2025 WEEK 1: TEAM JOURNAL
Only one week into the build season and Nemesis is already preparing to make waves in “REEFSCAPE”, the 2025 FIRST Robotics Competition season game presented by Haas.
This 6-week long marathon began with an action packed kickoff chalked full of brainstorming, prototyping, and creating a makeshift game field out of team members in order to see it lifesize.
Following the weekend - and a brief snowy set back - build and business team members got right to work.
The design team started on 2d sketches to figure out the geometry and architecture of the coming 2025 robot. They are prototyping ideas and testing them before putting more materials and time into the finalized parts. The leads are also teaching newer designers how the design process works.
However, teaching rookies on the team how to integrate into their chosen subteam(s) is not only happening on the design team. This begins as early as a rookie’s initiation onto Nemesis during September in the offseason.
But learning on an FRC team is never done! And this active, hands-on approach that the build season offers is being expertly taken advantage of by our designers.
And that isn’t the only subteam swimming their laps around the lab; our software team has been just as busy.
The firmware on devices like prototype boards and past seasons robots have been updated to the latest versions. Getting previous robots up and running is especially helpful so that more members on the build team can test, practice, and learn new things for this upcoming season.
One of these robots is “Fury”, way back from 2018. Fury has been worked on to get the elevator and driving abilities working again for these exact reasons.
An elevator mechanic is especially helpful for this season’s teleoperated challenge of placing PVC pipes called “Coral” onto higher and higher branches.
Some rookies have been instructed with working on vision: implementing a way to use color to detect game pieces, like the “Algae”.
Scaling for vision and support for multiple cameras in order to have better pose data have also been administered during week 1.
Software leads have begun characterizing the swerve base, as well as working on pneumatics on a prototyping board
And the entire subteam has been utilizing the latest version of Advantagekit; a logging framework– to run simulations when resources are not available. This has garnered very positive feedback.
Another subteam has also been electric during this first dive into the build season: and it's none other than our electrical team!
They have been working with and testing out different prototypes, using pneumatics such as an algae shooter, and a coral end effector. These are still being tested.
The electrical members have also fixed, wired, and put a new motor on Fury so that it can be used by software.
This is a perfect example of how even though Nemesis is divided into sub teams, all team members are still very interconnected. This collaborative workspace is what really makes Nemesis an award winning team.
And, just like our design team, electrical leads and experienced members have also been teaching rookies about basic electrical components and the fundamental steps and practices when wiring a robot.
Taking a deeper dive to the behind the scenes of the build season, you can find the business team just as busy.
Our finance team has been writing and submitting grants. Without this, we wouldn’t have money to spend on travel costs, apparel, or even the basic materials we use to prototype and build our robots.
They’ve also made thank you notes for donors, reconciled bank transactions, and created sponsor packets for in-person sponsorship inquiries.
If you’re interested in learning more about what Nemesis has been up to so far in 2025, just like our amazing sponsors, think about attending Nemesis' annual Sponsor Night on February 20th.
The Impact team has been tirelessly writing up a script to present to judges as well as planning and executing outreach events at places like the elementary and middle schools in the Robbinsville District. They’ve been working on organizing events with local nonprofits, drafting Impact submissions, and creating presentations for upcoming events.
And the media team has been on top of a lot of work themselves.
Starting off strong with their goal of increasing Nemesis’ social media presence this year; many videos and photos were taken by camera wielding divers at kick off.
Photography has continued into this first week at the tech and computer labs, capturing exciting photos of Nemesis’ creative problem solving at work.
2025 button designs have been started. This project is spearheaded by the media lead, who uses the opportunity to teach upcoming media team members how to use programs like photoshop and adobe illustrator.
The media team has also used this time to update previous articles from the 2024 season; like the World Championship recap article.
Team bios and headshots are being updated on the website and prepare for full team and subteam photos the following weekend. And they are moving folders of photos and videos from 2024 from an old hard drive to a smaller faster one. This will make everything involving retrieving files much more seamless.
Week one has already been incredibly productive, but Nemesis is more than ready to “just keep swimming” into week two!
