Season by season

Season Journal

What we did, in order. Newest season first; within a season, oldest entry first. There's a template in the page source.

2026–27

Kickoff was this month. Entries start as soon as we have photos worth showing.

2025–26 · DECODE

1. 13Sep 2025

   Kickoff

   First meeting of the DECODE season. We read the game manual, argued about strategy, and got a to-do list on the whiteboard: launcher, drive train, intake, storage, camera. Someone sketched a chassis on graph paper and by the end of the day there was a base frame with two motors and a test station for the programmers.

   

   

   

   

2. 17–26Sep 2025

   Chassis types, launcher drawings, AprilTags

   We compared H-frame, A-frame, triangle and box frames on the whiteboard and picked the one that gave us the most room for mechanisms. The mechanical group drew the first launcher and built a rough flywheel prototype out of two motors and a channel. The programmers got AprilTag detection running on the rough chassis by Friday.

   

   

   

   

3. 27Sep 2025

   Family Day

   Families came to see the shop. We built a goal ramp and a second test station, and took the chassis outside to drive on the giant floor map on the court. More on the outreach page.

   

   

   

4. 4Oct 2025

   Prototyping Saturday

   Cardboard everywhere. We built a cardboard drum to see how three artifacts would sit in it, a twin-spinning-bar intake, and a "kicker" to push artifacts into the drum from the side. None of it was pretty and all of it taught us something. The prototype bot got a face.

   

   

   

   

5. 18Oct 2025

   Solar Science Day

   An outreach day on campus with telescopes, a meteorites table, the county library's STEAM Machine bus, and a Go2 robot dog that our chassis got to meet on the pavement. Visitors took turns driving. More on the outreach page.

   

   

   

6. LateOct 2025

   Doing the math

   Before committing to the flywheel we worked out the launch physics on the whiteboard: exit speed, angle, and how far off we could be and still score. We also wrote down our design loop so everyone was using the same words for it: idea, discuss and plan, build a prototype, test, go around again. Road Runner tuning moved into the hallway, where the floor is flat.

   

   

   

   

7. 1–5Nov 2025

   The new drum

   The cardboard drum retired. We printed a ring in sections, mounted it on a plexi face, and printed brackets to hold it. While the drum was off, we moved the Control Hub and Expansion Hub to places you can reach without taking anything apart, and found one missing bearing that explained a wobble.

   

   

   

   

8. 10Nov 2025

   Plywood and dead wheels

   We cut a plywood disc to close off the drum, and mounted two odometry dead wheels with encoders under the chassis so the robot can track its position separately from the drive wheels.

   

   

   

9. 14Nov 2025

   Game Night

   Our fundraiser in the Forum: retro games on the big screen, ping-pong, snacks. Before we set a ticket price we simulated attendance and costs ten thousand times to find a break-even point. It worked. More on the outreach page.

   

   

   

10. MidNov 2025

    Intake, side panels, portfolio

    Three things at once. The mechanical group heat-gunned plexi into intake guides and printed a fresh set of cheese wheels; by the end of one Saturday the intake fed the drum for the first time. The side panels got their 607 number plates. And the portfolio team mapped out the engineering portfolio page by page on the whiteboard.

    

    

    

    

11. 22Nov 2025

    Wiring and batteries

    Drum and launcher fully wired, a battery mount sketched and built, spare motors tested. One of us also spoke with a Maryland representative as part of the National Robotics Summit.

    

    

    

12. 29Nov 2025

    Practice field

    The day before the scrimmage we taped a field onto the shop floor and drove full cycles until the drivers stopped thinking about the controls.

    

13. 30Nov 2025

    Scrimmage

    Our first matches against other Maryland teams. The drum indexed, the launcher launched, and we learned which parts of the robot come loose when it drives over a field tile seam at speed. Everyone came home with a to-fix list.

    

    

    

    

14. Dec–Jan2025–26

    Around the shop

    Back in the shop after the scrimmage: tuning with FTC Dashboard, tidying the wiring, and mounting a Limelight camera in January.