FRC 538/FRC 10101 FTC Team Network

[drewwhis]

Hello from North Alabama! Our FTC testing involves members affiliated with a whole lot of FTC teams more-neatly described by two FRC Teams:

• FRC 538 - Renaissance Robotics
• FRC 10101 - Critical Hit

The members involved are affiliated with these FTC Teams:

• FTC 19459 - Titanium Renaissance Rockets
• FTC 21830 - Renaissance Raptors
• FTC 21394 - Top Hat Robotics
• FTC 24180 - Blue Bananas
• FTC 24331 - Caesar Circuitry
• FTC 24332 - Guardians of the Cyberverse
• FTC 25114 - Lovelace's Legacy
• FTC 26154 - 7 Degrees of Freedom
• FTC 32355 - Cyber Steel
• FTC 31017 - Knockout!
• FTC 35722 - Renaissance Robotics

We received our Systemcore, Motioncore, and A301 units today and are excited to hit the ground running!

[drewwhis]

The other night, we successfully imaged the Systemcore unit.
Tonight, we successfully installed the RHC2 IPK.

When we went to update the A301 firmware, we had initially plugged all 8 units in and tried various combinations to do an update - rev. 11 vs. rev. 14, selecting all motors vs. selecting one motor. In the end, we removed 7 of the motors to update one, then we were able to update all using rev. 11. We were then able to do an "Update All" using rev. 14.

When using RHC2, we were never able to see the devices on the Hardware tab in Safari, but they did appear in Chrome as well as Firefox. We were able to use the Telemetry tab in Safari, though.

[NotMaxwell]

At tonight's meeting, we tested our first simple program running an a301. We originally tried to use the Blockly editor to create the program, but encountered an error when the program tried to import the Rev Python library. We originally thought this issue occurred because it was not selected in the WPILIB tools menu, but selecting and redeploying did not fix it. We then resolved ourselves to writing a Java program in VSCode.

Running the Java program worked flawlessly after installing the rev dependency noted in the systemcoretesting readme. After running a simple program to move the motor using .setThrottle(), we then moved on to playing with REVHardware client 2 Alpha on Systemcore. When we attempted to control a motor with the hardware client, using any control method (position, velocity, duty cycle), our a301s jittered back & forth. We switched out our a301s and reattempted with the same results.

[drewwhis]

Tonight, I spent some time swapping a Control Hub for an Expansion Hub on the FTC 19459 DECODE robot and installing some mini-USB cables. After installation, I hooked up Systemcore to the two Expansion Hubs and wired up one of the existing motors to the Expansion Hub. I did a brief test of the one motor, setting throttle with a Blocks program and setting throttle with inversion with a Java program, both successful.

Hoping to do some more thorough testing once the team is meeting again.

[drewwhis]

Last night, FTC 19459 - Titanium Renaissance Rockets began some hybrid testing. I had previously replaced the Control Hub with an Expansion Hub and applied the REV USB Retention Mount and Cable to both Expansion Hubs on the team's DECODE robot, and tonight the team finished reassembling and rewiring the motors and servos.

We focused on doing just a drive test using WPILib - specifically using the MecanumDrive class.

We initially ran into one issue using this configuration:

• WPILib 2027.0.0 Alpha 6
• FIRST DS v2027.0.0-alpha-6
• Systemcore beta 12 (173)

When enabling the robot, there was a delay to even start a motor running at a constant setThrottle, and disabling the robot did not stop the motor. When trying to control the MecanumDrive, the robot seemingly did not respond to joystick inputs.

We updated the Systemcore from beta 12 (173) to beta 12 (176) and this seemed to resolve those issues.

Separately, this was several of the students' (mostly middle schoolers) look at the Systemcore unit, and while exploring the features, we noticed the USB Camera functionality was available, so we tried that out using some Logitech camera we had lying around and were impressed with the results.

[CohenHill]

We built a goBILDA Starter Bot and adapted it to use A301 motors on both the drivetrain and flywheel. Currently, the drivetrain is fully assembled, and we are working on a flywheel solution. Since our A301 motors max out at 500 RPM, we are using a 1:3 gear ratio to achieve a flywheel speed of 1500 RPM. On the software side, we have coded a TeleOp and a base Auto in VS Code using Commands v3.