I'm working on an app that takes in a photo of a FRC Robotics robot and uses an AI model to check for any problems or rule violations. These problems include wiring faults, rust, loose screws, rule violations, and way more. This app also has a tool where you can track batteries for Robotics competitions.
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
4h 18m 48s logged
Devlog #5 ->
My app now has a load in screen! Yay! I figured it was necessary just to make my whole app look more professional. It was pretty easy (took lots of time though) to add and I didn’t fall into any huge difficulties. Only a mini one because I tried to make the animation in the home screen class and it got chaotic. Once it was its own file it was quite easy because then I just needed to fix up the UI.
Look here if you want to learn more about how to do animations in your own project (if using Flutter): https://docs.flutter.dev/ui/animations
I also added a very tiny change to the error message for logging in. Instead of saying “Team already registered”, it tells you to contact my email if you cannot access your team. I guess I got really nervous that someone would try to access their team, and if they couldn’t, they would go and put another team’s number and so on indefinitely. Right now, I think this is a good way to fix the issue, but I’ll add a way to report it in the app; that way, the issue can be solved quicker, and you won’t have to send an email to someone. I did have the idea to make it so there is identification of some sort for each team; however, that would just make the app complex, and my whole goal was to have a simple solution to problems. So, if this app actually does really well in the FRC world, I will add some sort of verification; that way lost accounts can be found, and it would just give all-around easier access.
Next, I am going to focus on my long put off task: photo to video. I am not sure how I am going to do this, if I am going to be so honest. My idea for it came fom the Smile Doctors invisalign app where it opens up your camera and tells you things like “go to better lighting” or “move to the left”. However, I think that will be super complex and difficult to implement so I might have to start a lot smaller. Best of luck to myself, I guess!
List of current tasks:
View it here: https://mirage54321.github.io/Robolens/
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
4h 32m 35s logged
Devlog #4 ->
Hey! I have been working on the issues I talked about in my last devlog. So far I have successfully solved one:
How I solved “Connenction to MongoDB working for flutter web but not github?” ->
The issue was that GitHub Pages is a static hosting service and couldn’t connect directly to MongoDB. Therefore I had to update the application so the GitHub Pages frontend communicates with the Express backend on Render. Basically, I just modified some of the backend configuration like changing (in very very simple terms): fetch(‘/battery’) to something like fetch(‘https://ridgeboticsapp.onrender.com/battery’).
I also added a ? mark button so that if clicked on it can tell you a little more about the app. Right now, it is just saying some basic things but I plan to show this app to my friends and see what they think I should add to that text in order to help people figure out what is going on if they just found my app.
Finally, I fixed an error I wasn’t even aware of: the name finder for each teams batteries. I made it so when you sign up your team, it will try to search up the team name with that FRC number. However, there would be times where I would sign in as my team and it would show up with some random name like “Robo-Knights” or something weird. I think this was related to the Gemini model because I had used it while testing, soincorrect team names could have been stored and reused instead of being verified.
To fix this, I connected my backend to the official FRC Events API. Now, the app sends the team’s FRC number to FIRST to retrieve the official team information to then save the verified team name. This prevents teams from accidentally being assigned another team’s name and makes sure the battery data is connected to the correct FRC team.
It was never too big of an issue because I could always just edit the names in MongoDB but having it so it says the name right 100% of the time is just much easier for me.
Now my new top things to work on are:
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
1h 33m 20s logged
Devlog #3
In the past few days I have been working on adding a battery tracker because I believe that it has the potential to be very helpful to FRC teams. Tracking batteries is always a pain for my team, and other teams I’ve connected with can probably agree with that statement. Batteries can randomly fail by not charging or just full-on dying in two minutes. Although one might assume that keeping track of all this is easy, it truly is not. Having a system to hold records and data, I believe, can be very helpful to teams!
I’ve added the third tool to the app: a shared battery tracker where a team can log in with a team number and passcode, add batteries, and mark each one as charging, in use, or available. It also lets you flag a battery as weak or unreliable with a note, so if a battery dies mid-match, the whole team can see that history the next time they’re deciding which one to grab. I even added an option for the AI to recommend which battery to use next based on how long it’s been charged and whether it’s been flagged before.
My new challenge for this tool has been working with MongoDB. It stores the data fine, but it wasn’t letting me log in (it kept throwing an error). What confused me more is that when I ran it in Flutter web, it worked just fine. This is what I plan to work on for the next few days.
To fix my last problem, which was with the AI saying it had spikes in usage, I changed the message to ask the user to try again because it usually works on the try right after. Right now, this is just a temporary solution until I can find a new AI model.
List of things to work on:
View it here: https://mirage54321.github.io/Robolens/
Log in as guest for team 4388 if you just want to view it.
P.S. My logged time is glitching out a bunch and I would love if someone could help me in the #stardance-help on slack.
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
1h 27m 19s logged
Devlog #2
Now that I’ve finished the foundation of my project, I can keep adding tools! On my last ship, I realized I should keep more documentation. So be ready for more devlogs going forward!
To get a little more comfortable with what I’m doing, I decided to add another AI scanning tool that I have been thinking about: a rules checker. The general scanner already looked for physical problems like wiring and cracks, but I wanted something that could actually check a robot against the official FRC rulebook. So I added the actual PDFs of past FRC game manuals (2024, 2025, and 2026) and let the user pick which season’s rules to check against. That PDF gets fed into the AI alongside the photo, so instead of relying on whatever general FRC knowledge the model already has (which could be outdated or made up), it’s reading the exact rulebook for that year while it looks at the image.
Getting the PDF into the AI request in the first place took some figuring out. I had to load it from the app’s assets, converting it into a format the API would actually accept, and making sure it got sent alongside the image without breaking anything. Once it worked though, the difference was noticeable (the AI’s answers started actually referencing real rules instead of guesses).
The bigger challenge was AI usage limits. Not “too many messages” though. Instead, it was more that other people using the same free model at the same time meant my requests were competing with everyone else’s. Half the time a scan would go through fine, and the other half it just wouldn’t, with no real pattern I could find.
To fix this I… haven’t yet, honestly. Still an open problem :(. Hoping to hear from you guys for some ideas!
I’m a little nervous because AI kind of has a negative connotation in FRC. To address that issue, I’m planning to make the whole app not centered around AI so I’ll be adding more tools.
Excited to keep going though, because I just started programming my new idea: adding a battery tracker!
View it here: https://mirage54321.github.io/Robolens/
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
I made an app for specifically robotics teams (although this could be used for other things too). This is still a work in progress because there is so much more I want to add. I did this project so that I could make something with an AI model and I'm really proud of myself because Flutter was really hard to work with!
@mira_j_maroni
on
Robotics Robolens
4h 35m 48s logged
Devlog #1
I’ve finished the foundation of my project! The app currently has a simple UI and one AI tool that takes in a photo and tells you what’s wrong with it — whether it’s frayed wiring, loose screws, cracked/bent frames, or corrosion.
Goal of my project: cut down the time it takes to find an issue so an FRC team has more time to actually fix the problem, and flag problems a human might miss during a rushed pit-stop check.
Working with Flutter to program the UI wasn’t too bad. I’ve always been used to Java and JavaScript, so although Dart isn’t exactly the same, I picked it up pretty fast.
I had the most difficulty implementing the AI. I started with an Ollama model, but it was way too slow — it would time out before it ever finished telling me what it noticed in the photo. I then found out Google lets you use a free Gemini model, so I got an API key for that and added it in. The new problem: every time I published my app as a GitHub Page, the API key would get disabled because it wasn’t safe sitting in client-side code. I finally learned the key needs to live on a backend to actually be secure, so I set one up using Render.
I’m so proud of how my project is looking so far! Next up, I plan to add more tools, like a rules scanner.
