This Week in FRC - Feb 02, 2024

As a recap, this year’s First Robotics Competition game, presented by HAAS, is called “Crescendo”. The 2024 game needs a robot that is able to intake a disk-like foam ring and successfully shoot it into three different scoring areas – the speaker, amp, and trap! At the end of the game, robots will even need to hang off a chain structure! Team 7419 has been working hard for the past 4 weeks, and each of our three departments is happy to report that the hard work is paying off!

Hardware

This week, the Hardware Department continued to work on The Alpha robot. This robot was being tested throughout the week when unfortunately, a couple of hardware issues came up. To ensure that the software team had the time necessary for testing, these issues were resolved as soon as possible. The intake on the Alpha robot, which is used to pick up the note, was also recently switched from an over-the-bumper, deployable, and retractable intake, to an under-the-bumper intake. Both types of intake have their own advantages and disadvantages. Through rigorous testing of functionality, we finally decided which type to use on the final robot. Hardware's meticulous planning and testing is starting to show results as Team 7419’s Alpha robot continues to show improvement and progress.

Software

During the week, the software team got autonomous control for the shooter wrist functioning. They are now able to control the wrist and get it to any position necessary automatically. This is useful for our autonomous routines and shooting automatically in a match so that the drivers will not have to manually adjust the shooter angle to the desired position for scoring. The autonomous routines of our Alpha robot are also commencing, with a successful one-note intake being created and run this week. The one-note intake is the most essential piece of any advanced and successful routine, and our software team plans to iteratively build upon this with more powerful routines in the future. The software division plans to continue their work in order to better team 7419’s robot.

Business

This week in the Business Department, we have continued to finalize the Impact Award submission with the short answers, essays, and video. With the deadline quickly approaching, the members are working hard to make progress. As we continue to film, we hope to display Team 7419’s team work and dedication, along with the uniqueness of our team. With 4 weeks so far, we have also been planning and making progress on our Robot Reveal. We have also shown the knowledge and experience of 7419 at Quarry Lane’s 1/28 Expo!

If there are any questions, please email qls7419leadership@gmail.com. Check out our Instagram, @7419tech, for more frequent updates as well as our Youtube channel, 7419 Tech Support (@7419tech), for long form informational videos about our team. Our team is super excited for the season ahead, and we can’t wait to update everyone more in the future!