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Show HN: High school robotics code/CAD/design binder release (chiefdelphi.com)

79 points by Hacktrick ↗ HN
Hello HN!

My name is Patrick, and I am a junior at my High School’s FRC robotics team FRC 341 “Miss Daisy” (yes named after the movie). Every year, during the first weekend in January, a new robotics game is released (no it’s not battlebots). The game could be about launching balls into a goal, climbing monkeybars, or placing cubes on a see-saw. This year we were challenged to build a robot that could shoot orange foam donuts into a goal about 6 feet in the air. Here is a yt video with the game animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9keeDyFxzY4&t. After we received the game we then had six weeks to design, build, program, and field a robot capable of playing the game. And we did pretty well this year! I have attached a ChiefDelphi thread (robotics forum) where we have released our season materials. This being our CAD (3D model of robot), code, and design binder. I encourage you to take a look and leave any questions that you may have.

Thanks a lot!

27 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 72.9 ms ] thread
altcognito
I haven’t read through the binder yet but I appreciate you cross posting this to HN because the work many FRC teams do is excellent for a bunch of high schoolers and deserves more visibility.

Good luck, next season is just around the corner.

Hacktrick
Thanks! I am excited to see what the new game is.
[dead] mindslight
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dang
Please don't introduce extraneous grumps at the top level. It's not that you're wrong, it's just a poor starting point for conversation—especially for a Show HN.
dudleypippin
Yes, yes they do. And they have high-pressure air wars and they short batteries through paper clips chains to see how hot they can get them. Kids still do stupid things, honest.

-a mentor of an unspecified FRC team

mindslight
Hey now, if those paper clips were actually a short circuit then they wouldn't get hot.

Stupid was the kid who thought he'd try to catch the water balloon in a bucket, missed, and it hit him square in the crotch and bounced off unbroken. Ahh, FIRST hijinks.

lobsterthief
We were shooting bottle rockets across our robotics shop using an acetylene torch when my friend blasted the skin off his hand.

Our shop keys were revoked. High school kids do stupid things. But they learn and most live on

mkoubaa
I sincerely hope the next game is rocket league
Hacktrick
That would be really cool! There was something kind of like that in 2010, you had to score soccer balls in goals. But there were these obstacles on the field and poles you could climb at the end for extra points. It was called breakaway.
FredPret
I'm not even that old but the phrase "high school robotics" would've been pure daydreaming back then.

Incredibly exciting that you can do this!

core_dumped
I’m in my mid 20s and FRC was probably my favorite high school memory. From the community, to the challenges, to the robots you get to participate in building. It’s such a cool program.

Hopefully it gains higher adoption among other public schools, FRC was foundational to my SWE journey

vrosas
I’m a SWE now, but being on the build team of FIRST taught me an incredible amount and now that I’m a homeowner I’m realizing how applicable it is. I remember cutting 2x4s to build demo field parts and now I’m building walls of my home out of the same material with the same tools I used as a teenager.
lobsterthief
Same, I’m in my late 30s and it’s one of my best high school memories as well. Learned so much, made so many great friends, and worked with amazing technologies.
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WillAdams
Back in the days of personal computing, an administrator at my high school managed to secure funding for a robotics course despite there not being anyone at the school who knew more than basic wiring.

We wound up buying an Apple ][ and a Rubbermaid trash can and an early voice recognition module (Cognivox) which we then mounted on a set of wheels and put the monitor on a lazy susan on top and the opening was made into a drawer for the computer/keyboard, and the bottom was opened up to have a latchable door where an extension cord and other accessories could be stored.

We called it CTC-1 (Computerized Trash Can, Mark 1) --- always wondered what happened to it and the lab of TRS-80 Model IIIs...

I still regret not over-ruling the finance committee and buying my kids a Lego Mindstorm set when they first came out.....

dano
If you have an interest in FRC, consider becoming a mentor at a local program in your area. I've mentored Team 812 in La Jolla California for about 14 years. It's incredibly rewarding.

https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/volunteer/men...

pryelluw
There’s also the Microsoft Teals program that is focused on CS (I’m a volunteer). Just putting it out there. Not all schools have robotics programs.

Btw, congrats to the OP and team. Proud of yalls work!

mafm
Nice work!

Cool that you made this available for other people to benefit from.

WillAdams
Why OnShape?

Why not Commonwealth Robotics Studio or some other opensource CAD option?

boromi
Super easy for collaborative work. As good as some opensource CAD options are, there isn't really anything out there in terms of OnShape for collaborative CAD work.
avhon1
Commonwealth robotics studio doesn't seem to be suitable for designing typical FRC robots. It looks like it's meant to design and simulate robots that mostly consist of servo-driven legs around a central body.

The only open-source CAD option I've seen that might be suitable for doing this kind of design work is FreeCAD, or its Ondsel fork. There are not many people available to FRC teams to teach them how to use these programs, and there's a high risk of them running into serious bugs or limitations.

Most FRC teams use professional CAD packages (like Autodesk Inventor and Dassault SolidWorks). These packages are offered to teams for free. Many teams have mentors with professional experience using one of these programs. OnShape has taken over in the last couple of years as the most popular, because it is easier to license, doesn't require installation permissions, works on any device with a web browser, has an easy to understand and administer way for multiple people to collaborate on a model, and has a critical mass of community scripts, part collections, and tutorials.

avhon1
Just to add, FreeCAD still doesn't ship with a way to do constrained assemblies of parts. You can arrange multiple parts together without any constraints on them, but if you want them constrained together then you have to pick an external workbench (there are 3 choices!) and install it separately.

https://wiki.freecad.org/Assembly

SolveSpace has the capability built-in, but its constraint and geometry solvers are not robust enough for designing full FRC robots. It either gets very slow, or start saying that constraints are unsolvable (even though they are), or starts generating geometry with extra or missing faces.