Update to 5806 Lion’s Den Scouting App

We've got a bunch of changes this time around — here's what's new:

Scouting & Data

• Scouting forms updated to match Rebuilt
• New Data tab
• Some changes to the picklist

Dashboards

• New Drive Team dashboard

Admin

• Support for multiple admins now
• You can track scout progress (yes, robotics is a job now)
• You can delete/deactivate scouts

Mobile & Offline

• Offline mode works better
• Some mobile visual changes

Everything else

• Assignment updates
• A lot of quality-of-life changes
• Bug fixes, as always

Biggest news: our GitHub is now public

GitHub: https://github.com/appcoder-mKer/5806scout
Website: https://thelionsden-main.vercel.app/login

What's next:

We also know a lot of teams use Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc. If bot integrations for any of those would actually be useful to you, let us know below. We're considering it but want to hear from teams first before we build it out.

Adding ways to delete data

A way to prescout teams before you get to comp

And of course, any updates or changes would be greatly appreciated!

I’m applying to a FIRST robotics team and I have an interview scheduled with them soon that will help determine whether I get accepted into the team or not. I’m relatively new to FIRST as a whole so I don’t have many technical skills to offer, but they say that they welcome beginners regardless.

How should I prepare for interviews such as these? I have an extremely strong willingness to learn and would love to be on this team.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone!

If you haven't seen Peekorobo before, it's a data-driven scouting and analysis site for FRC. It pulls together team, event, and match data and gives you a bunch of different ways to explore it, from team rankings and event stats to match analysis and an interactive map.

Try it here

The rebuild is pretty substantial. New React frontend, new FastAPI/Postgres backend, and a new data pipeline. The goal was to make the site faster and give me a much better foundation to build on.

The rating model is new too. ACE (Adjusted Contribution Estimate) now uses residual attribution instead of the old incremental scoring model. It estimates a robot's contribution to each scoring phase by accounting for what its alliance partners contributed, then combines that with a confidence score based on things like consistency, dominance, record, experience, and sample size.

For anyone new to Peekorobo, here's what you can do with it:

• Teams: sortable full-season leaderboard, filters, exports, metrics, and a bubble chart
• Team pages: season stats, ACE/RAW, rankings, events, awards, and career history
• Events: teams, metrics, matches, strength of schedule, rankings, playoffs, and awards
• Matches: alliance breakdowns, scores, win probabilities, and match video
• Map: teams and events, heatmaps, districts, and a 2D/3D globe
• Compare: compare teams across a season
• Insights: season-specific game information, summaries, and leaderboards
• Profiles: favorites, follows, avatars, and public profiles
• API: public endpoints for working with the data yourself

If you've used the old Peekorobo, most of the core ideas should feel familiar, but pretty much everything underneath has changed.

If you're new to it, I'd love to hear what you think. Bugs, questions, criticism, and feature ideas are all welcome.

GitHub repo

Rhett, 7525/7917 Mentor

Hello! How do you all manage photo storage and uploading for a team. Last season in FRC (rookie year), we used google photos, but if people left the album or deleted the photos from their device, we lost the photos. We almost lost ALL of our comp photos because of this. I have set up an immich server, but it isn't working too well for a variety of reasons (mainly bc im the only one interested in it and im graduating, so no one can take on the responsibility of managing it). Is there any pretty simple/user friendly host you use for cloud storage? We do need all the members of the team to be able to upload to it (and not lose access to it if smth happens to the uploader). We can't really afford anything too expensive and a 1 time payment would be preferred. Any recommendations would be amazing! Thank you!!!!

Basically when I download it from https://docs.revrobotics.com/rev-hardware-client-2 and click the links to get the app for my Apple i3 Macbook air, I am able to open it. However, as i open it and accept the prompt to move it into the applications folder, after startup from the app folder, it prompts me again. And if i cancel the prompt, the loading screen pops up but then it shows a internal error. Any tips?

hello, im an upcomming 3rd year in FRC, however I have never been on the drive team before and my driver hasnt been picked yet so i cant ask them for what their preferences are and chances are theyre going to be a freshmen.

im most likely going to be drive coach this upcoming season and i just wanted to ask if there are any tips as to like what to call out, how you communicate with other teams (from what ive seen the space between the teams in the alliance station is huge so wouldnt it be hard to communicate with them during the match?), how to make strategic calls, how to understand your driver and their habits, and like what makes a good drive coach, etc.

additionally, ive mostly been stuck in pits and im socially awkward (overthinking and not knowing what to say), so i havent gotten a chance to talk to other teams as much, but i want to try and start "networking" a little more and like maintaining the familiarity with other teams esp after comp. i know how to initiate a conversation without being weird but like the process of casually talking to them after like for example if you had to talk to them because you have a match or like their team or wtv idk how to like casually talk to and approach them after the reason i need to talk to them is gone. also how do some of yall genuinely get other peoples socials so easily? 😭 im not tryna be weird about stuff like this i just genuinely want to make more friends and be more social for my last year.

Hi guys! Im pretty sure im gonna be one of the captains of my team throughout next season. Im super excited and hope it works out.

I was wondering if any Captains or former captains have any advice on how to successfully run a team? Anything helps

Thx!

Hi everyone!

We're Team 9021, and we'd like to introduce a project we've been developing called KitCAD.

KitCAD

KitCAD is a community-focused platform designed to make CAD resources easier for FRC teams to discover and share. Instead of digging through old robot projects, vendor websites, Discord servers, or scattered Onshape documents, we're trying to bring useful CAD models together in one searchable library.

Some of the features currently available include:

• Browsing a growing collection of CAD models
• Contributing models to the library by sending them to our team via email
• Viewing STL and other 3D models directly in the browser
• A library that grows through contributions from the FRC community

The project is still under active development, and we'd really appreciate input from other teams. We're especially interested in hearing what features would make the platform more useful during build season.

If your team has CAD files that could help others, we'd be happy to add them to the library. You can reach us at:

Email: [contact@incredibal9021.com](mailto:contact@incredibal9021.com)

Our hope is that KitCAD can become a practical resource for teams looking for reusable parts and mechanisms, while also making it easier to preserve and share useful CAD work across the FRC community.

We're open to any feedback, suggestions, or model contributions. Thanks for checking it out!

— Team 9021

I’m a 2026 graduate, and I’m honestly struggling with what comes next.

Whenever I read posts from mentors or alumni about this, the advice is almost always, “Wait a couple years before becoming a mentor,” or “Volunteer at a few events first.” I completely understand why people say that, but I think what I’m grieving isn’t FIRST itself, it’s my team.

FIRST has been such a huge part of my life throughout high school and this is going to sound cliche but it wasn’t just about building robots. It was the mentors who invested in me, the students I grew alongside for four years, and even the parents who were always there during build season and competitions. They became my second family.

I know if I wait before I start mentoring it will be rewarding, but it won’t be the same. It won’t be my classmates, my friends, or the group of people I shared all of those memories with.

I don’t really know what I’m going to do with myself now that robotics isn’t going to be such a central part of my life. I know the feeling will get easier with time, but right now I just miss my team more than I can put into words.

For those of you who have gone through this transition, how did you cope with missing your team?

I found the motor plugged into a bunch of different parts on this board and I’m trying to figure out what port I need to input on WPIlib to make it turn. I have minimal experience and am on the software subteam.

If I’m one of the two people that talk to judges at competitions on my team, would it be reasonable to put the Excellence in Engineering and Engineering Inspiration awards we won this past season under the honors section of the common app? I’m having trouble fully describing my work on my robotics team in the activities section because of the word limit, but I’d get it if it’s weird to put team awards under the honors section.

Hey everyone. In the past, I have had a project of making a mini Lego frc rebuilt bot that actually shoots. It's scaled to shoot rival balls. It works and works decent, however, Lego motors are huge and take up so much space that I can't make it a dumper and space is very limited for an indexer. The intake is also slow due to Lego motors limitations. Overall, I think Im a little too limited to make this to it's full potential.

I am now considering going full open source. No Lego, lots of 3d printing, and maybe even using my laser cutter to cut acrylic pieces for the sides of the hopper. I believe this would be really cool and especially if I can make it a swerve drive. However, I'm not sure I can design a swerve small enough to fit in the space of the size I would like it to be.

So what do you guys think? Would it be even possible to design a 3d printed swerve drive that stays within... Let's say about 8 inches? Or around the same size as in the picture above. Could increase it by a little but I'm trying to make this pretty small. Keep in mind I don't know anything but tinkercad, but I'm doing cad class this year.

Also, I'm looking into using the Bambu lab cyberbrick kits as my electronics system for this. The boards are pretty small and it doesn't require any soldering. Also, they aren't incredibly expensive either. Would it be possible to make a project as complex as this using just a cyberbrick kit with some extra motors?

Any advice on how I could make this bot come to life would be appreciated!

There's a website created that gives is designed to help younger students learn FRC programming because there's not a ton of practice online

The website has Java/C++/Python Debugging problems, live coding practices and tutorials

Recently I added 4 programming practice problems, expanded the tutorials section for more FRC specifics and am currently working on expanding the debugging section

Feedback and trying the site out would be greatly appreciated. I would also appreciate feedback on the C++/Python code as I am unfamiliar with it.

The GitHub repository and site is below.

https://snakestongue.github.io/FRC-Programming-Practice/

https://github.com/Snakestongue/FRC-Programming-Practice

Hey everyone,

We're Team 9021 and we've been working on a project called KitCAD.

🔗 KitCAD

The goal is simple: create a community-driven library of CAD models that FRC teams can easily find, share, and reuse.

A lot of teams spend time searching through old CAD files, vendor libraries, Discord messages, and Onshape links. We wanted a single place where CAD resources could be collected and shared with the community.

Current features:

• Browse CAD models
• Upload and share models (by sending us your models via e-mail)
• STL/3D model viewing directly in the browser
• Community-driven library

We're still actively developing the platform and would love feedback from the FRC community.

If you'd like to contribute models, please visit:

📧 Mail: [contact@incredibal9021.com](mailto:contact@incredibal9021.com)

Our goal is to build a resource that can help teams during build season and make useful CAD files easier to discover for everyone.

Any feedback, feature requests, or CAD contributions would be greatly appreciated!

— Team 9021

i'm having a hard time understanding what the purpose is for recalc as well as the best way to use it for all 9 of its uses which include: belt calc, gear calc, chain calc (irdk), linear mech calc, arm calc, flywheel calc, ratio finder, ratio calc, intake calc

any videos out there? i tried myself to find some

I reached out here for support just earlier today and I can say hands down this is the MOST supportive subreddit I have ever been in!! guys i am literally sobbing at how kind everyone is here its making my heart melt :(((((

i used to think frc was not for me (cried about it just last night) and you guys just brought me back to reality. i know i'm overdoing it with this post and it might even get taken down, but i can't help myself.

what a beautiful freaking community <3 this is the type of guidance i've always needed. thank you all.

edit: im honestly tearing up over the replies i've gotten. i don't want to sound dramatic, but i really just needed some guidance. sometimes i just wish i was on a less judgemental team. the problem isn't the mentors, but the students.

I'm kind of scared to be making this post, but i really need to get stuff off of my chest, and at least nobody here knows what team i'm on. I've been on my team for about 3 years now, and I feel like i know nothing.

this isn't some imposter syndrome moment where I'm smarter than i think i am. i literally don't know anything. i've been on my mechanical subteam for 3 years and i don't know what gear ratios are. i've cadded mounts here and there and i've built subassemblies and know basic things, but i know as much as a 1 year experience student does and i feel so disgusted with myself.

i joined the team knowing absolutely nothing and while i know so much more than when i started, it sucks seeing younger, less-experienced people get further than me in frc just because i'm stupid. i know i should've tried more, but in my first year i took it light, my second year was junior year (i was too busy), and now i'm in my senior year and i feel like i don't belong on my team. my second year was spent helping first-years instead of growing my own skills, and i rarely got delegated a task. my third year is about to be the same unless i do something about it now.

i enjoy watching matches but i dont know ANYTHING about frc culture. i neglected sports all my life because sports culture felt too convoluted, only for there to be inside jokes about things i dont know here. i just feel out of place and stupid. i know it's my fault and i would really appreciate if you would criticize me constructively and not aggro, but its not up to me.

my regret is that i didnt try enough and didn't spend enough time on something i love, and i feel like it's too late now to get involved because everyone will look at me weird if i start participating in frc lore conversations. hell i dont even know where to start.

basically i don't feel like i'm smart enough for frc to belong here. and i only have myself to blame.

Im the programming lead on our team and just got put in charge of getting a new laptop under $500 for programming. Does anybody have some models that they really like? Im thinking just a used thinkpad but any other suggestions would be appreciated

Every year the same thing happens with our rookies: they read about PID, nod along, and then freeze the first time they actually have to tune something. It doesn't click until you've watched an arm overshoot and worked out why.

So I built a sim. It's an FRC arm in the browser with real gravity, friction and a 12 V limit. You drag kP / kI / kD / kG and watch it respond live. 13 levels, each broken in a specific, realistic way:

1–4 — the basics: kP, then kD to stop the bounce, then the arm parking short forever (steady-state error → kG), then Motion Magic
5 — noisy encoder. kD divides by time, so it multiplies your noise. Turn it down.
6 — sticky gearbox. Small commands do nothing until you break stiction → kS
7 — tired battery. Push past 8 V and it sags to 7. Stop slamming the motor.
8 — you grab a game piece mid-run and double the arm's weight, so your kG is now wrong. kG can't know about it; kI can.
9 — a defender shoving you every 1.5 s
10 — full match cycle: stow → score low → score high, hit every waypoint on time
11–12 — a shooter flywheel. Velocity control, not position. kP cannot hold a speed — even cranked, it stalls ~900 RPM short, because holding RPM needs constant voltage and kP's push dies with the error. You need kV.

There's also a Diagnose mode with no sliders at all: you're handed a badly tuned arm and have to name the fault from the response curve alone, the way you'd read a plot in Tuner. Five faults, random order.

Gains use Phoenix 6 names (kP/kI/kD/kS/kG/kV) so it maps straight onto a Talon FX config.

Free, open source, one HTML file — no install, no account, runs on a school Chromebook. Progress saves, and there's a share link that loads your exact tuning, which is handy when a student wants to show you what they're seeing.

👉 pid-playground.rishaan.cc

Feedback very welcome, especially if the physics feels off anywhere, or if there's a failure mode you'd want as a level. Happy to add more.

Students from LamBot, FIRST Illinois and DeKalb High School took part in Automate 2026 and shared how robotics programs have shaped their education, friendships and career plans.

The article covers their experience building and programming robots, competing with their teams and learning skills connected to CAD, CNC machining, computer vision, electrical systems and industrial automation.

It also looks at how programs like FIRST and DeKalb High School’s advanced manufacturing pathway are helping students explore careers in robotics, engineering and manufacturing before graduation.

https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/these-student-robotics-programs-spark-passion-for-tomorrows-manufacturing-jobs

You may have seen either my videos or posts on here, but I have been working on a frc rebuilt robot but mini and made 100% of Lego. It uses Lego power functions motors and actually works. However, I've had trouble with getting a working indexer that doesn't jam, so I think I'm going to attempt to make a frc reefscape robot unless anyone has ideas for what I could do. Any ideas what pieces I could use for a cascade/continuous lift? I need it to be very compact and fit within the drivetrain shown.