Skip to content

2025 Season

IsaWombat edited this page Feb 18, 2025 · 46 revisions

Code Purple 2025 REEFSCAPE Engineering Notebook

Brought to you by the 2025 Chief Technical Officer Isabella "Bella" Warmington and our wonderful technical leads!


Code Purple, Team 5827, is a veteran team founded in 2016. Our members and mentors are proud to have participated in FIRST for nine years thus far. Code Purple’s mission is to create a safe space that fosters innovation and creativity in students through STEM education. We strive to provide a place for everybody, regardless of experience. We believe that everyone has a place in STEM as we work to highlight our students’ skill in our interactive and engaging learning environment, allowing students to solve real world problems through adaptation and collaboration.

Meet The Robot!

Presenting our 2025 bot: Jacques Roo-Steau

(INSERT FINAL BOT PIC & CAD)


Strategy

Every season during kickoff after the game is revealed the first thing we do as a team is gather together to discuss and dissect the game rules. We examine how we are able to score points, the fouls and how we might lose points, as well as how to gain ranking points and robot design restrictions such as weight and size. We break off into small groups to do an in-depth analysis and come back together as a whole team to discuss important rules and cover how the game works. Once we feel that we understand those topics, we then go into examining what we want to be able to do in the game that will make us successful. As we discuss possible strategies and what to focus on during matches, we consider what the robot must be able to do in order to accomplish our goals. We list our priorities and then rank them on what we deem to be the most important to focus on in the designing and construction of our robot.


Game Analysis

Directly after the 2025 game was announced, our team gathered as a group and studied the game manual to collectively gain a deep understanding of REEFSCAPE. We then split the student population into 3 main groups discussing:

  • The Algae Game piece
  • The Coral Game piece
  • Defensive Strategies

Based on what they discussed, we decided to focus on scoring the coral game piece, as its:

  • Easy to handle and score
  • Needed for TELEOP
  • Ranking point and scoring bonus during AUTON For the algae game piece, students decided to put any algae manipulation onto the "want" list for out robot.

These groups discussed the most efficient and high scoring strategies to determine our main goals for our robot design, further splitting the analysis with the focus of having an outcome of "what not how" when deciding what we want our robot to accomplish in-game. These groups compiled their knowledge of the game manual to determine what we need the robot to do. These groups were then formed to focus on any strategy the team may have missed:

  • Defensive Strategies
  • Scoring
  • Ranking points

These breakout sessions and brainstorming led to us creating an abundance of "priority lists" to further solidify our team strategy.


Priority Lists

Our final priority list is the following:

Need:

  • Coral (L1, L2, L3, L4?)
  • Climb
  • Ability to remove algae from the reef

Want:

  • To score algae (processor rather than net)

This led to the creation of a more "in-depth" list of what we need our robot to do by the time we head to competition, especially since we have a week 1 and week 2 competition.

Coral (must have by week 1)

  1. Find (Need: Ground intake or direct from human player station)
  2. Obtain
  3. Manipulate (Need: Can’t get stuck, need high margin of error)
  4. Place (Want: place all 4 levels, fast and reliable. Need: Can place on a level)

Climb (Want for week 1, must have by week 2)

  1. Find (High tolerance, take into consideration spinning cages)
  2. Grab (Quick grab, something to tell the driver if the cage is grabbed)
  3. “Pull” (naturally fast)

Design Goals and Design Process

Going into the build season and the start of the robot designing process we designated some goals to focus on during the process to ensure that our robot met the standards we aimed for this season as well as priorities discussed earlier. In order to visualize these priorities, we created a list with all these goals ordered from first to design, and last to be designed.

General:

  • Speed (approx. 11 second cycle time)
  • Stable (Low centre of gravity with no tipping)
  • Robust (Needs to take hits)

Manipulate abilities

  • Able to reach L2, L3, L4
  • Simple to code
  • Needs to allow room for climber
  • Allow for wiring of the end effector

Coral End Effector:

  • Direct control of the Coral
  • Fast (Drops in <.5 seconds)
  • Score with bumpers against Reef

Intake

  • Pick up off the ground
  • Large effective intake area (+- 6 inches)
  • <3 second from Coral contact to driving away.
  • Transition must be smooth to end effector
  • Remove Coral against Coral Station

Climber

  • Able to achieve DEEP climb
  • Large effective capture range
  • Robot stays up when disabled
  • Align + capture 10 seconds
  • Climb 5 seconds
  • Protect sensitive areas

Algae

  • Needs to be able to remove algae in >2 seconds

CAD

The use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is a relatively old strategy for our team, but it has been an integral part of our design process. New members are trained in basic CAD skills during the offseason, and continue learning as the season progresses. We use CAD for preliminary dimension checking, proving concepts, and ensuring that components are precise. Additionally, it allows us to machine parts with less errors and more ease. We also use our CAD models as blueprints for prototypes, to find any interferences in our designs, and to ideate and redesign easier.


Brainstorming


Prototyping

When we set out to prototype our different robot subsystems, we decided to brainstorm ideas for a basic robot while also choosing to follow the RI3D for Reefscape. Drawing inspiration from multiple RI3D groups and team member ideas, we gathered together to discuss which subsystem prototypes RI3D teams used for their robots. We used metrics such as speed (for completing its objective), ease of CAD, build, wiring, coding, and drive, as well as integrability (how easy it is to add to our robot and whether it obstructs other robot subsystems) and adaptability (how easily it can be changed or modified or how it could help with other tasks). After ranking them, we concluded that we would use the star-compliant intake and a conveyor end-effector, also known as Bingus and Sugnib, respectively. Because we chose to follow this ranking process, we streamlined our efforts, saving materials and allowing us to focus on prototypes we believed would succeed. This, in turn, gave us more time to make refinements. Through much trial and error, we were able to refine our CAD models, and our final products became better as a result.


Sub-Systems for Jacques Roo-steau

Design Sub-systems


Electronics Sub-systems


Programming Sub-systems


Sub-Teams

Build

Lead: Aimal Samir

Pre-Season: Build worked on building the new swerve modules and completing the blueprints CAD/Design gave them for a "Swerve-bot". Build started by safety training everyone in the shop and beginning basic parts and blueprint reading skills with a new robot cart design. They proceeded to move around the shop, teaching new machines as the blueprints progressed.

Post-Season:

CAD / Design Team

Lead: Logan Schmidt

Pre-Season: CAD/Design worked on design skills using a "mini kickoff" with practice sheets and old game videos. CAD also practiced their Fusion skills by CAD-ing the "Swerve bot" for Build. Post-Season:

Electronics

Lead: Matthew Warmington

Pre-Season: Electronics began with simple wiring lessons and soldering lessons to familiarize the members with the basics of electronics. Electronics also began identifying different FRC components and build a "Board Bot", a hardboard sheet with every electronic component a FRC robot needs. This was later used for "Swerve Bot"

Post-Season:

Programming

Leads: Omkar Page & Jayden Hong

Pre-Season: Code worked on the website for our club, as well as gave the new members lessons on the basics of both code and the robot code. They issued a main project at the end of the lessons to refine their skills. Code also worked with electronics to update our Swerve-Drives and begin coding practice with "Swerve-Bot"

Post-Season:


Pit Setup

Competition Packing Checklist

Clone this wiki locally