough women in engineering panel, giving us ideas for our own panel back at home. Additionally, we went to the chill-out game event towards the end of the day. They had cockroaches! We were also officially the least chill people there, as several teammates engaged in a high-stakes (bragging rights) puzzle-building contest. This was the day I learned people could be bad at puzzles.
Qualification Matches and Whatnot!
While the practice day allowed us to get some issues worked out, we still had quite a few things come up throughout the day. Before I talk about the actual robot news, I have a fun fact to share. Our head mentor loves the national anthem choir, but our team cannot sing. These facts seem like they would cancel each other out, but they do not.
Every competition, we fill that choir with Talon kids, and just make sure none of us are standing too close to the mics. While we give her grief for the public humiliation in the moment, it is actually really fun to look back on. Thank you, Ellie. I’m still surprised I was the only one to find out your plot earlier.
Now onto robot updates, these are provided by a lovely mentor on the team (I have just copy-pasted from our Slack channel)!
Post Match Update 1:
Robot controls started backwards, and the robot turret is not facing the hub, so we are on the practice field to work on it. Positives: Won auto and successfully drove and passed despite stuff not working great. The drive team does have an emotional support dinosaur. We were still able to drive and pass to our alliancemates! Our human player also scored us a ton of points!
Our driver actually drove this entire match backwards!
Fun Fact!
Post Match Update 2:
Wheels were fighting each other at the beginning of the match, and then the field orientation was sideways for most of the match. At the end of the match, it did lock in.
Post Match Update 3:
We had Will and Rishi (programming peeps) with Brooke-Lynn (Brooke-Locked-In-Lynn), drive team for debug help. We put a ball in the hub with the robot. Everything is working on the practice field, so we are discussing with FTA since the robot isn’t working on the field.
Post Match Update 4:
Can issue for the drive motors so none of the motors ran. Programming is continuing to work on the turret issues.
Match Updates Break: IMPACT Update!
WE PRESENTED!!! IT WENT REALLY WELL!! EVERYONE LOCKED IN!!
Post Match Update 5:
We scored a point, and the robot drove forward. Still working on the turret aiming, but checking on the practice field.
Post Match Update 6:
We found a logical error in the shooter code, so hopefully aiming will work for the next match.
Post Match Update 7:
Back to the practice field to work on dialing in the aiming.
Post Match Update 8:
We are going to do some adjustments to the passing, aiming for the shooter.
Final Stats
Team 2502 was Rank 16 with a record of 6-5-0
We were unfortunately not selected for a playoff alliance, but we stuck around for the awards!
The Creativity Award!
We didn’t walk away from this event empty-handed; our team won the Creativity Award! This award was given to us based on our unique robot design. We opted for a hopper-less design. Our robot currently works like a snowblower, making us a great alliancemate who can easily get all the fuel onto our side of the field.
Final Thoughts
While we didn’t get exactly what we wanted out of Northern Lights, it was still an incredible experience! Even though we didn’t reach the playoffs, we were still able to make a lot of needed progress on our robot and have a ton of fun throughout the day. Through talking with other teams, practically ice skating to the venue every day, cheering on our bot, and playing enough Clash Royale 2v2’s for a lifetime, our team made memories we won’t soon forget.
Stay Connected With Us During The Entire Season!
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