FRC Training for the Off Season

[HunterSeeker]

Ideas & Recommendations for Keeping your Team Involved and Preparing for Next Year

Right after competition:

Finish your Robot! - The build season is too short to get it all done, but now you can go back and finish things.  Implement that vision system, add that extra arm, or optimize your code

Evaluate Your Team – Are your lead programmers going to college next year? Have them work with your newer members to pass on their knowledge. Have them go through the code together so someone is not learning to program last minute next year. Be sure to check out all of the LabVIEW training options we have listed. If you're new to LabVIEW the best place to get started is LabVIEW 101 Video Training.

Over the summer:

Find/Host an Off Season Competition – How much better could your robot be in two months? Prove it! See if you can put on a small competition with other local teams, or talk to your regional director to see if any other local teams are starting a competition. Check out the FIRST's guide to Off Season Events

Re-Purpose That Robot! – Think of a new use for that robot. Does your classroom need a soda delivery bot or a T Shirt Cannon? Does your local food pantry need a can sorting robot? How about making that competition cart follow you down pit row next year?

Share your Love - Now that you have an awesome robot from your season, show it off! Find opportunities to show your robot to everyone in your community and share your love of robotics and inspire them to learn more about science and technology. Nursing homes, day cares, church groups, and scout meetings are all great places to share your robot and spark the next great engineer's passion. If you do something cool we'd love to hear about it.https://decibel.ni.com/content/thread/16831

Develop Next Year’s Drive System! – No matter what the game is next year your robot is going to need to move around. It could save your team a lot of time if the robot already reliably gets around. This will also give your drivers more practice, and your programmers more time to implement additional features. Swerve drivers are not easy, neither are transmissions or using the connect, have those things ready for next season

Pre-Season Next Year:

Train your New Members! – Get your new members familiar with last year’s robot. This is a great opportunity for veteran team members to strengthen their knowledge and get your new members up to speed.

Start Programming Early! – LabVIEW has getting started info to get your team running before the build season.

LabVIEW for FRC Training Slides (pptx)