#Devlog 7: The end for now, adjustable hood, thicker plates, and blender renders.

Hello guys, and welcome, to one of the final devlogs of this series!!!!
Next time you see me, hopefully it will be my ship, but lets go over my progress shall we?

Adjustable hood

Much awaited, as mentioned in my last devlog, my only way of controlling shots was through adjusting rpm, which is very power expensive and takes time, which isn’t ideal.
This is why we now have a servo powered hood! You can try this for yourself by rotating the white part of the hood.We can now quickly adjust our shooting curve, meaning faster Shoot On the Move!!!
(Credits to Rafin from 14469 for some help on the hood)

##Thicker plates
Now this is something I’ll admit my friends have told me FOREVER about and I was too busy to figure out why my pocketing tool didn’t work, turns out my tool radius was too high. Now that its turned down, we can actually have thicker bars! This should hopefully drastically increase durability. (0.1 -> 0.22-0.3)

##Blender renders
In preperation for my ship, I have begun the process of rendering. By the time this devlog is posted, my renders should be done, and atleast my banner is a render photo now. I have never really used blender much, so this is a decent learning curve for me.

I would like to thank EVERYONE who supported me during this journey, and I hope you appreciate what this project taught me and hopefully you like it too! 

Devlog 6: Parking Mech Pt2, Rubber bands, and more!

Hey guys, this is a decently lengthy devlog, so lets get into it!

Parking Mech

My parking mech is done!
My main problem, as you saw in the last devlog is that I only had around 20 degrees of room to deploy my bellypan cause I was hitting a bar, what was my solution?
Getting rid of the bar.
In all seriousness, I put out a small hole in the bar that way, the arm that connects my motor and bellypan can move through.

Now, we can lay all the way flat, but there is still a large footprint, as anything that touches the ground adds to my footprint. So I added a small bar that should hopefully work to reduce my footprint (anything that touches the ground)

Rubber bands

Following advice from my last ship, I realized it was important for people to actually know where rubber bands were. Or atleast some what to understand. For now, I have added rubber bands, but I might end up making them a bit less opaque as its hard to see inside right now.

Random other changes

Removed that random spur gear on the back of Shooter, thats useless
Added a light bar to the back of bot and an LED to the shooter.

Future plans

1. Odometry pods, this would be amazing
2. Adjustable hood shooter, right now I can only adjust RPM, which takes time and is expensive on power, which I know all to well can kill matches. An adjustable hood would save so much power.

Quite a long post, but hopefully ship #2 soon!
Thanks!
PS: On image one, top is old, bottom is new.

Devlog 5: Parking Mechanism, Part 1

Hey guys! My first main content devlog after my last ship.
One of the things I left out on my first ship is a parking mechanism.
One of the unique things about this challenge is the parking bonus, where if 2 bots are fully within a 18x18 zone, we get 30 points (compared to 10 for just one)
I decided to build a parking mechanism for this!
This is partially inspired by 10255’s design, but only for the bellypan. Motor mount and ratchet is all uniquely mine.

The motor

First things first, how am I going to power it?
Luckily, I have one motor left out of my 8 motor limit, so its simple as that, just adding a motor!
But what RPM exactly?
GoBilda, where I really like to get motors from has a multitude of options. I decided to go with 30 rpm, because i feel that would be more than strong enough to lift my robot.

The ratchet

But whats stopping it from falling back down after i climb???
Thats why I decided to make a small inline ratchet!
Hopefully, it isnt meant to hold things for long of course, but it should be long enough to last atleast 3 seconds, which is the minimum for parks.

The bellypan

Now this part is a wip, this will be covered in part two. But for now, its just a polycarb sheet.

(thank you pic collage for the collage tool im lowk abusing it)

First image is part of my inspo btw, the other 2 are my CAD.

Devlog 5: Wires and Code!

Hey guys! Welcome to my 5th devlog in this series.
This devlog is quite major as you can see by the 7 hours spent on it so lets go over the details.

Wiring

I have finally gotten most of the wiring done for this project. Unfortunately, I was not able to get my PCA9865 yet, hopefully I will get it sometime soon, but in the meantime I found a fix.
What is my wiring strategy?
I know 2 things. Power and signal.
I tried to first feed power to my ESP32 and then to servos, but my servos are very power hungry, and this didnt work.
Turns out, on my power supply, the male pins are much much more powerful than the power supplied to my breadboard rails. This presents a unique challenge, as I have to conserve my 5v power slots.
I also found out that no matter what I do, it is still too little power to handle all my servos, and so I came up with a solution.
For my signal, this was easy. I hooked up my 4 stepper motors to my ULN2003 module, and then one signal wire to each servo!

The programming

What is the solution you may ask? Creating everything in steps! By doing this, Instead of setting my servos directly 0-180, I set it 0-180 but in steps of 10 every X milliseconds. This decreases the overall power requirement, allowing my arm to work under very low power!
I implemented this in my code with a scheduler that whenever my inverse kinematics are updated, it starts a cycle of moving servos.

My next devlog will cover my end effector! Stay tuned!

Reship!!

Hey guys, unfortunately my project did not pass my first ship. So I’m here to fix it.
(according to shipwrights due to the specifics of my design it is ok to simply show a small 3dprinter version that unfortunately broke and a previous iteration that actually was built.)
This is just a devlog for my images and stuff to be here.
Video of it below
https://youtu.be/BBkzpUcLwDI
CLARIFICATION:
This robot has never competed, is meant to be competed with, or any other relation with first. While the previous iterations shown are competition bots, this bot is not. This is simply a proof of concept of a competitive bot that I used in order to learn CAD. This project was created solely for my practice and to be presented under Stardance.

Devlog 4: The arm has been prototype

Hello again guys and today we have another devlog. Sorry it’s been a while since my last devlog but I have a lot of exciting stuff to show.

First, I have finally figured out inverse kinematics!

Law of cosines was a bit annoying to learn and to apply considering my method is finnicky but I managed to get all my servos to move into position based on real time, and my turntable also works!

Problem 1: Power Draw

I severely underanticipated the amount of power this would draw, and my psu can provide 9v1a stepped down to 5v wheras my arm needs over 5v6.5a. In order to solve this, I will get a PD trigger board which I will hook up to a PCA9865 module in order to power this. I also learned a ton about SDA and SCL signalling, which I thought was like CAN but I was completely wrong

Second, we have a basic code!

Although we still do not have a webend for me to run machine learning on this, I am able to manipulate all my servos.

Third, I am working on objects to pick up.

One of the problem with the power draw is that my servos will jitter and release certain items. In order to circumvent this I will design an object and claw similar to Samples in the FTC game Into The Deep for 2024-25. This way I have something to dig into

What’s next?

Next up I have to work on a webend that way I do not have to constantly be plugged into my ESP-32
I have to wire up my PCA9865 (the SCL SDA will save me so so many wires)
And lastly implement machine learning! Adios my friends!

Devlog 3: Starting to build

Yesterday my P2s was delivered! I’m excited to use it and I have begun printing some parts.
One thing I did not think about when designeing my parts is tolerences, especially for 3d printing. Today I spent some time on OnShape redesigning 2 of my parts for printing. More parts to follow, but this is is finally being built!
Unfortunately I have not ordered my servos yet (although I do have my stepper motor) so we will have to wait on Amazon for that.
Tomorrows devlog should have some parts assembled.
Thanks for reading!

Devlog 2 : A bit of wiring and code

Today I begun the wiring for it. Since I am still awaiting my amazon order for parts and my 3d printer, I found a tool called Cirkit Designer where I could wire my parts up, and program a few of them.

Unfortunately, my ULN2003 driver does not have simulation, but atleast I can wire it so that I have a reference for my program. This way, I know what parts to order

Alongside this, I began programming this. I am coding this in VSCode with Pymakr, that way I can code this in a language I am already familiar with instead of having to switch to C++, which I have never used.

I will continue to work on first controlling the servos and motors raw using an arduino I have lying around, but I will try to get my true code done soon.

Devlog 1 : The arm begins

I finished building my first prototype of the arm. This is going to likely be my base for the whole project until I am able to buy parts and a 3d printer for this project.

Configuration

Currently here is the configuration
Base is driven by a 28BYJ-48 Stepper motor
Shoulder is driven by a MG996R
Elbow Wrist and Claw are driven by MG90S

This should hopefully lead to a maximum range of 10-11 inches with a max load of around 200-250 grams.

Hopefully, I will be able to power this with an ESP32-S3 in order to run machine learning algorithms and inverse kinematics that way I can identify and pick up objects autonomously.

Devlog 3 : Magazine and shooter

Hello guys! This time we have most of the robot done, time for an overview!

Magazine

The Magazine is based off a rubber band design, this way we have compliance so that we do not have to spam wheels.
If you look in the photos, you can see a set of blue and black wheels, those two are connected by rubber bands.
Addressing one of the concerns in my ship: The balls should not fall out. since the ramp has a hole in the center ideally the artifacts should self center and the rubber bands should hold it in place (Something I have personally seen on a real robot).
I also faced another major problem, how do I get my artifacts from my mag to my shooter?
Due to the form factor of my build needing a turntable, I can’t just directly send it straight into the turret, as it wouldn’t reach without adding like 50 rollers. (large rollers would collide into my turntable housing) So i devised a counter roller, which is mounted in the rear and can speedily feed things into my shooter! (this is shown in the 2nd slide image on the bottom right, look for the 2 sets of black rollers near the green ball)

Shooter

I decided to go for a turret, although several teams have had major success in a straight shooter (shoutout to my goats 30564). This was because I felt that shooting on the move and shooting no matter where we are is what makes something competitive, and it also is a test of my cad skills.
I took inspiration of the Andymark turntable, but the form factor wouldn’t work here, so I took the bearing and put it on a custom plate.
For the turret itself, its a single 6K rpm motor, which from my previous experiences was more than enough, we also have a Limelight (vision camera) on the shooter for accurate localization.

Devlog 2: The intake

Hello again guys! Welcome back to more CAD Chronicles
Today, I have our intake created.

There are many different types of intakes I’ve seen this year, rubber band, vector wheel, and surgical tubing.
All of these have pros and cons, so lets go over them.

Rubber band:

Rubber band intakes is what my team used back when I was on it. It is simple, effective, and once you touch an artifact, you keep it, there is very little wrong with it. But, it is harder with those to have the intake extend the entire width of the bot, so you might not be able to intake 3 artifacts at once.

Vector wheels

Now theres 2 kinds, fixed, and pivoting (where the wheels can move up and down to comply with the artifacts). I decided, that for auto strategy since we might be contacting multiple artifacts at once, to go with a fixed design for this. Vector wheels can easily span the entire width of a bot, and also funnel into the center.

Surgical tubing

This one is a nice one, basically for those who have not seen them, it is a form of intake where there is a central hub, and tubes stick out of the hub, almost like a fan. These are supposed to catch on to artifacts and pull them in. While these are pretty good, they do not have centering and also are quite large, so they do tend to stick out the bot.

Now what did I pick?

You might be able to tell from my image, but I ended up picking a vector wheel intake!
I decided this was the best course of action, because I can easily intake 3 artifact wide, which is good for far zone cycling and also auto pattern cycling, and also it has centering. You will see in my next devlog why centering is important!

Devlog #1 : The beginnings

Hello guys! Welcome to my project!
I would like to thank you guys for checking my project out and here I’m gonna outline a bit of what I am going to do.

What is my goal? I want to create a competitive FTC style bot!
My last season on my team was last year, we got to state but we placed around 20th. This year, me and my friends will hopefully start a new team, but I need to learn CAD so that I am actually well equipped to do work. I decided that cadding a robot is the best way to do this!

I decided on a couple goals.

1. I want a vector intake (to maximize possible intaking area)
2. As much custom cnc parts as possible (both a challenge for me and also conserves space)
3. A turret (IMO most competitive bots use a turret so time to join that league)

Those 3 goals will shape the rest of this project.

Drivetrain

My first thing was beginning my drivetrain, as you can see below I got around half of it done so far. Sketching is a bit awkward but I’m getting the hang of it. Hopefully this works out well!