FTC Team 12862 Progress Updates

[eePatCox]

Hi all, I am the lead mentor for Waldon Robotics, Team 12862. We're a middle school team in Michigan. Our FRC team at the High School has been exploring SC for a while now as Alpha testers and we are taking on the FTC Alpha testing. I'll be posting our status here and probably cross-posting to CD as well (Were an FTC Open Alliance Team) if anyone wants to read and stat up to date over there.

We got our hardware back in June but the summer has been busy and we haven't had any meetings with the kids. I got everything booted last night and we'll be meeting today (8/6/26) to look at getting this set-up for the first time. I have put together a chassis with 4 A301s and My initial plan is to just jump right in and start using SC + MC and no legacy components. (that might not be the ideal and we'll cross that bridge when we get there).

I will post some details on the build that we have as a separate post here too, if anyone is interested in what we've assembled. Looking forward to finally being able to dig in and get something working.

[eePatCox]

My first comment: as I mentioned, I got everything booted last night. It was late and I didn't see that I needed to update the A301s so that's probably why my first code set did not work. BUT, I have the MC and SC here at work right now and I'm just looking at the LED status lights. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see or expect here.

1. do we have documentation on what these LEDs mean
2. I'm currently seeing the following:
   • SystemCore:
     • Green PWR LED
     • Solid Amber MODE LED
     • STATUS LED Off
   • MotionCore:
     • Green PWR LED
     • Flashing Amber MODE LED
     • Flashing Amber STATUS LED
       Like I said, I see that I need to flash the A301s (which I will do when I get home in a little bit), and I updated the firmware on the SystemCore but is there firmware update for MotionCore that I need too and if so, how do I update that (RHC2 is not 'seeing' anything)

[ThadHouse]

All those LEDs are correct. I don't think right now there are Motioncore updates.

Initial code likely didn't work because A301 updates are needed, as you saw.

[eePatCox]

The team got together on Thursday and we looked at a number of things but unfortunately did not have a lot of success with getting the robot moving. I went back and looked and I kept getting a compile error. After a lot of debugging on my end, I saw that as I install the REVLib dependency, I get a compile error and then as soon as I remove it the compile error goes away. No code change or anything is required, just adding/removing the dependency. As I look at the gradle logs, I see the following (and a few more errors like this, I think 5 in all)

> Could not GET 'https://frcmaven.wpi.edu/artifactory/vendor-mvn-release/com/revrobotics/frc/REVLib-driver/2027.0.0-alpha-6/REVLib-driver-2027.0.0-alpha-6.pom'.
   > Got SSL handshake exception during request. It might be caused by SSL misconfiguration
      > (certificate_unknown) PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target`

I am on my work laptop and I think that possibly there's something in my antivirus that's blocking my accesss because I can copy and paste that link into a browser and get there just fine.

I took my wife's computer, installed WPILib and was able to get it to compile just fine and flashed the robot this morning without any issues, so it is just a computer problem. We are now up and running with a full mecanum chassis.

I thought I would also add some pictures of the hardware setup and mechanical build.

Here is how our motors are mounted into the system. The Motor mount has two M3 screws and then the 4 M4 screws go through the GoBilda chassis rail and into the motor mount. I would have preferred to just use two M4 (well, preferred to use 4 M4 screws) but there is not the proper clearance in the A301 for a bearing to come in. My main reason for adding the two bearings on either side of the channel is to remove any stress that may occur on the A301s motors. We had issues with direct driving wheels with the older motors and I don't want to re-live the experience of replacing motors at a competition.

Here is what the full robot chassis looks like. We moved the cross-bar back one hole, which allows us to securely fasten the MC, SC and Battery holder to both rails. THANK YOU for putting these mounting holes on 8mm centers!

[gearsincorg]

That is a great assembly diagram. How did you create it (with all the lables etc)

[eePatCox]

OnShape for the basic CAD. Then, I added an exploded view. Screenshot that into PowerPoint and then add the labels. Then Screenshot into the post here.

[eePatCox]

One note on the assembly and how it causes differences. I made sure to mount motors such that the harness was on the bottom and pointing towards the center. This means that Front vs. Back motors are mounted backwards to each other. You still have to invert two motors, but now, you invert the front two and not the back two. Nothing too weird but just 'different' than what most FTC teams are used to and different than most 'sample' code out there.

[eePatCox]

Just a quick note on my compile problem I was having. I took some time to dig into it in-between meetings today. Since I'm on a company machine and we hold our own certificates, the company cert was not being applied to the non-system java. I just needed to go grab the certificate and install it as an additional one in the wpilib java location. quick and simple if you somewhat understand what you're doing there.