Paying it Forward
At Omega, we recognize the role that our community has played in the development of our robotics team. Without such a supportive group of friends, family, businesses, mentors, and more, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
We also recognize that there’s a lot of needs to be addressed in the place that we call home, and it’s because of both of these reasons that we give back to our community through our outreach programs!
Ultimate Goal 2020-2021:
Western region robotics forum
WRRF Spark Planning
- Start: 4/3/20
- End: 9/18/20
WRRF Spark 2020
- Start: 9/19/20
- End: 9/20/20
WRRF Fall CADathon: Waterworks
- Start: 9/20/20
- End: 10/13/20
WRRF Snowflake Planning
- Start: 10/24/20
- End: 12/19/20
Summary
Focus Area: FTC Community, STEM Professionals
People Reached: 180+
Man Hours Spent: 35
Western Region Robotics Forum (WRRF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to spread STEM (specifically robotics) education and connect students with industry professionals. We became involved in WRRF events after a judge at one of our qualifiers last season, Mr. Clayton Ou, contacted us to be part of the WRRF Fall Convention planning committee. The series was later renamed WRRF Spark. WRRF Spark was a 2-day event which included workshops, activities, and a virtual CAD competition (“CADathon”).
As members of the planning committee, we decided the overall structure of the virtual conference, which workshops would be featured, and what activities would be included. We also facilitated the convention.
Specifically, Trinity was part of the activities committee and was in charge of running various activities such as a Jeopardy game. Rebecca was part of the contest committee, which designed a FIRST-style game called Waterworks for a CADathon. The game involves robots picking up PVC pipes and pipe fittings, putting them together, and dropping them off in designated areas on the field.
Additionally, Trinity and Rebecca presented a workshop on how to make a great FTC engineering notebook. Rebecca also presented an Intro to Python workshop.
Trinity was also on the planning committee for WRRF’s Winter Convention, WRRF Snowflake, a 1-day event similar to WRRF Spark. Trinity was on the sessions committee, which was in charge of organizing the schedule of workshops. She helped to create a promotional flyer and program for the event. She also facilitated several activities the day of the event. The planning committee for WRRF Snowflake was smaller than WRRF Spark, with 6 student volunteers.
Impact:
WRRF Spark and WRRF Snowflake were events that attracted hundreds of participants from the FIRST community, including members of FRC and FTC teams, mentors of those teams, and STEM professionals. Both events included activities that allowed teams to bond, network, and learn valuable technical and nontechnical skills to succeed in their respective competitions and future careers.
Allstars united robotics program
Summary
Focus Area: Local Community, STEM Professionals
Man Hours Spent: 40
We are working with Allstars United Education Foundation (“Allstars”), one of our sponsors, to spread robotics in our local community in Evergreen. One way we did this before the pandemic was mentoring the 2 Allstars-funded FTC teams at Quimby Oak Middle School and Chaboya Middle School. (We would have continued this mentorship if Allstars was able to continue funding them, but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic made this economically unfeasible.)
Besides mentorship, we also worked with the CEO of Allstars United, Madan Bellam (a former engineer) this past summer to create a local robotics league similar to FTC so that elementary and middle schoolers could acquire STEM skills. We even CADed a minibot that would be sent to students for them to build and program all on their own. They would then use this minibot in a mock FTC-style game we created called Mining Mania. Once again, the pandemic limited us from actually carrying out this program.
Learn code website
Location
https://omega9656.github.io/learn-code/
Time & Date
Initial commit: 3/27/20
Latest commit: 8/30/20
Status: Ongoing
Summary
Focus Area: FTC Community
People Reached: 180+ (page views)
Man Hours Spent: 50
Learn Code is a one-stop-shop website for FTC teams that want to learn or teach FTC programming. Our website features a variety of topics such as Java, command line (bash), Git, and GitHub across 7 units. Our programming team is also working on adding more units to the website, such as the FTC SDK, FTC CV, Control Theory, and Roadrunner.
Our website is comprehensive, with lessons, practice problems, solutions to those problems, and quizzes (with immediate scoring and answer feedback). It’s the perfect place to jump into FTC programming or to use as a resource for training new members.
Impact
We advertised our website on the FTC Discord, a community of over 7,000 FIRST members (mostly members of the FTC community). Learn Code is also posted on the NorCal FTC Teams Helping Teams page. According to Google Analytics, our site has over 180 page views.
Besides the broader FTC community, Omega has also used this website to teach new and returning members the basics of programming as part of our sustainability lessons during the offseason.
FTC 18715 Artemis
Summary
Focus Area: Team Mentoring
People Reached: 15
Man Hours Spent: 10
At the start of the season, we learned that our school’s robotics club was starting a new FTC team, 18715 Artemis. We reached out to the rookie team, offering to mentor them. We have had various meetings with the leads of team Artemis via Zoom to give them advice on fundraising, which parts/tools to purchase, robot design, and how to coordinate an FTC team.
Impact
Starting a new FTC team is hard. Starting a new FTC team during the COVID-19 pandemic is even more difficult. As such, we wanted to give Artemis as much help as we could because we knew the hardships they would have to face.
We are also passionate about mentoring other teams because our own team didn’t get a lot of mentorship when we started, and we know the difference it makes to be able to ask other people questions about how FTC works, how to manage a team, how to build/design a robot, and how to program it.
If you would like to support us in our mission to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders, please consider sponsoring us by clicking on the link below.
Skystone 2019-2020:
If you would like to support us in our mission to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders, please consider sponsoring us by clicking on the link below.
Our programs
Village Branch Library Workshop
Location: Village Square Branch Library
Dates: 4/15/17 and 4/22/17
Summary:
Over the course of two consecutive Saturdays, we introduced of our FIRST robot to 15 kids at our local library. While many were interested in our outreach, we ended up having to waitlist 36 of them. We limited the number of people that we accepted as this was our first time doing an outreach and we wanted to focus our attention on a manageable group of people.
Impact:
We were able to inspire children (ranging from elementary to middle school ages) to pursue fields in STEM. After our presentation, many displayed interest and excitement to join our local FIRST teams, so we did our best to answer any questions they had!
Pictures:
Middle School Introduction
Location: Chaboya Middle School and Quimby Oak Middle School
Dates: 6/17, 6/18
Summary:
Our team knew of the benefit of introducing FIRST and STEM to middle schoolers to help foster a long-term interest in the field. That is why we went to our high school’s two largest feeder middle schools: Chaboya and Quimby Oak. We demonstrated the robot and talked about the structure of FIRST. We stressed the importance of Gracious Professionalism and collaborations with your team. By showing our design process to the students, they were able have an example of the thinking process they should have in robotics.
Impact:
We were able to inspire middle school students (from 7th to 8th grade) to further their interest in STEM. After our presentation, many displayed interest and excitement to join our robotic club at EVHS. We have actually recruited Sriteja, Trinity, and Josephine from our presentations. Now, they are active members of Omega.
Play Space Workshop/Scrimmage (Screamage)
Location: The Play Space
Date: 10/28/18
Summary:
Our team wanted to learn new skills and gain a greater understanding of the local FTC community, so we participated in the workshop hosted by FTC 8404 Quixilver and FTC 2891 Warriorborgs. In this workshop, our programmers learnt important aspects of implementing computer vision in FTC, while the mechanical team learning important tools and tricks from members of Quixilver and Warriorborgs. For example, the mechanical team learned how to reliably wire electronics and calculate the required stall torque for a lever type mechanism. Also, the scrimmage allowed our team to test out our latch mechanism and get a hands on experience with a fully assembled field.
Impact:
This scrimmage had a major impact on the team’s season. First, it allowed the mechanical and programming sub-teams to gain valuable skills that would assist us in the rest of the season. It also allowed us to validate previous designs such as the rack and pinion, and gain hands on experience with a competition ready field.
Pictures:
Parent Night
Location: Nidhir’s House
Date: 12/13/18
Summary:
At Parent Night, we wanted to demonstrate our robot and ask for additional monetary donations. Fortunately, most parents were willing to donate, despite us having difficulties demonstrating our robot. Difficulties included the phones running out of battery. We also discovered that we really needed Rev electronics since our robots kept disconnecting.
Impact:
Parent night helped the parents better understand what FTC is and what we’ve spent our season doing. Even though our demonstration wasn’t successful, we were still able to explain what we’d been working on. Overall, it better solidified the parents’ understanding of what our challenge was as well as the side challenges we needed to overcome. It also helped parents actually see where the money they’re donating is going.
If you would like to support us in our mission to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders, please consider sponsoring us by clicking on the link below.
Project Pickup
Location: Evergreen Community
Date: 6/19 – Present
Summary:
Currently, Omega is working with members of our school’s FRC team (2854 Prototypes) to design a robot that can pick up trash and recycling off the side of the road as a community project. See evprojectpickup.wordpress.com for more information!
Impact:
As of Summer 2019, the Project Pickup team has finished an initial CAD design for what our cleaning robot would look like. Once the Skystone 2019-20 season is over, we plan to resume working on Project Pickup.
FIRST GLobal STEM Corps
Location: Samoa (via video calls)
Date: 9/12/2019 – 10/27/2019
Summary:
FIRST Global is a robotics “olympic” that invites over 100 countries around the world to send a team to compete in an annual competition. The goal of the competition is to foster community and global friendship by giving countries that otherwise could not participate in robotics competitions a chance to participate in FIRST Global. Most helped are the countries not reached by other FIRST Competitions. Since FIRST GLobal does not have the manpower to provide each team competing one on one help, they’ve organized FIRST GLobal Stem Corps, where teams and individuals can sign up to mentor one of the FIRST Global Teams. We mentored Team Samoa, who is a first year team in FIRST Global and one of the first robotics teams in Samoa.
Impact:
Since it was Team Samoa’s first year competing, they had a lot of technical questions regarding their robot. We provided technical advice, especially regarding drivetrain design, linear slides/hang building, and control theory (regarding the use of encoders and proportional integral derivative control). Thanks to the hard work of their students, Team Samoa would go on to have 7 wins and 2 losses at the FIRST Global competition in Dubai. It was a true honor and privilege helping this under resourced team and we wish them the best of luck in continuing to grow robotics in Samoa.
AllStars United Workshop
https://allstarsu.pathtoexcel.com/
Location: Chaboya Middle School, AllStars United Summer Camp
Date: 7/12/19
Summary:
We presented the slideshow we had made yesterday to three different classes. Each class contained students of varying ages: one had seventh and eighth graders, another had sixth graders, and the last had fourth and fifth graders. We started out each class introducing the kids to FIRST, FTC, and Omega using Google Slides.
After the presentation, we did a few more interactive activities. First, we let them drive around the robots we had brought. A lot of kids really seemed to enjoy this (almost everyone participated), which was quite different from the level of engagement we received from the students at Quimby and Chaboya a month or so ago. Back then, there were still always people eager to drive, but only a few.
After that, we split the class into two separate groups. One group was to build an obstacle course for the robot out of cardboard, styrofoam, and duct tape we had brought from home and the other was to code an autonomous path to guide the robot through said obstacle course. The programming group got the opportunity to try their hand at Java (they all started with a basic understanding of block code) and the building group was able to be creative (coming up with unique challenges for the other group using only the relatively limited materials we had provided them).
At the same time, for those that neither wanted to code nor wanted to build the obstacle course, we showed some students the CADs we had done last season using Fusion 360. These kids not only got to interact with the kinds of parts we actually use in building our robot, but also gained a deeper understanding of how our robot was designed and why it worked.
The nice thing about this activity was that it gave kids an opportunity to work on whatever most interested them: whether that be mechanical, programming, or design related. Many students were engaged in the activities and asked us questions about robotics beyond the activities, which we were happy to answer in depth. As we only had an hour with each set of kids, this was about all we were able to do, but we are proud of what we were able to teach them.
Impact:
The class sizes were pretty small (this was largely due to there being a movie day that coincided with our visit—something that we were unfortunately not informed about earlier). While this meant that we weren’t able to reach as many kids as we had originally hoped to, it also meant that the kids that were there got a more one-on-one experience. Additionally, as there were only a maximum of three of us there at any given time, and given that some of the kids could be a bit loud and unruly, this made things a lot more manageable for us. Overall, it seemed like the kids had fun while also learning a bit about what it’s like to be on an FTC team.
Highway Beautification Outreach
Location: Southwest Expressway and Meridian on-ramp
Date: 7/13/19
Summary:
One of the members of an Adopt-A-Highway Litter Pickup group contacted our team and wanted us to build a robot that would help make their efforts for cleaning the highway more efficient and more safe (some parts of the highway are too dangerous for volunteers to walk along the road and pick up litter). We teamed up with a couple members of our school’s FRC Team (2854 Prototypes) to design and build the robot, since they’re more accustomed to building larger robots. This day was primarily focused on scouting the area to identify any potential obstacles our robot would have to face and to see exactly what kinds of trash our robot would need to be able to pick up. We actually took the place of other volunteers so that we’d be able to experience the challenges (in terms of efficiency and accessibility) that our robot will hopefully be able to solve.
The first thing we noticed at the site was all the different types of terrain. We’d have to make a robot that could navigate through the rough asphalt of the highway, the more grassy shoulders, as well as the shifting gravel on the sides of the road. When we were walking on the hill that comes between the flat shoulder and the wall of the highway, we found it hard to keep our feet from slipping since the ground itself wasn’t very stable. One of the challenges that some of the volunteers pointed out to us was that the hills go very high up, which makes it hard for a human to climb up while holding all the required equipment.
Another problem is getting the robot to recognize the differences between trash and the dirt and leaves surrounding it. A lot of the litter we picked up was either partially buried or stuck in bushes, so the robot would have to be able to scan for trash and adjust its intake accordingly. There were also so many different types of trash, most of which needed to be sorted between recyclable materials and actual trash. We even found a dollar bill and some brand new mechanical pencils which was very cool.
Additionally, there was a homeless encampment set up on the side of the hill behind some bushes whose inhabitants threw trash down the hill towards us. This reminded us that we could also have a problem with people and/or cars accidentally hitting and possibly damaging our robot.
Impact:
After this trip, we were able to settle on a basic design for our robot. To accommodate the tough and varying terrain, we plan to use 8 large wheels with the front two wheels slightly raised. The wheels we picked should be able to traverse the kinds of terrain we encountered and with the raised front wheels, our robot would be able to deal with bumps and slopes. We also decided to have 2 different intake systems: a roller to pick up larger piles of trash on the ground and an arm to reach into bushes and such to pick up the more scattered and less accessible pieces of trash.
Besides helping us determine what we’d need to design/build in terms of our robot, this experience gave us a greater appreciation for all those volunteers that do this all the time (it’s hard work that often goes unnoticed). There’s so much litter on the highways, and by participating in this project, we’re able to use our robotics skills and knowledge to help our environment, even if it’s just a bit.
If you would like to support us in our mission to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders, please consider sponsoring us by clicking on the link below.
FTC Discord
Summary:
Ever since 2017 our team has been on various FTC online communities such as the FTC discord. However, since 2018 our team has been increasingly more active. Discord is an online chatting program that facilitates instant messaging/file sharing/voice calling for large communities. The unofficial FTC discord is a multinational community of FTC students, mentors, coaches, FTA (Field Technical Advisors), and vendors to come together and provide help and ideas. The FTC discord has 4,156 members and continues to grow at a rapid pace. It has a mix of both rookie teams and world winning teams that build off each other.
Impact:
One of our captains, Justin, is a moderator on the FTC discord, and he helps maintain a welcoming and safe environment on the discord. Additionally, the Swerve Alliance is a smaller discord server made up of mostly veterans, where the idea behind Game Manual 0 (a higher level technical guide to FTC) was developed. Finally, FTC Omega members compete in the VCC (Valor Cad Challenge), a 5 day CAD challenge designed for FTC. Justin also wrote a 3-page rendering guide for the CAD & Design channel.
GAme Manual Zero (GM0)
Read GM0 here: gm0.copperforge.cc
Concept Exploration: April-May 2019
Writing: May-September 2019
Initial Public PDF Release: September 7, 2019
Initial Wiki Release: November 12, 2019
Summary:
One of the major issues facing FTC is the lack of team sustainability and team stagnation. Unfortunately there are a lack of resources to help new/inexperienced teams improve. While there is plenty of documentation for teams to start up a pushbot, there is inadequate information on current FTC design trends on how to build a high scoring robot. As a team, we experienced the faults of this lack of documentation first hand. When we tried to improve after Relic Recovery, we were totally lost with no mentorship guidance or dedicated resources. Many other veterans noticed this pressing need too, and a community effort of 31 contributors on the FTC Swerve Alliance Discord emerged to address this issue.
Impact:
Game Manual 0 is approximately 250 pages and covers nearly all technical aspects of FTC, from design, build, fabrication, code, and electronics. Its reached over 6400 people online and even more through kickoff events and workshops. Our co-captain, Justin, is one of the four managing editors, and we hope that Game Manual 0 is the first step to raising the floor for all FTC teams.
Justin’s Guide to Rendering
Date: 8/24/2019
Summary:
One aspect of the FTC community that wowed me when I was inexperienced was the use of renders. These slick, well put together showcased team’s CADs in a beautiful photo realistic way. Over the summer of 2019, I sought to learn how to render. Very quickly, I became proficient in rendering, with other members of the FTC community taking note of my skills and asking me how to achieve similar results. I wanted to make an easy-to-follow guide so that anyone could achieve comparable renders, and then wrote up such a guide. My guide is a three-page overview on how to get great looking renders quickly in Fusion 360, with tips that can be applied to other rendering programs like SOLIDWORKS Visualize and KeyShot.
Impact:
My guide to rendering was posted on the FTC Subreddit and Discord, with it being pinned in the #design-and-cad channel on the Discord which has 5,520 members as of last count. I also use this guide for sustainability within our team so that the team will be able to produce high quality renders for marketing and documentation purposes for years to come.
Omega Robotics 
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