FRC Roundtable

In this episode, Kevin N from Team 2052 KnightKrawler shares how his team organizes their CAD documents to improve document sharing and versioning. At the end of this short presentation multiple teams show their CAD for this year's robot and share some advice and information on how their team approaches CAD. A list of all links that were shared in the chat during the talk can be found in the YouTube show notes.

Luke from Team 2530 Inconceivable shares his best advice for managing the electronics on your robot. Learn what teams are doing to improve the reliability of their electrical components.

The FRC Regional Director for the northland area leads the roundtable this week with information regarding the FRC Championship tournament. Mentors for several teams also share their advice.

In this episode Briley from team 3277 ProDigi leads us in a discussion about playing defense this season, the different ways teams can employ defense and the impact it has made on the game. "Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships" - Paul Bryant

The 2024 game Crescendo saw major shifts in how the game was played between week 1 and week 6. Now that we are at the halfway point, do we believe we have seen the optimal game play strategy or is the "meta" still evolving as it did two years ago? How are teams adjusting their drive team strategy? What design changes is your team making to their robot? Have we seen the optimal defensive play, or will that change? How does every robot maximize their effectiveness going forward?

Learn how Team 2052 KnightKrawler helps local Girl Scout troops earn their robotics badge, while exposing more girls to robotics and encouraging more girls and young women to explore STEM.

In this episode the roundtable discusses what we learned from Week 1 Regional competitions. How do we think game play will evolve and what changes are needed to our robots.

In this episode teams that participated in Week Zero share their experience and observations. Teams discuss what they are working to improve before Week 1 competitions and where they experienced challenges with this year's build.

Our Northland FIRST Regional Organizers share everything you need to know about getting ready for competition this year. Even if you aren't competing in Minnesota or North Dakota, there is plenty of good information for anyone getting ready to compete.

Our local Judge Advisors, Rachel and Jess return to share information and advice on the Impact Award and Dean's List Award process.

In this episode, Team 2502 Talon Robotics returns to talk business. Last month the team joined us to share how they restructured the engineering side of their team. During this episode, Talon will share how they run the business side of the team with discussions on processes, events and awards.

What did teams learn after their first week of design and prototyping? How are team's strategies evolving?

In this episode, mentors and students from many teams sharethoughts on what will be key match strategies, how the game may evolve as the season progresses, and how high, medium, and low resource teams can find success during the season. The 2026 FRC season should be an exciting fast pacedyear with REBUILT.

Team 2502 Talon Robotics returns to lead another FRC Roundtable. This time the discussion will be focused on organizing and training the engineering side of your team. Talon student leaders will share what they are doing this year and invites student leaders from other teams to share how their teams prepare for the season.

Northland Judge Advocates Rachel and Jess share and dispel common judging myths that will help your team improve.

UPDATE: Due to a technical failure, the first publish of this episode was missing half the presentation. Elise and Laurie very graciously offered to re-record the presentation. This is a republish of that presentation with the Q&A from the original recording added.  Continuity Best Practices through Process & DocumentationA step by step resource for developing and implementing team continuity. The presenters will walk through a process to help you unpack your team’s current available information, discover what else you might want to develop, and build a living document that is easily transferable to a next generation.Presented by Elise Cronin-Hurley Mentor for Team 1902 and Laurie Shimizu former mentor for Team 1816 Slides Available: https://tinyurl.com/mvkwpwmvWorkbook Available: https://tinyurl.com/8ph25499

On this episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable we discuss who travels and who stays home. Should the whole team travel? What are the advantages and disadvantages of sending a smaller group to competitions? How do teams handle the costs?

Bob Atkins simultaneously mentors 6 FRC teams, with a sprinkling of FTC and FLL on top. In this episode, Bob shares advice for running a successful build season and staying on schedule.

Mahi from Team 2531 RoboHawks shares his experience as Champs Dean's List winner. We explore the best advice he collected throughout his Dean's List experience and since. Tons of fantastic advice for both students interviewing and mentors preparing essays.

In the second of our roundtable sessions organized by FIRST, we discuss the importance of mental health. Mick Lynch, a Certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor, and a dedicated clinical and sport psychologist at Winona State University, shares his advice for approaching mental health and normalizing the importance of taking care of ourselves and each other.

Team 2472 shares their impressive leadership process and structure.

What do we do when we observe something inappropriate? Do we directly engage? Do we wait and address the problem later? Do we refer the situation to someone else? What are the ways to deal with situations we encounter in FRC and everyday life.

What is MinneTrials? How has it helped teams grow and improve? Tips and Tricks. Advice for first time teams.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Team 7028 The Binary Battalion shares about their team members, how they run their team, the nonprofit that supports them. They talk about their community outreach with their tank bot t-shirt cannon. 7028 talks about the pros and cons of being a program of community education and not an official sport of the school district. They also share about their student fee structure, how they manage sponsorships, fundraising events, and budgeting. Binary talks about how they manage their season, leadership structure, project management approach and process including their team decision-making practices, design approach. Apps they've build for scouting, and more!

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. This week 2129 Ultraviolet shares about their team history, make up, dual captain and leadership system, methods of recruitment, youth outreach programs, how they use minitrials for team training, their season flow, process, meetings, etc. There was also a lot of Q&A with the group.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Aaron 2847 MegaHertz mentor lead a discussion on how FRC teams can start advocacy efforts with their local and state government or industry leaders. Aaron talks about remembering overall goals of FIRST - beyond building a robot. Gaining skills in advocacy and business planning are some of the outcomes FIRST students benefit from so let's use them. Aaron talks about the importance of researching what matters to the people you will be influencing. Does coding, computer skills matter to them or are they interested in jobs and economic development? What industry are you speaking to, manufacturing? agriculture? etc. Aaron outlines case studies of advocacy and there was a lot of Q&A with the group.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. 5! 10! 15! 20! 2530!!! This week Inconceivable! shares about the make up of their team, how they recruit and onboard new team members, the structure of their subteams and functions, how the team handles communications on discord, failure reporting with FEMA - and show their failure report on screen, CAD using OnShape, etc. They talk about what their facilities are like, how they've grown in robot production areas like battery maintenance, swerve drive, vision, and new robot construction approaches for motors, thin-walled tube, etc. They also share about their changes to strategy and scouting, how they are growing in outreach and a hearty Q&A with the group followed.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss the topic of getting ready for FIRST FRC World Champs. This episode was recorded at the end of the REEFSCAPE game season in 2025 but takes a more global approach to generally how to plan for your team to manage the Champs experience, specifically getting there, hotel registration, travel and logistics, shipping robot and pits via coordinated Amazon trucks. the discussion also includes how to help your team make the most of the event including tips for Wednesday load in, pits, inspection, sensor calibration. And Wednesday Thursday conference opportunities. Also, how to manage your team, youth safety, what is GP / stands expectations, what it's like on the field, matches and queueing. Also how to feed your team, connect with other teams, what to prepare for your team and chaperones, managing internal team communication at Champs. How to manage Saturday load out and finale.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Team 2847 MegaHertz shares about their team, specifically: about the teams overview, structure and history. They tour their shop space, and talk about the MegaHertz build season approach and schedule. 2847 also talks about their mentorship of 3 Vex IQ teams, 2 FLL teams and 1 FTC team. and their activities for outreach and advocacy. 2847 shares some of their technical robot accomplishments, CAD approach, etc. highlighting their design approach from REEFSCAPE in particular.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. This week is an open table where the group brought up whatever was on their mind, ranging from team finances, changing the robot midstream, robot programming, and finding practice space.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss how teams approach scouting and alliance strategy.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss what teams took away from their week 1 REEFSCAPE 2025 competitions. Lessons learned, and what they are looking at going forward in the competition season.

(2025-02-23)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Team 2052 KnightKrawler student programming lead Afomia leads a discussion of advanced autonomous programming using pathplanner. Specifically Afomia shares how 2052's auto strategy has changed each year for the past 3 years. She also shares a pathplanner GUI demo, talks about key auto classes that 2052 uses, command composition, creating new auto classes, and choosing autos without deploying. Afomia leads live demos for several of the subtopics on screen.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. John Stratis team mentor and seasoned FIRST Robot Inspector reviews the most common reasons teams fail inspection and what you can do to avoid failing and have a successful robot inspection. John highlights the key new rules from 2025 including that weigh in is now possible at load in and pits now close Thursdays when practice matches are complete - no more late evening pits. Other new rules include a reduced weight limit, new rules for bumpers (see the new bumper rules episode). Tips include benefits early inspection, watch for sharp edges, team numbers on all 4 sides, electrical tips, new radio rules and tips, robot light requirements, pneumatics tips, firmware rules and tips, the importance of gracious professionalism when asking for a second opinion from the lead inspector. A discussion of Q&A with the teams follows.

(2025-02-02) An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. FIRST Robotics Emcee Yoji Shimizu leads a review of the 2025 changes from FIRST on FRC alliance selection and regional advancement points. Plus the reasoning from FIRST on why these changes were made. Some key changes include the pacing of alliance selection including use of timers to speed up decisions, changes to who can be on the field during alliance selection, and the rule which now skips your team if a decision is not reached in the allotted time. Yoji also discusses new rules around advancement to World Championships including the new regional advancements points system, retirement of wildcard advancement, priority waitlist, etc. Discussion is robust and there is a productive questions and answer section of this episode.

An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Recorded in January of 2025 this discussion centers on the new FIRST rules for bumpers published in 2024. John Stratis of Team 2177 The Robettes leads the discussion. John is also a FIRST robot inspector. He reviews a brief history of bumpers - none were required historically and now they are part of the design challenge and not a specific set of design requirements. John shares the 2024 bumper rule updates, common points of confusion where teams were not understanding the bumper rules and the FIRST rationale for why some of these changes came to be.

(2025-01-19)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss the topic of Scrum and Agile Project Management and how 2052 uses it for FRC. The basics of agile and kanban boards and task management are covered by Team 2052 mentor Ashley who is a professional project manager. The concepts of sprints, scrum masters, standup meetings, handling dependencies, are also covered in the context of FRC. Ashley and student Max share about use of the Miro cloud-based SaaS tool which works on the school wi-fi and is a free tool with unlimited board viewer users. Discussion also includes post-it note methodology as well which other teams are using.

(2025-01-12)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss robot design as they go through the 2nd week of build season for this game.

(2025-01-05)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors to discuss the REEFSCAPE kick off video and first thoughts as build season starts off.

(2024-12-15)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Students John and Emilio from Team 3082 Chicken Bot Pie host a discussion about Chicken Planner, an open source app just released. ChickenPlanner is an autonomous path planning tool for FRC robots, developed by FRC Team 3082 (Chicken Bot Pie), that generates paths using Bézier curves and supports modular autonomous routines with event markers to trigger code during path following. It allows teams to define paths and sequences of paths on a GUI, with the ability to preview and edit waypoints, and automatically generates robot-side code to execute the planned trajectories. The students share about why they chose Java and other teams share their experiences and ask questions of 3082.

(2024-12-08)An episode of the Sunday night FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics students and mentors. Jess a mentor from the Miller Bots Team 2549 leads a discussion about how to use the Agile tool of Retrospectives for your team. Jess covers the purpose - continuous process improvement; benefits - specifically how using retrospectives can improve team morale, find places we can grow and avoid problems. Jess also covers how to conduct them effectively, how to integrate them into team operations and leads a demonstration of a retrospective with the group. Jess highlights the positive nature of agile retrospectives for team and self reflection and recognition of what works. Jess covers the 3 kinds of retrospective meeting frameworks.

(2024-11-24)Episode 58 of the FRC Roundtable for FIRST Robotics Competition. 2052 KnightKrawler leads a discussion and demo about designing and manufacturing robot parts. Discussion about how teams approach robot design, review of assumptions and decisions prior to starting CAD, methods of designing around a robot intake plate, designing around robot chassis, game piece interaction, modeling gears, pulleys, mounting plates and how the team sets up its CAM operations and more!

(2024-11-17)Episode 57 of the FRC Roundtable, FIRST students and mentors discuss programming robot code for autonomous paths and trajectory planning. Team 3082 leads the discussion and presents on their teams approach and best practices. Discussion includes the math behind programming curves - what are splines? what is a bezier curve and how can I use it in robot code? Also following algorithms - what is pure pursuit and how teams can use it in programming auto. Goals to consider during autonomous - what should we aim for during auto? How does a team plan? Finally, suggestions on how to start coding for autonomous robot code and a showcase of what Team 3082 has done.

(2024-11-10)In this episode attending students and mentors have an open conversation about where teams invest their money in tools and equipment. The goal is to help newer teams or restarting teams learn from others what really can make a difference for the team either in making a better robot or having something that energizes your team or provides a training opportunity.

(2024-11-03)Episode 55 of FRC Roundtable is a discussion of lessons learned from in-house machining aka CNC tips and tricks learned by 2052 and others. Pros and cons of in-house manufacturing, how to combat the cons . Tips and lessons from 2052's experience in manufacturing with CNC around preparing operations, recovering failed operations, being efficient with time and resources, CNC machine and tooling health, followed by questions, answers and feedback from the discussion group.

(2024-10-27)Episode 54 of FRC Roundtable is all about getting to know Team 2181 GEARS. GEARS went through big changes during / after the 2020 disruptions to competition and participation and their nonprofit status. The team has been around but also re-formed itself significantly and discusses that process of culture and process overhaul. Students and mentors share about how GEARS approaches their budgeting process, how they pull from multiple HS populations, how they manage a team of 50+ students, the support and space their schools provide, and more.

(2024-10-20)In Episode 53 of FRC Roundtable there's an open discussion with students and mentors of how teams approach prototyping whether that is in pre-season for off season or mini-trial competitions or in the 6 week build season. Also a discussion of swerve drive and the preference for different motors as the new SDS motors came on the market, issues with programming swerve drive, library issues, etc.

(2024-10-13)Episode 52 of the FRC Roundtable is a discussion lead by Team 5202, Talon Robotics on how they approach training, both what the team used to do and how they've changed their approach recently around team member and sub-team specific training and an open discussion q&a with the students and mentors attending.

(2024-10-06)Episode 51 of FRC Roundtable is lead by Team 2491, NoMythic. Students and mentors from NoMythic talk about their team culture, core values and mission and how they've worked to create a culture where students and mentors can passionately be themselves.

(2024-09-29)Episode 50 is a discussion of team building, how to integrate new team members into your team. 2491 NoMythic shares their process of holding a 3 day overnight team retreat experience. 2052 KnightKrawler share about their team building and new member training process. Other teams share their process and various question / answers.