This Month’s News!
Edition 7 - JaNUARY 2024
Hey all Team 668 supporters! Welcome to the long anticipated seventh edition of the Apes of Wrath newsletter, the second letter of the 2023 - 2024 season. Apologies for the lack of a November/December edition, the pumpkin launch kept the team very busy! To make up for it, this letter will be split into two parts, the first part explicitly about the pumpkin launch and the second a return to the normal newsletter format!
As mentioned in previous newsletters, every year our team chooses a fall project to teach new members the basics of robotics, ease returners into the new season, and allow for new members to test out each subteam and explore their interests. It also serves as a great team bonding experience. This year instead of working on a robot, I proposed a pumpkin launch, and after much deliberation it got approved! Here’s how it went:
BEGINNING STAGES:
In collaboration with mentors Daniel and Mr.Weissman, I planned the pumpkin launch as a 4 day event. However this was soon proven to be completely unrealistic as predicted by Mr.Weissman, and the event was extended to an 8 day work schedule.
We began by determining the goal and rules of the competition:
“Create a mechanical machine that can launch a small pumpkin the farthest distance possible (farther than your opponents)”
RULES:
Your machine has to be completely mechanical NO ELECTRICITY NO PNEUMATICS
Springs are allowed ✓ Your machine must be completely made of wood (aside from screws, glue, etc.)
Special parts must be approved (non-wood) You must follow safety protocols Failure to follow safety rules results in disqualification
Everyone on your team must contribute Pumpkins must be launched in plastic bags to prevent mess
Next, the team was split into 4 groups as follows, each named after a type of pumpkin:
LONG ISLAND CHEESE: Parker, Alessandro, Tanish, Caleb ,Kuvam, JT, Kaden, Gabby, Jeremy, Nathan
BIG MAX: Kian, Gabe, Andrea, Zach W, Aadi, Saúl, Kaden, Andrew, Dylan R, Isra, Dylan
ATLANTIC GIANTS: Lexi, Louis, Nishant, Ben, Saul, Aaron, Kameron, Anna J, Khushi, Zach
KABOCHA: Jack, Mikayla, Shahar, Simon, Gianmarco, Jeremy L, Derek, Oorjith, Nichola, Chris, Corrie
The proposed 4 day schedule included 3 days for work and the fourth day for the launch.
DAY 1 - Rules, Safety, Tips, Teams, - Brainstorming and Research
DAY 2 - Brainstorming, Prototyping (if applicable), Blueprints
MATERIAL LIST NEEDED BY END OF DAY
DAY 3 - Building and testing
DAY 4 - LAUNCH DAY
Why did I think 9 hours of work was sufficient time for four teams of highschool students, most of whom had never used a drill, to brainstorm, plan, build, and test pumpkin launching machines? No one knows.
The actual schedule ended up including 5 more days of work, an extra 15 hours.
Each team was given a budget of $150 to spend on supplies. If teams wanted to use supplies beyond the list of pre approved items, it had to be approved by Mr.Weissman.
Finally, the last thing to determine was the prize for winning and consequences of losing, and this is what we came up with: For the winning team, a pumpkin trophy with an engraved plaque of the team name, as well as a framed and signed picture of the team hung in the room. Most importantly, they got first choice of pumpkin treats at the end of the launch. The losing team had to clean up all of the pumpkin chunks off the field before choosing their dessert.
OFF TO WORK: And so, after a long slide show going over all of the details of the competition, the teams were off to brainstorming!
Each team was required to submit a complete BOM (Bill of Materials) as part of the planning process. I was in charge of consolidating the lists to make it simple for Mr. Weissman to get all of the supplies in one trip, and upon further examination of the lists, I realized three out of the four teams had the exact same supplies with the exact same quantities. Somehow, three of the four teams decided on the same design, which happened to be the terribly complicated projectile launcher, a walking trebuchet
Luckily, each team decided to change the design in a different way. Atlantic Giants thought they were slick by increasing the scale of their design to 1.5 the size of Big Max’s in order to launch the pumpkin farther than them. Then, Kabocha decided they were going to triple the size of Big Max’s, and hopefully blow the competition out of the water by building the most massive machine. This resulted in relentless taunting from Kabocha that they were going to crush our puny machines in competition. The three teams began building around the same time on the third day of the event.
For those of you that don’t know what a walking trebuchet is, HERE is the best video I could find kind of showing how it works. Also, here is a short explanation from the launch: HERE. Basically, the launcher utilizes gravity to pull the weight down, swinging the back end of the arm up in a circular motion, launching the projectile. So, by Kabocha making theirs very large with a big counterweight, it seemed theirs would go the furthest.
Long Island Cheese chose to spend a long time in the planning phase which benefited them in the long run. They decided on a sturdy slingshot type design. Even though they lost time in the planning stage, their design was simple and effective, and they were the first team to finish building. Long Island Cheese finished so early in fact that they even had two full days of testing.Meanwhile, the other three teams came to regret their life’s choices as they had chosen the design with the most complicated angles and math.
BUILDING ENSUES:
COMPLICATIONS:
Each team faced complications as it moved into the building stage.
Long Island Cheese:
LIC had quick success, but upon further testing noticed that their projectile would sometimes hit a plank on the front of their machine added for structural support. However, they had so much extra time they were able to decorate their launcher, winning major style points.
Big Max:
Big Max originally built their triangle base out of 1x1 square dowel, which stood no chance of holding up their concrete counterweight. And so, they replaced their base with 2x4 planks, seemingly fixing all of their issues. (This was in fact not the case as we see later)
Atlantic Giants:
Atlantic Giants was my team and I can attest that we faced a plethora of challenges, starting with the counterweight. We brainstormed for a long time on how to build a housing for the concrete weights. All of our ideas required drilling into a concrete block to attach the weight to the arm through the hole, but that came with the risk of cracking the concrete, and the team does not have a concrete drill. Apparently, the entire team had forgotten cinder blocks with holes already exist, and are available for purchase at home depot for less than three dollars. Thankfully, Mr.Weissman picked up the wrong cinder blocks, and the ones he purchased were the typical cinder block shape with the big rectangular holes. After some experimenting, we discovered the hole was the exact width of two 2x4s side by side, and were able to design a new, much better way of attaching the weight to the arm.
But the problems didn’t stop there. I won’t go into too much detail because it is quite painful, but we had to recut our wood multiple times because each time we had finished cutting, we would bring all the parts together and notice we had cut the angle wrong yet again. No matter what math we did, somehow we would always forget to take something into account. Eventually, after help from Daniel, we were able to get the angles correct and our machine came together.
Kabocha:
On the night of the second to last work day, Kabocha faced a tragedy. They had finished their machine and decided it would be a good idea to test it in darkness on hard asphalt, because that sounds like a plan for success. Unfortunately, the machine fell to the side instead of forward, smashing the one inch thick plywood arm in two.
It seemed as if all hope was lost, but this tragedy turned into an opportunity for growth. Kabocha bounced back quickly, rebuilding their machine in just one day to be even stronger than before by adding a base to the part of the arm that would hit the ground, increasing stability.
LAUNCH:
Finally, after pushing back the launch date twice, the day had arrived. December 2nd, the teams spent one hour adding finishing touches to their machines, then it was time to drive all the supplies over to the field in Rahil’s awesome cyber truck to set up the launch.
Prior to the launch, I double checked with the sports director that the field would be clear of sporting events and we were free to use any part of it. On the morning of Dec. 2nd we discovered, there were multiple soccer games going on. And so, to prevent any chance of injuring an eight year old soccer player with a flying pumpkin, we decided to relocate to the other side of the field, launching away from the children’s rec soccer game. This ended up working out for the better as we found a huge roped off open space next to the baseball diamond. I took “any part of the field” to heart, and we happily ignored the caution tape roping off the expanse of field we intended to use.
Then it was time to start launching! The order was predetermined via random generator, and with that Big Max was first up. The exhilarating launch was narrated by the excellent MC, my mom Marlene M.
Big Max:
Though the launch looked great, the pumpkin unfortunately got stuck in the pouch and did not score Big Max any distance. Luckily, the machine survived for a second attempt. Unfortunately, on the second attempt the base of the machine did not stick into the ground as intended, and caused the machine to collapse onto the ground. As foreshadowed earlier, the machine did not hold up to the weight of the concrete. Though the new and improved triangle base sustained no damage, the weight hit the ground on the swing forward creating a massive crack in the arm. They quickly evacuated the launch area to attempt repairs, but were unable to finish them before the end of the launch, and so Big Max was out of the competition with no distance on the board.
Attempt #1: HERE
Attempt #2: HERE
Long Island Cheese:
Next up was Long Island Cheese with their slingshot design! They were the first team to successfully launch a pumpkin. Instead of concrete as a counterweight, LIC decided to use students despite it being against the rules as seen on slide 21 of the pumpkin launch slide show by Lexi M., but we let it slide. With one student on either side of the base to hold it down, another student would pull the pouch back, and another would load it. An example of true teamwork. After a couple of failed attempts, it was obvious to LIC that they must remove the top crossbar in order to get a clear shot to the field. After removing the bar, they had a successful launch and became the leading team!
Atlantic Giants:
The Atlantic Giants were up next. Our first attempt was a complete failure, as I released a little later than fellow launcher Ben G., so our machine did the exact same thing as Big Max’s, but thankfully we sustained no damage. We quickly picked up our walking trebuchet and reset it. Our pumpkin kept falling out of the pouch before launch, so we ended up taking a very long time to launch our second attempt. But once we got it loaded, our second attempt was great! Except, the pumpkin fell out of the pouch as the arm swung around the axis :,( . Had the pumpkin not fallen out, the launch would have been very successful. We were ready for attempt number 3, but upon further examination we realized one of the cinder blocks had broken when it hit the ground on attempt 2, and we determined the weight was too uneven to achieve a successful launch. And so, we Atlantic Giants left the launch stage with no distance on the board, but excited at the potential of our machine.
Failed Launch: HERE
Almost Successful: HERE
Kabocha:
Unfortunately for everyone else, Kabocha lived up to their trash talking and was the star of the show. Their impressive and massive machine was very successful, working mostly as intended and launching the pumpkin the farthest. Tragically, their sling hit the ground on the way around, reducing their distance significantly. (their estimated possible distance was 800ft!) On the second attempt, the base hit the ground at an angle and completely dismembered the machine, but it didn’t matter because Kabocha had already won!
RESULTS:
And just like that, the launch was over! After a total of 8 work days, just about 24 hours of work, we had 3 completely trashed pumpkin launchers and a semi successful slingshot. Even so, as said in the email sent out following the launch, we learned a lot, there were no *major* injuries, and the sprinklers didn’t turn on so it was a huge success! It was also a great team bonding experience and everyone enjoyed learning new skills and getting to know each other. Here is how the teams placed:
1st place: Kabocha
2nd place: Long Island Cheese
3rd place: Atlantic Giants
4th place: Big Max
(Pictures below are in order of placement)
Kabocha happily got in line for the treat table while Big Max picked up the two lonely pumpkins that were launched onto the field as well as the two mini pumpkins launched by the water balloon launcher.
Everyday we would begin the meeting with a slideshow outlining that day’s goal, complete with many snoopy pictures for encouragement.
Overall, the pumpkin launch was a great success and we had a lot of fun with the whole process. Thank you to everyone who came to support our team at the pumpkin launch, it was a blast having everyone there to see what we had spent the previous 3 weeks working on. Thank you to all the parents who volunteered as drivers and treat providers. Putting on events like this would not be possible without your help and support. We hope this event got you excited about our team’s coming season (even though it may not have been the best example of our capabilities).
As always, for any questions please feel free to reach out to me at lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org, or Mr. Weissman at lweissman@firstinspires.org
Goodbye fall season, onto the build season!
Thanks for reading!
Lexi M.
President
Edition 6 - October 2023
Hey all Team 668 parents and supporters! The Apes of Wrath Newsletter is back for another year of exciting updates! Welcome to the first edition of the 2023 - 2024 Newsletter. These newsletters will include upcoming important events as well as monthly updates on what the team is working on. Welcome to all of the new members, we are excited to have new Team 668 robotics families! This month’s newsletter is similar to the first newsletter of last year as this letter once again includes an overview of FIRST and what we do as a team, as well as addressing some upcoming important events! Last season never had a recap newsletter on champs, so to make up for it we will be adding some memorable photos from competition to the website to share our favorite memories very soon.
Important Upcoming Dates:
Makers Faire Team Bonding Event - Saturday Oct. 20 - 9:00 am ~ 5:00 pm (email coming soon if it hasn’t come already)
Room cleaning - Sat. Oct. 20 from 10:00 - 11:30 (for those not going to Maker Faire)
Club rush - Tuesday Oct. 24
Programming workshop - Oct. 24 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
**Parents info night - Wednesday Oct. 25 @ 7:00
Picture day for mentors and leaders - Oct. 28 during meeting
Pumpkin launch - Nov. 11 (date may be changed)
More information coming in an email soon
Link to team calendar: Here
OUR COMP DATES HAVE BEEN DECIDED:
Week 1: Silicon Valley Regional - Feb. 28 - Mar. 2
Week 5: Monterey Bay Regional - Mar. 27 - Mar 30/31 (not sure yet)
FIRST Robotics - Our team, The Apes of Wrath 668 has been established since 2001, making this our 22nd competition year. We are a part of the FIRST robotics program, which hosts robotics competitions worldwide. FIRST releases the year’s new competition in early January each year, which is the start of the robotics build season. The robot must be able to complete tasks to score points and help beat the opposing alliance. Here is last year’s competition video released by FIRST as an example of how a game would work 2023 FIRST Robotics Competition CHARGED UP presented by Haas Game Animation You can also find more information on our website, linked at the bottom of the newsletter.
Team Requirements - To stay on the team, team members must fill the attendance and outreach requirements (more information below). If team members wish to be on the travel team - a group of students who travel to the robotics competitions in the Spring - they must have a higher attendance and more outreach hours than the others.
Team requirements:
Attendance requirements: 60% attendance
Outreach requirements: 10 hours
Travel Team requirements:
Attendance requirements: 75% attendance
Outreach requirements: 15 hours
As of now, our team meets 2 times a week:
Tuesday - 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Saturday - 9:00 am - 12:00 pm (varies)
In Room 500 at Pioneer High School. As the season progresses and we begin the build season, the hours will change to be around 25 hours a week - 2 weekdays after school and both days on the weekend.
Leadership - Team 668 is a student driven and mentor guided team. We split our team into different subteams based on each member’s skills and interests, each led by subteam captains. Apes of Wrath has many different mentors (all of which you can see on our website) but the mentors who help lead meetings and give instruction on a weekly basis are
Lonny Weissman
Rahil Mehta
Daniel Sturman
Eric Diehr
Keila Pound
Our new 2023 - 2024 student leaders (!!!) are:
Lexi M - President
Jack V - Vice President
Gabe S - Electrical Captain
Nishant S - Mechanical Design Captain
Alessandro D - Machining Captain
Kian S - Software Captain
Parker L - Controls Captain
Shahar G - Business Captain
Mikayla C - Media Captain
Louis G - Outreach Captain
Leaders run meetings and help make decisions regarding our team. Subteam captains help delegate jobs and make decisions regarding their subteams.
Outreach: As mentioned above, we require a certain amount of outreach to be a part of the Apes of Wrath, which we give plenty of opportunities to fulfill the hour requirement. Students will be made aware of each outreach event and are expected to fulfill their required hours through robotics organized events ONLY, outside outreach will not count towards their team hours.
Fall Project 2023: Every year our team has a preseason build, also called fall season. We do this in order to refresh returners, get back to a robotics mindset, give new members a sense of what robotics is like and to help them find their interests, and also to give the team time to bond before build season. We have had a bit of a slow start to the year, but we are excited to pick up the pace starting now!
To get everyone up to speed with the way our team runs we have been running workshops in the 4 main aspects of FIRST engineering, mechanical design, machining, electrical, and programming. More specialized workshops are coming soon, such as 3D printing, using the laser cutter, and using the team's GitHub.
After these workshops we were planning on getting back into our T-shirt shooter project from last year, however not before having our first ever PUMPKIN LAUNCHING COMPETITION!!!
That’s right, this year we are going to have a pumpkin launching competition in early November where we will split robotics members into two teams to go head to head in a ruthless battle of the gourds. Keep your eyes posted for more information coming soon as it is sure to be a very exciting event. All are welcome to watch!
After the pumpkin launch, we will return to normal, working on our T-shirt shooter robot to bring to football games, with the occasional fun workshop day thrown in the mix such as designing clocks and things of that nature.
More information on the T-shirt shooter:
For this year’s project, we are making a new t-shirt shooter - from scratch! We bring our t-shirt cannon to Pioneer football games to promote our team and gain outreach hours. Our old t-shirt cannon is very old and breaks down often, so instead of refurbishing it, we decided to make it our fall project to create a new one! This way, we can follow the same procedure we would normally use when creating a real build season robot, but we don’t have to abide by the FIRST restrictions. This new T-shirt shooter will be equipped with an awesome swerve drive train for maximum maneuverability and cool factor in order to capture the hearts of every robot-lover in the stands.Thrifty Swerve Driving Example.
How to get on the emailing list:
Click the “Newsletter” tab on our website, https://www.team668.org/ , and fill out the information for the newsletter, and you will be added to the emailing list for both the newsletter, and other information/updates.
If you are on this emailing list and would like to be removed, please email lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org.
Parent Support: Though we have amazing mentors and student leaders, our team can’t function without the help of our team parents! Some things we currently need help with are :
Workshops
This year we are trying to get more parent-led workshops, so if you have any ideas on a workshop you would like to lead please reach out to lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org with questions or your workshop idea to get started! Workshops can be anything from STEM related ideas to grant writing, interviewing, college, presenting, budgeting, or any other useful skill you think could benefit the team or members in the future.
Donating snacks - Add your name to this google sheet to bring a snack :Robotics Snacks!
Bringing meals - Since our team has grown significantly, meals are more important than ever! During build season, we meet from after school until late at night, so we need dinner provided, and lunch on the weekends if possible. This would mean making a meal or purchasing food for around 30 - 40 people (TBD). This will become necessary once we start the build season in January of 2024.
Carpooling - Since we have so many outreach events, team members need rides a lot of the time, so providing carpool would be very helpful and not an often commitment.
Mentorship - If you work in an engineering field, such as electrical, mechanical, programming, software, etc, and you would like to work with the team in that capacity, we would love to have your assistance! If you consider yourself none of the above mentioned, but have skills in marketing, business, organization, management, media, we could use your help as well. If you can’t make too big a time commitment, don’t worry! We will take any assistance you can provide.
Room Cleaning - Our room gets very disorganized very quickly (shocking, I know) so every other month or so we are planning on hosting a clean up in order to tidy everything back up so that we have a usable workspace. Parent support is greatly appreciated in this regard so that we are able to clean in a more organized fashion. An email will be sent out before each cleaning day asking for volunteers to help for a couple of hours in organizing cleaning.
Any support parents can provide is greatly appreciated!
More information will be provided at the parent meeting on Oct. 25 2023.
Thanks for reading! We are very excited to start this new season with all of our new members!
There will be a new newsletter posted every month.
If you have any questions regarding Team 668, email lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org, or contact Lonny Weissman at lweissman@firstinspires.org
Lexi M, President
Edition 5 - March/April 2023
Hey all Team 668 supporters! Welcome to the fifth edition of the Apes of Wrath newsletter. This month, we will recap our experience with the Arizona East Regional, our fun leading up to that, and how we’re prepping for Monterey Bay Regional and FIRST Championships in Houston, Texas!!
Competition Dates:
Arizona East Regional: March 15, 2023 - March 19, 2023
COMPETED AND COMPLETED!
Monterey Bay Regional: March 30, 2023 - April 1, 2023
COMPETED AND COMPLETED!
Houston Championships: April 19, 2023 - April 23, 2023
Leaving April 18 in the morning, coming back April 23
You can visit our team calendar at our website here: https://www.team668.org/upcoming or https://tinyurl.com/apesgc
Spectators:
The spectator ban from COVID-19 has been lifted!
For anyone interested in coming out to Houston for the Championships, the best days to watch are April 20-22.
April 19th → Load in and practice matches
April 20th-21st → Qualification matches
April 22nd → End of qualification matches (morning), playoff matches (afternoon), and awards
SUCCESS at Arizona East Regional:
As I’m sure most of you have heard by now, our alliance got first place at the Arizona East Regional competition last week! Here is the series of events leading up to the big win:
First, an introduction to our drive team:
From left to right:
Parker L. - Driver
Lexi M. - Operator
Keila P. - Drive Coach
Lucas W. Technician
Hugh T. - Human Player
Wednesday, March 15 - We left at lunch and took a very fancy limo bus to the airport where we boarded our plane and flew to Arizona! From there we went to the hotel and everyone unpacked. A couple students went with Mr. Weissman to set up the pit, and we made it look very nice:
Thursday, March 16 - We arrived at the competition very early and got our robot set for practice matches. The day was spent working out the kinks of our robot so that we would be fully prepared for the following day’s qualification matches.
We ran into some issues with Kava’s drive train as well as its grip on the cone, which led to some issues. Any minor bump would cause the robot to drop the cone into our robot. The rule regarding holding cones is that the robot can only be in control of one game piece at a time. When the claw would release the cone into our robot, we could no longer score any more cones because we had no way of getting the fallen cone out of the base of the robot. To fix this problem, we velcroed two pieces of polycarb to the barrier stalks of the telescoping arm and just like that the problem was fixed. We spent most of the day in the filler line, where we would get placed into practice matches.
Friday, March 17 - Day 3 was all qualification matches, and we didn’t do as well as we would have liked. Our alliance matchups weren’t super favorable for us, and we ended the day ranked somewhere in the last 5 out of 37 places. Even though we didn’t place well, we showed off our robot’s capabilities and were even able to get the second triple balance of the entire competition!
Saturday, March 18 - Day 4 was the big day! We had a lot of success in our alliances and we finally started winning some matches. We showed we could reliably achieve a triple balance, and we even tried out defense. During one of our matches we were paired with Team 2659 Robowarriors and Team 7426 Pair of Dice Robotics, and we worked really well together. Since they were both really strong robots they scored and we played defense. Our driver, Parker L., went CRAZY on defense, and we were very disruptive toward the other team. Our drive team worked well with Team 2569’s driveteam, and they said they wanted to work with us again. (Remember this - it is a very important part of this story)
Qualification Matches: We ended the qualification matches in 26/37 place, and we were unsure if we would get chosen for an alliance. The alliance selection process is a little confusing, so to better understand you can watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnac20aFjeI. Throughout the entire alliance selection process, we were anxiously waiting to see if our team would be selected and we were a little disappointed when we weren’t chosen. There was only one selection left to be made by the first seed alliance, which was team 2596. Most of us had already begun thinking about the trip home when suddenly, the first seed team announced, “We would like to invite team 668 to join our alliance”. We were ecstatic. Our whole team erupted into cheers and our president, Keila P., went on the field and accepted our invitation. After alliance selection, the drive team geared up for playoffs and the team celebrated with a delicious lunch. We went into finals as a part of the top alliance, Team 2569, Team 6063, and Team 668!
Playoffs: Our first match was against the last ranked alliance, Alliance 8, and we destroyed them 109-39. The second match was against Alliance 4, and we won 137-99. And then it was the final matches. In these last matches, the top team of the upper bracket goes against the top team of the lower bracket, and the best of three wins. In this case, that would be Alliance 1 vs Alliance 2 for the win and the chance to go to Houston for the World Championship. We lost the first match, however someone on Team 2569 noticed that there was a technical foul on us that had not been properly accounted for. They disputed the score, and succeeded in getting the refs to change their ruling! We ended up winning the first match by 1 POINT, and everyone went crazy. That meant that we only had to win one more match in order to go to the World Championship.
After our 15 minute break between matches our Alliance was pumped up and ready to go. We had gone over strategy a million times and our driver, Parker L., had gotten great tips from team 2569’s drive coach which were really helpful. The match started and we did great right off the bat - Parker was doing well on defense, 2569 had a high scoring autonomous period, and 6036 was busy gathering and scoring cones. As the clock ticked down, we racked up points until finally we ended the match with a triple balance with ONE second remaining, and we got the win! Our teams erupted into cheers and we were announced the winners of the East Arizona Regional Competition!
To see some of our matches, click the links below!
A playoff Match - https://youtu.be/mw0Wd5c30jk
Final Match 1 - https://youtu.be/1-JQCrxh7T0
Final Match 2 (winning match!!!) - https://youtu.be/GMbRLgNKb8A
Winner announcement + awards! - https://youtu.be/pjnRsIqKC7s
Monterey Regional Update:
Though we already qualified for the world championships in Arizona, we are still competing in the Monterey Bay Regionals at Seaside High School. Here are some changes we have made to the robot in order to prepare for MBR.
Updated Claw - Nishant S. spent the week updating the claw design to be much stronger than before, which includes:
Changing from delrin material to aluminum
Adding spacers that contour the shape of the claw to increase surface area for better grip on the cone
New Auton Code - Shahar G. and programming captain Kian S. worked on new auton code in order to score a cone on the middle peg during the autonomous period of the match. We were able to score during auton now because we changed the way we preloaded the claw to a new method where we were able to keep the cone from falling, though this method was unreliable.
Technical Explanation: In order to grip the cone, the motor that opens and closes the claw needs to be running so that force is continuously applied on the cone so it stays inside the claw. The robot only turns on once the match starts. Since the cone is preloaded into the robot before the game begins, just closing the claw on the cone without the motor running isn’t enough force to keep the cone in the grasp of the claw. We weren’t able to solve this problem during Arizona. HOWEVER, we have since changed our method of preloading the cone to manually winding the motor to close the claw, then releasing it very slowly so that it will very weakly hold on to the cone. Then once the match started, the claw would immediately grip the cone and score it thanks to the new auton code. We soon found out that this method is extremely unreliable as there is no guarantee that someone won’t bump the robot and cause the cone to fall. Even if anyone stepped near it, the cone was likely to fall. Not to worry though, we solved this problem mid-Monterey Regionals.
Reliable Ethernet Cables: Since we had some issues without ethernet cables in Arizona, we remade ALL OF THEM, which was an extremely tedious process and we had many people learn how to do it in order to get the job done. Eventually we got all of the cables done in a couple of hours.
Monterey Regionals: Firstly, thank you to all the parents and supporters who attended the regionals to watch us, it was really fun to have you there! Also, special thanks to the parents who carpooled, provided meals, provided snacks, and for providing our break area outside of the arena, which was very helpful for our team to relax.
Monterey Regionals went very well and we ended up getting second place! Here are some highlights:
Lexi M. snapped the claw clean off the robot: Lexi M, the operator who controls the claw, unfortunately sheared the claw off of the robot during one of the beginning practice matches. The claw got stuck on the loading station, and in an attempt to dislodge it, Lexi M. retracted the claw, however the 3D printed part that attached the claw to the actual robot snapped in 2 and left our claw lying on the ground. However, this turned out to be a good thing because in the hours that followed, Technician Lucas W. and others worked with mentor Rahil to create a new way to attach the claw using metal, and it is now much stronger.
Driveteam’s reaction to claw breaking
Fixed preloading method: Because the preloading method was so touchy, Mikayla C. worked with mentor Daniel to come up with a way to keep the claw closed enough to hold the cone. The winning idea was tape! By putting a piece of serrated tape on the seam of the motor, the claw was able to grasp the cone without it falling, and the tape was easily broken when the claw went to score the cone.
Alliance selection: We were chosen by the second seed alliance! Our alliance partners this time were team 971 and team 8033!
Belts snapped: The belts got very worn out, and in the last playoff match one of the kevlar belts completely snapped and the arm lost most mobility. In the first finals match the OTHER belt snapped, and we ended up tying the telescope arm to the backstop so that it didn’t get in the way during defense.
Second Place: We ended the Monterey Bay Regionals in second place! We were extremely close to winning the second finals match, however our alliance failed to engage the charging station in the last few seconds and we weren’t able to pull out a win.
Preparations for Houston: Since we only had a week and a half to work on the robot before MBR, we weren’t able to make too many changes to the robot. However we have a little less than a month after MBR to improve the robot for Houston. Lexi M. made a master list so that we stay on top of tasks:
Name Tags: Tanish T. took the opportunity to create this year’s competition nametags. The final design is a laser cut yellow acrylic banana with each team member’s name cut out in the Planet of the Apes font. We love them very much.
Big Thanks to Parents, Mentors, Sponsors, and Supporters: We want to say a big thank you to everyone who contributed to our team. Even something as simple as dropping off snacks or offering to carpool can has such a positive impact, and we couldn’t have made it to the World Champs without everyone’s help! We also want to say a big thank you to Team 2569 and Team 6036 for being such great alliance partners. See you in Houston!
Keila P. & Lexi M.
President and Vice President
Extra pictures from competition preparations:
Pictures from Arizona:
Edition 4 - February 2023
Hello Team 668 supporters, we graciously welcome all to the fourth edition of the Apes of Wrath newsletter! This month, we will recap all the fun activities our team has done throughout the build season, and share new information on this year’s competition
Competition Date Update:
Arizona East Regional: March 15, 2023 - March 19, 2023
Leaving school early afternoon on March 15th, coming back on March 19th in the morning - Specific times TBD
Monterey Bay Regional: March 30, 2023 - March 31, 2023
Leaving March 29th after school, coming back on March 30th in the evening - Specific times TBD
You can visit our team calendar at our website here: https://www.team668.org/upcoming or https://tinyurl.com/apesgc
Spectators:
The spectator ban from COVID has been lifted! For anyone that would like to come support us at Monterey Bay Regionals, the best days to watch are March 30th and March 31st.
March 30th - Start of seed matches
March 31st - End of seed matches (morning), Final matches (afternoon), and awards
Parent Support:
Parent Slack Channel - Our team communicates through a messaging platform called Slack, and we think it would be beneficial for the parents to be able to communicate with one another, so we created a channel just for you!
An email invitation has been sent out to parents of current members to join the channel, so we ask that you please accept and follow the instructions to set up your account if you do not have one already.
You can think of Slack kind of as a big group chat where all parents can communicate with each other as well as the mentors, president, and vice president.
Parents Night (Travel Team) - We will be hosting a parent’s information night sometime in early March to go over all the information regarding travel to both Arizona and Monterey. If your child is on travel team it would be extremely beneficial to attend the meeting. There will be an email sent out once a date has been set.
Snack List - Thank you to all the parents who brought in snacks over the last couple of days, we really appreciate it and our snack cabinet is filling up! To show our appreciation, here is a very accurate reenactment of Team 668 member, Shahar G. after seeing our snack cabinet was replenished:
Build Season Update:
We are now 6 weeks into build season, so we have one more week left to complete our robot in order to stay on schedule. Once the robot is done, we will begin driver training and tryouts.
Every year we name the robot after an ape from the movie Planet of The Apes, and we have an official name for this year's robot! Introducing … Kava!
So far we have a functioning drivetrain and we are working attaching the telescope to the drivetrain!
Telescope arm:
Drivetrain:
We switched from using Falcon 500 motors to Neo 550 motors:
Hugh T. designed 3D parts, and Lucas W. was able to machine it using the CNC router (Normally we use the router to cut 2D parts so that everything is flat - so this is very cool)
Parker L. and Saul S. have been setting up the Limelight that will be attached to the robot. The Limelight is able to read AprilTags (as shown below), and determine the robot’s location relative to them.
We set up the T-shirt shooter drivetrain with Neo motors in order to set up driving practice for drive team tryouts:
February and Late January Update:
We have been very busy getting ready for competition in more ways than just building the robot:
Field Elements - In order to practice the game, we build our own field elements out of wood! This year we built the:
Charge Station:
Node:
Double Substation Slider:
Pit Frame Fail - A group of Team 668 members spent a couple hours assembling a humongous 10ft x 10ft metal frame that we were planning on using in the pit at competition. However, the frame proved to be too difficult to assemble for it to be worth the benefit it was going to have for our pit, so we decided against it, much to the relief of the assemblers. Here is what it looked like during assembly:
Drivers Station - Parker L. has been working on a custom driver station for us to bring to competitions so we can compete in style. The driver station will provide a place to keep all of the drive components. The prototype is in progress at the moment, but here is a look at the CAD:
We also have done some other fun things:
Freshman night - Media Captain Jack V. and Vice President Lexi M. spoke at Pioneer’s freshman night to introduce robotics to incoming freshmen. They talked about all of the fun things we do in robotics, and afterwards we had many people come up to our table to check out the robot and ask us questions. We brought the base of the T-shirt shooter to demonstrate the types of things we do here in robotics.
Clock - During a slow work day, Nishant S. and Lexi M. collaborated on a project to bring clocks to Room 500. The original clock in the room stopped working, and was consequently ripped out of the wall. Now, members of the team can constantly be seen asking “what time is it?”. To combat this issue, Nishant and Lexi laser cut robot clocks! Next time you come to Room 500, be on the lookout for our very fitting robot clocks.
Here are some more goofy pictures taken this season so far:
Machining Highlights:
Team 668 wants to say a big thank you to our sponsors:
Thanks for reading!
Lexi M.
Vice President
Edition 3 - January 2023
Hello Team 668 supporters! Welcome to the third edition of the Apes of Wrath newsletter! This month's letter will recap all the fun activities our team did leading up to the start of build season and new information on this year’s competition.
2023 GAME - CHARGED UP:
For new parents, here is how our build season begins! Every January, that season’s game is revealed through a livestream and the game manual is released. Then, we begin brainstorming!
This year’s game revolves around receiving and scoring cones and cubes, as well as parking on an unbalanced platform. You can watch the game animation here: 2023 FIRST Robotics Competition CHARGED UP presented by Haas Game Animation
For more information, take a look at the game manual: 2023 Charged Up Game Manual
2023 Robot Update:
After days of brainstorming and complex decision matrices, we moved onto prototyping different mechanisms! We focused on prototyping a mechanism to receive and score the cone game piece. We had 2 groups working on different grabbing mechanisms:
Claw - Team members designed and prototyped a motor powered gripper that uses 2 claw prongs to grasp and transport the cone.
Gripper - Another group of team members worked on a mechanism to grip the cone using a pneumatic piston and a gear-like system to open and close two arms.
With lots of testing, we have since decided to pursue the claw as our method of retrieving game pieces!
Our Strategy: Our current overall strategy is to receive cones from the slider via a human player using a grabbing mechanism, then transport it to the grid and score the cones on the the middle and high nodes. Our plan for auton is still TBD, however the goal for the endgame portion is to engage on the charging station.
Build Season Schedule:
Every Tuesday: 3:30 PM - 10:00 PM - Break for dinner around 6:00 PM
Every Friday: 3:30 PM - 10:00 PM - Break for dinner around 6:00 PM
Every Saturday: 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM - Break for lunch around 12:00 PM
Every Sunday: 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM - Break for lunch around 12:00 PM
Sunday meetings are planned for every week, however, we may take Sundays off if we are ahead of schedule.
Competition Dates:
Arizona East Regional: March 15, 2023 - March 19, 2023
Leaving school early afternoon on March 15, coming back on March 19 in the morning - Specific times TBD
Monterey Regional: March 30, 2023 - March 31, 2023
Leaving early morning March 30, coming back on April 1 in the evening - Specific times TBD
You can visit our team calendar at our website here: https://www.team668.org/ or https://tinyurl.com/apesgc
Parent Support:
Meal Sign Ups: Meals 2023 Thank you all very much for signing up to provide dinner for the team, we now have a scheduled meal for every night of the build season. If we add more meeting dates in the future, we will be sure to let all parents know and add those days to the Meals spreadsheet.
Airport Pick Up - For parents of travel team members, we don’t have transportation from the airport back to the school, so it will be expected that parents pick up their child(ren) at San Jose International Airport (SJC), on the morning of March 19, 2023. Our plane is scheduled to arrive at 11:50 AM, so please make transportation arrangements for your team member(s). We are flying on Southwest Airlines flight 1388.
Snack List: We are always in need of snacks! Please sign up if you can using this link:Robotics Snacks!, or just bring some in! We are asking for non-sugary snacks and small water bottles. Thank you to those that brought items in, our team is very appreciative of the snacks. -
January Review:
Kickoff!
Kickoff Live Stream: Everyone arrived at school bright and early at 7:30 AM to see the game released. Our team hosted a viewing party and a neighboring team brought their pancake 3D printer to make everyone breakfast! We even got a visit from the CEO of PG&E, Patty Poppy. She talked about her role in PG&E as well as with FIRST. She even talked about the future of robotics in and with PG&E. Overall, it was really great to hear her talk about her experiences, especially being a woman in STEM. We also distributed drivetrain kits to local teams.
Kickoff Potluck: After the live stream, everyone went back to the robotics room and we celebrated the start of the season with a potluck! The food was very delicious and it was a fun way for parents to get insight on what we do in robotics.
Brainstorm: The rest of the day was spent reading the game manual and brainstorming ideas for our 2023 robot!
Team Dinners: On weeknights we have team dinners, thanks to the wonderful parents that provide delicious meals.
Media Room Makeover: Over the break, we started transforming our media room into a media/cool-down room. We painted the walls our team colors, added more comfy seating, LED lights and an air purifier. Students can use the room when they need a break from the hustle and bustle of build season.
December Review:
Holiday Party: In December we hosted our second annual Holiday Party! Members got to enjoy a Secret Santa gift exchange, video games such as Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart, and a hot chocolate bar with lots of snacks. Throughout the meeting, members also wrote holiday cards to elderly folks, spreading cheer and spirit to our community.
Room Organization: We’d like to extend a huge thank you to parents and members who graciously volunteered their time and effort to make our room a clean, organized, and usable space for us to use going forward. Being able to fully utilize our room will help us tremendously going into the build season, so once again, thank you for all your hard work.
Fall Project Update:
We ended the fall semester with a near complete swerve drive drivetrain, which we have since completed in the early weeks of the build season as part of building electrical and programming skills. As of now, our swerve drive is functioning well! The project served as an amazing hands-on exercise and experience for all members, and we are fully prepared to attempt a swerve drive on our 2023 competition robot.
Thanks for reading!
Keila P. and Lexi M.
President and Vice President
Edition 2 - December 2022
Hello Team 668 parents! Welcome to the second edition of the Apes of Wrath newsletter! This month's letter will highlight the upcoming events and schedule for December and early January, as well as recap our team’s activities for November.
- Upcoming Activities: -
2nd Annual Holiday Party: December 21st from 1:00 - 3:00 We are having our second annual Holiday Party on December 21st from 1:00-3:00 in the robotics room! Food will be provided, as well as a hot chocolate bar! We will project a holiday movie and trade gifts in a secret santa. There will also be an opportunity to get outreach hours creating holiday cards for the elderly.
Kickoff Day Livestream Viewing and Kit Distribution - January 7th 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM. (Arrive at 7:45) January 7th is kickoff day for the 2023 build season, and we are hosting a livestream viewing party! The party will be held in the PAC at Pioneer High School. The livestream is from 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM, followed by robot kit distribution from 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM. However, students are expected to arrive at 7:45 AM. This part of the event is for team members, but parents are invited to the kickoff potluck taking place directly after kit distribution in Room 500.
Kickoff Breakfast Potluck: January 7th at 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM Parents are invited to the potluck after kit distribution on January 7th at 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM. We would really love to have as many parents as possible attend! The potluck is to celebrate the beginning of build season, as well as answer any questions you may have regarding the following three months. Also during the potluck, we will show the video released earlier that day explaining this years competition.Please fill out this google sheet: Kickoff Potluck Sign Up with the breakfast dish you will be bringing to the potluck. There are example foods on the sheet, and there will be reminders sent out periodically as kickoff day approaches. Students will stay after until 5:00 PM to brainstorm ideas for the 2023 robot!
To recap:
7:45: Students arrive
9:00 - 9:30: Livestream viewing - students only
9:30 - 10:00: Kit distribution - students only
10:00 - 12:00: Team potluck - everybody!
12:00 - 5:00: Team brainstorm meeting - students only
- Holiday Schedule: -
Meetings will take place at the normally scheduled hours until after the holiday party on December 21st. There will be no meetings for the rest of break until January 3rd, 2023, which will mark the return of our normal schedule until we finalize our build season schedule. The schedule will be posted on the team website as well. Once again:
No meetings from December 22, 2022 - January 2, 2023
- List of Dates: -
12/21/22 - Holiday Party 1:00-3:00 - Wednesday
12/23/22 - 1/2/23 - No meetings
1/3/23 - Return of normal meeting schedule
1/7/23 - Kickoff 9:00-5:00 - Viewing party, potluck, and brainstorming meeting
- Parent Support: -
Kickoff Potluck Food Sign Ups: As mentioned above, we are hosting a breakfast potluck to celebrate kickoff, so once again, here is the link to the potluck google sheet:Kickoff Potluck Sign Up Please fill out your name and the dish you will be bringing.
Room Organization: Some parents expressed a willingness to help us reorganize our room, which is desperately needed, as you saw if you attended the parent meeting. We will be organizing the room on 12/10 and 12/17 from 10:30 - 1:00 on both days. We really need some help with managing and coordinating the organization of the room, and your help would be extremely appreciated. An email was sent out a couple days ago regarding room cleaning, so if you are able to help out that would be greatly appreciated. Please contact Mr. Weissman at lweissman@apesofwrath668.org if you are planning on coming.
Amazon Smile: Team 668 has an organization on eAmazon Smile, and when you order from amazon through our organization, we get a small portion of the profit. Here’s how to do it in 2 simple steps!
Go to the website https://smile.amazon.com/
Type “Pioneer High School Robotics Inc” into the search bar and select it
From now on, as long as you access amazon through the smile link (the same as above, or just type “amazon smile” into your search bar), our team will get a small donation for each purchase you make!
Snack List: Last month’s letter had the wrong link to the snack sheet was embedded. The mistake has been corrected, so here is the correct link to the snack google sheet: Robotics Snacks! So far we have had two sign ups and a couple people have brought snacks in, so thank you to participating parents.
Fall Project Update: As explained in the previous letter, our fall project this year is designing and building a brand new t-shirt shooter! We will use the brand new shooter to promote robotics during football games, and stir up excitement about robotics during recruitment days by using it in demonstrations. Last month:
Our swerve drive modules came in mid-november, and we split into groups to assemble them with minimal issues.
The machinists finished manufacturing the metal stalks, and are finishing up the polycarb belly pan required for drive train assembly, led by machining captain Sebastian N., and Lucas W.
The drivetrain is almost complete!
Turret design and prototyping is underway, led by CAD captain Hugh T.
- November Update: -
O'neill Sea Odyssey Outreach Event: A couple students traveled to Monterey early in November to help out the O’neill Sea Odyssey by cleaning the rooms and life jackets. The Sea Odyssey educates elementary children on the importance of marine health and all about ocean life.
Custom Ornaments: Each team member designed 2 custom STEM related ornaments using the computer aided design program, Onshape. We then laser cut and engraved the ornaments onto clear acrylic and hung them on our tree in Christmas in the Park in Downtown San Jose.
Christmas In the Park Team Tree: We decorated our first ever custom Apes of Wrath team tree! It is decorated with the custom ornaments, along with some red and white bauble ornaments that represent our team colors. If you are in Downtown San Jose, go visit our tree!
- Website Updates: -
You can look for the following updates to our website, thanks to Jack V.:
An “Upcoming” section with important dates.
A step by step instruction on how to register your child for the team.
Overall, a great start to the 2022 Fall Project!
Thank you for reading!
Lexi M.
Vice President
Edition 1 - November 2022
Hello Team 668 parents! This is the first edition of a recurring newsletter regarding our team activities! In case you missed parent informational night that took place on November 3, this letter will include some basic information about FIRST robotics and our team.
- FIRST Robotics -
Our team, The Apes of Wrath 668 has been established since 2001, making this our 22nd competition year. We are a part of the FIRST robotics program, which hosts robotics competitions worldwide. FIRST releases the year’s new competition in early January each year, which is the start of the robotics build season. The robot must be able to complete tasks to score points and help beat the opposing alliance. Here is last year’s competition video released by FIRST as an example of how a game would work. You can also find more information on our website, linked at the bottom of the newsletter.
- Team Requirements -
To stay on the team, team members must fill the attendance and outreach requirements (more information below). If team members wish to be on the travel team - a group of students who travel to the robotics competitions in the Spring - they must have a higher attendance and more outreach hours than the others.
Team requirements:
60% Attendance
8 Hours of Outreach
Travel Team requirements:
75% Attendance
15 Hours of Outreach
As of now, our team meets 3 times a week in Room 500 at Pioneer High School:
Tuesday 3:30 - 5:30
Friday 3:30 - 5:30
Saturday 10:30 - 1:00
As the season progresses and we begin the build season, the hours will change to be around 28 hours a week - 2 weekdays after school and both days on the weekend.
- Leadership -
Team 668 is a student driven and mentor guided team. We split our team into different subteams based on each member’s skills and interests, each led by subteam captains. Apes of Wrath has many different mentors (all of which you can see on our website) but the mentors who help lead meetings and give instruction on a weekly basis are:
Lonny Weissman
Rahil Mehta
Daniel Sturman.
We have two new mentors joining our team this year, Eric Diehr and Manny Sandhu!
Our student leaders include:
Keila P - President
Lexi M - Vice President
Kavya S - Electrical Captain
Hugh T - Mechanical Design Captain
Sebastian N - Machining Captain
Kian S - Programming Captain
Jack V - Media Captain
Parker L - Controls Captain
Leaders run meetings and help make decisions regarding our team. Subteam captains help delegate jobs and make decisions regarding their subteams.
- Outreach -
As mentioned above, we require a certain amount of outreach to be a part of the Apes of Wrath, which we give plenty of opportunities to fulfill the hour requirement. As of now, there haven’t been many events planned due to there being no outreach captain this year, however we have an event coming up tomorrow, on November 5th, from 3:00 - 5:00 pm, working with O'neill Sea Odyssey in Santa Cruz. If students can’t make it, there is no need to worry because we will have many more outreach events in the future.
- Fall Project -
Every year our team has a preseason build, also called fall season. We do this in order to refresh returners, get back to a robotics mindset, give new members a sense of what robotics is like and to help them find their interests, and also to give the team time to bond before build season. For this year’s project, we are making a new t-shirt shooter - from scratch! We bring our t-shirt cannon to Pioneer football games to promote our team and gain outreach hours. Our old t-shirt cannon is very old and breaks down often, so instead of refurbishing it, we decided to make it our fall project to create a new one! This way, we can follow the same procedure we would normally use when creating a real build season robot, but we don’t have to abide by the FIRST restrictions. We are also testing out how to create a robot with a swerve drive train, instead of the west coast drive train we normally implement on our competition robots! A swerve drive is a type of drivetrain in which each wheel can point in any direction. Since the wheels can point in any direction, the robot can move in any direction. Additionally, it can do cool maneuvers such as turning its wheels to form a circle and spinning very quickly. Being able to experiment with a swerve drive during fall season will help us get used to it and be prepared for the build season. Here is a good example of a swerve drive.
How to get on the emailing list:
Click the “Newsletter” tab on our website, and fill out the information for the newsletter, and you will be added to the emailing list for both the newsletter, and other information/updates. If you are on this emailing list and would like to be removed, please email lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org.
- Important Dates -
Start of build season: January 7, 2023
Arizona Regionals: March 15, 2023 - March 19 2023
Monterey Regionals: March 30 2023 - March 31 2023
For more information, check the calendar on our website at About > Upcoming.
- Parent Support -
Though we have amazing mentors and student leaders, our team can’t function without the help of our team parents! Some things we currently need help with are:
Donating snacks - Signup Sheet
Bringing meals - This would mean making a meal or purchasing food for around 30 people. Sign up sheet arriving by build season!
Carpooling - Since we have so many outreach events, team members need rides.
- Mentorship -
If you work in an engineering field, such as electrical, mechanical, programming, software, etc, and you would like to work with the team in that capacity, we would love to have your assistance! If you consider yourself none of the above mentioned, but have skills in marketing, business, organization, management, media, we could use your help as well. If you can’t make too big a time commitment, don’t worry! We will take any assistance you can provide. Any support parents can provide is greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading! New newsletter posted every month. If you have any questions regarding Team 668, email lexi.m@apesofwrath668.org, or contact Lonny Weissman at lweissman@firstinspires.org.
For further information, visit our website and socials linked below.