Reefscape FRC 2025

Build Season

Kicking things of early, we gathered the morning of the Game Reveal.

The team arranged a few ideas and how we could go about doing things. Yet we waited for the RI3D teams to make their robots.

Our team decided to take a lot of inspiration from the RI3D team "RUST Hounds" with their passive arm and high rising elevator, it was exactly what we needed as a rookie team.

As a rookie team, we were not in the position to get SWERVE drive, a sophisticated drivebase used by high ranking teams. Though at a cost, a full Swerve Drive kit costs more than $5,000 dollars.

We knew that having a holomonic drivebase would be essential for succeeding in the event we would be attending, the Southern Cross Regional Event. So we went for the "Poor Man Swerve," Mecanum Wheels, wheels with 45 degree rollers on their, which allows sideways movement.

To conclude we built a robot based on the rusthounds, attached to a mecanum drivebase for sideways movement.

Mecanum Assembly

Our team decided that making the drivebase first is the main priority.

This gives the programming team time to setup the new drivebase that they've never programmed with before.

Ensuring that the drivebase was build ASAP let us get the eletronics done swiftfully as well.

Field Assembly

The field group switched to high gear the get the field objects done as quickly as possible, they did it in the span of just a few build sessions, so that they could go back into their original groups.

ELECTRONICS

The electronics team decided to make a belly pan, as it would not get in the way of the super structure.
We initially went for an angled electronics board, but that was quickly shut down as there was not enough space the fit all the electronics on.

Electronics Board Rev.01

Board Revisions

We wanted to use DIN rail from the start, thinking of several ways to incorporate it even before build season.

It was used to mount all of our components such as Motor Controllers, VRMs, PDPs, RIOs, you name it.

To make things nice and clean, we used for the industry standard Cable Ducting to hide all of our cables. This was a good decision because at the Regional, our most commented thing was the beauty of which our electronics was super organised and managed.

Vision

This year, our lead programmer Dan wanted to incorporate vision into our robot, seeing that the game was super precise.

We had setup 1 orange pi 5+ running Photon Vision, and used 2 Ardu Cams, connected through USB 2.0

Wiring Solution:

Early in the build season we Cooked our only Orange Pi 5+. How you may ask? Well just make sure you give it the correct amount of amperage and voltage.

So, we ordered another including 3 things to ensure we didn't brick the new one.

1. 5A USB-C Brick

2. Orange Pi 5+ Metal Case

3. Step Down Regulator

These 3 things made sure our orange pi didn't die, and it got us through the entire season.

For wiring, we bought the "Polulu 5A Step Down Regulator" on Core Electronics, an Australian Electronics Retail Store, which supplied the correct amount of power to our mini pc.

Final Board

An image of our final drivebase.

Specs:

8x Victor SPX

4x Toughbox Mini Gearbox

4x CIM Drivebase Motors

1x NavX2-MXP

1x RoboRIO 2.0

1x CTRE PDP 1.0

1x Orange Pi 5+ 8GB

2x CoreElectronics Arducam OV2311

1x Vivid Hosting Compliant Radio/Router

2x VRM

4x 6" ? AndyMark Mecanum Wheels

Elevator

The Elevator was the time drainer.

This season we knew building an elevator was definitely one of the things we were going to be doing, so we set out to do so. But problems kept adding up, the first major problem was that there were no Metric bearing blocks, and it was too late of order any if there were any, so we had the grueling task of making custom bearing blocks, and to add insult to injury, we had no CNC machine the make nice bearing blocks, so we make janky and loose blocks that ended up making our elevator look like a banana.

Never the less, it ended up working our for us, and we had a robot built in time for the event.

The elevator consists of a pipe, plastic pulleys and braided rope, which made our elevator go up in stage sequences. This was essential for us as we needed the centre stage to lift first so we could pick up the game piece.

To conclude, some things that could have been improved on are, using wire instead of string, brace the elevator for rigidity, take more time and make better bearing blocks, and increase the overall height of the elevator.

After our season ended we realised how much we were being limited due to not having a CNC router. So mid season we decided to order a nice CNC router so we could go with the "Prototype and Final" idea.

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