We've got a group of tech nerds subscribed to this sub and we could all be discussing strats and exchanging real ideas and info.

Instead, it's become a bunch of memes, and not very good ones at that. Sad panda is sad.

"Back in my day", part of the reason I appreciated the FTC was the difficulty and excitement of brainstorming and creating a robot design to meet the challenge. It was during the thrilling season of Robot Reveals when we got to learn, in detail, about how everyone else had addressed the challenge. In the past 2-3 years, I have observed a growing culture related to Design Sharing and Copying.

I think the community has put an emphasis on winning and final performance at the expense of, what is in my opinion, a critical aspect of the Engineering and Design process.

I don't think this newfound culture I am describing is what FTC envisioned either. For example, in their description of the role of mentors, they emphasize facilitating instead of teaching. I think the current state of FTC has evolved even beyond teaching to 'showing and telling'.

Although there are many manifestations of this shift in FTC culture, I think it is most important to focus on what is relevant to this and future seasons, because as a community we are responsible for altering the culture to reduce the amount of Design Sharing and Copying (if that is what we want). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oc4u3xovomoQhqs4ZmGbdXlJL4tgUv-h/view?usp=sharing

Please share input on what parts of this post you agree and disagree with, and what you want for this season and the future of FTC! Additionally, I think it would be valuable if you could help brainstorm ways to encourage a culture of team-independence.

Hello.

One of the referees said that the human player should not touch the cones stacked outside the playing field perimeter in Autonomous.

1. Under what rule in the Game Manual is this not allowed?

2. Can the human player touch the outside cones during driver-controlled but before end game?

Thanks

oo my god

Hey everyone, I'm from team 31000 and we've created a a new website that can help you

introducing FTC Coach — the ultimate portfolio & judging tool!

coach is meant to deeply understand your specific robot, outreach, and business plan to help you sell your story. it's meant to be like a real judging coach, maybe even better!

it knows about a huge variety of the top, winning portfolios, and can tell you exactly how a judge interprets your unique mechanisms and initiatives, so you know EXACTLY what to emphasize to win.

- analyzes your specific content against winning criteria to identify your top 3 award options.
- generates mock interview questions and cheat sheets based on your narrative (no generic lists!).
- actionable scoring: get a 0-100 score for any award with concrete steps to improve your focused areas. it's super personalized, so it's never generic advice.

100% Secure: no storage, no logs. upload without getting your info stolen

https://coach.team31000.org/

feedback? dm me or leave a comment :)

Hey Reddit!

We’re a new FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) robotics team gearing up for the season, and we need your help. Robotics is awesome, but between registration fees, parts, and tools, the costs add up fast.

If you’d like to support us, here’s our donation link:
https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/fc-brawlers

Every contribution—big or small—helps us build, compete, and represent our community. We’ll be giving shoutouts on our robot, team shirts, and socials to all of our supporters.

Thanks for helping us chase our robotics dreams! ⚙️🤖

Hey everyone!
We just released FTC Link on the Android Studio Plugin Marketplace, and we wanted to share it with fellow FTC developers and programmers.

As an FTC team, we know how tedious boilerplate code, manual hardware mapping, and switching between documentation pages can get during build season. We built FTC Link to bring essential development tools directly into Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA.

Key Features:
- Gemini AI Assistant: Ask coding questions, debug OpModes, and get real-time assistance right inside your IDE workspace.
- 18 + Instant OpMode Templates: Pre-built, customizable Java templates for Mecanum Drive, Tank Drive, Swerve, Autonomous routines, and Vision integration (Limelight 3A / AprilTags).
- Dynamic Hardware Mapping: Easily configure your motors, servos, and sensors through a dynamic UI panel.
- Rule & Manual Helper: Quick access to game rules and constraints without leaving your workspace.

100% Free & Open-Source (MIT License)!
You can search for "FTC Link" directly on the Android Studio Plugin Marketplace or check it out here: Download Link** **
Documentation link: Documentation

We would love to hear your feedback, feature requests, or bug reports from other teams. Let us know what you think, and good luck with your robot builds this season!

A day ago, a post went up to discuss the sudden change of many smaller regions/states to having only 1 worlds spot, meaning only the inspire award winner.(https://www.reddit.com/r/FTC/comments/d2q1jb/should_the_captain_team_of_the_winning_alliance/) . What seems to have followed was a series of comments echoing the "wtf, first is bad" mindset. However none of the posts really seem to understand a few things: the why of the situation, and how this is actually a little balanced. I am however for the idea of a min. of two spots per region.

The Why:

Almost no one commented on why this is happening, except for a few people saying the "FIRST doesn't care" speech/shitpost. The real reason why this is happening is because not all states are fairly represented at worlds, based on the number of spots they have versus the number of teams in the region. Because of this, FIRST did a reassessment of the amount of slots each state gets based on the number of teams in the region, and redistributed the slots accordingly. so while some states went down, some went up. For example: worlds consists of the top 320 teams, <5% of the total amount of teams. so for a region of, lets say 30, to get that same top <5% percentile, you'd give them slightly under 1.5 slots, which rounds down to 1 (I don't actually know how they determined rounding, but you get the idea). This more evenly redistributed the number of slots per region, giving certain states a more fair representation. Now, was it a great idea to take the slots needed to re-balance the system from 2 slot states, rather than the amount of lottery slots? probably not. But was there good intent there, and was it for a good purpose? Yes.

The Balance:

The Inspire award is an award given to a team who best embodies FIRST and its values, and educates their community about STEM and robotics. This is the commonly held definition of the Inspire Award, however the award still includes a part about the robot, stating that:

"Robot design is creative and innovative, and the Robot performs reliably on the field. The Team communicates clearly about their Robot design and strategy to the judges."

This means that the robot IS a consideration into the inspire award. Often, it is viewed that this part of the award isn't weighted as high, which is often true since the robot part could qualify on its own, THAT MIGHT ALL CHANGE. The thing is, FIRST DOESN'T NECESSARILY SPECIFY HOW REGIONS WEIGH EACH CATEGORY, so for some of the 1 slot regions, they might now more heavily weigh the robot aspect of the Inspire Award. will the team that just focuses on robot and is WAC probably have a better robot than the team that wins the Inspire award? Probably, yes; however the Inspire award team won't be last place in competition, and will at least probably have to make eliminations as a captain or first pick in smaller regions. And, let's be really honest here, how many people are really willing to give up focusing the robot? Probably very few, if any. Often, Inspire award teams already have a decent-good robot. I doubt this will change the competitiveness of worlds by much, and if anything it will just have more well rounded teams.

On another note:

I think something that a lot of people are missing here is the intent of FIRST. FIRST is not meant to be just a robotics competition. It's meant to be an organization spreading awareness and interest for STEM, encouraging more of the future generation to pursue STEM related fields as a career. At the same time, FIRST is also meant to teach important values and life skills to students, such as leadership, cooperation, and that thing called gracious professionalism. The robot game is the attraction, or fun part so to speak, and is technically the "side thing". So when FIRST decides to not allow the WAC to advance in certain states, that is in no way against FIRST's mission and the intent of the program. So while a lot of people have repeated the argument of "why have the robotics competition then?" Well, it got you here, and now you might be looking into a STEM major a lot more than before.

So while it sucks to not have the WAC always advance, no, this is not the end of the world, or anything even CLOSE to that.