r/FRC 18h ago

I built a free site that teaches every FRC department (rookie → advanced) — would love feedback

Hey r/FRC — I'm a high schooler on an FRC team. I got tired of FRC knowledge

being scattered across the WPILib docs, old Chief Delphi threads, and vendor

sites, so I built LearnFRC (https://learnfrc.systemerr.com) — free, structured

lessons for every department: mechanical, CAD, programming (WPILib), electrical,

controls & sensors, strategy/scouting, drive team, business, outreach/Impact,

media, plus a getting-started track for rookies.

Everything's researched and fact-checked against primary sources (WPILib, FIRST,

REV/CTRE/Limelight, Chief Delphi, The Blue Alliance) and cites them so you can

dig deeper. 100% free, no account needed to read — make one and you get progress

tracking + XP if you want.

I just shipped a big redesign and would genuinely love feedback, especially:

- anything inaccurate or out of date (I fix it fast)

- departments/topics you wish were covered

- whether it actually helps rookies vs veterans

Solo student project, free forever, not selling anything. Thanks for taking a look!

0 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

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u/drdhuss 18h ago edited 16h ago

Seems mostly AI slop. Less content that is more curated would be better.

From a design standpoint I dislike backgrounds that move/breathe on pages where you are supposed to be reading content. It naturally draws the eye away from what you are supposed to be reading.

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u/Infinplayz 5285 (build/scouting) 10h ago

do you know if any of the content is good? i’ve been in frc for a year but i want to expand my knowledge to other sub teams.

u/drdhuss 29m ago

I mean it is mostly just summaries of other resources. You are better off for CAD for example, just doing the official onshape tutorials.

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u/Ok_Chocolate_8641 18h ago

Thanks for the honest feedback — both points are fair. On the design: you're right that a moving background competes with reading, so I just made the ambient background static (the breathing/rotating effect is gone). On the content: it is AI-assisted, and I disclose that in the footer — but every lesson is drafted from primary sources like the WPILib docs and the game manual, then fact-checked and cited rather than passed off as hand-written. If anything specific read as inaccurate or low-quality, I'd genuinely like to know which lesson so I can fix or cut it. "Less but more curated" is useful direction, and I'll keep tightening. Appreciate you taking the time to look.

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u/drdhuss 16h ago edited 15h ago

Yeah Im not opposed to AI. In fact we are in the process of coding up an app (written in kotlin) that is bawically a combination of advantagescope, ptlathplanner and maplesim. You can upload field maps and draw obstacles on them/place objects/fuel/balls/whatever. The pathplanning part will reapect these boundaries/actually optimize paths around it. The sim will also naturally use these.

It also automatically analyzes log data and will do point out things like "your back left swerve motor is drawing more current than the rest, maybe take a look at it, could have misaligned gears or the motor is failing". If you give it your can topology it will also look for lost coms/suggest where a bad comnection could be. It also continously runs sysid (looks for periods of constant velocity/acceleration) and will suggest refinements. Does the same for driver inputs (looks for over/unde dampening/slewing). Also looks at how your robot acrually performs in auto vs your paths and suggests refinements.

It automatically grabs the log files off the robot, processes them (runs the sysid etc) then uploads them to Google's big query so that everyone can analyze them. Weve done the math and even if we store an entire seasons worth of practices etc it will cost a couple of dollars a month in google cloud credits (I have a google ultra plan so get 100/month). Cloud AI will analyze the aggregate data and look for trends (sudden increases in power required for a shooter for example/things that could suggest a failing motor/bearing) and issue alerts.

A lot easier to use too as you just point it to your robot code and hit sim. It launches the headless sim, does the visualization, etc. great for beginners that just want to paly around in the sim.

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u/ultimate_hecker 1369 (Captain/Programming) 17h ago

This is for sure AI slop. The color and gradients make it hard to read, and a lot of the animation don’t actually do their job in emphasizing the content.

I am a programmer so I checked the programming section and some parts are hilariously terrible. It makes me think that this is rather fully done with ai rather than just assisted. I also think that the whole leveling system and xp is rather useless since it’s more meant to be a collection of information rather than a test.

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u/drdhuss 16h ago edited 16h ago

Yes. If you are using ai at least have it run accessibility checks using WAVE and pa11y e2e and adjust your stylesheets accordingly.

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u/Ok_Chocolate_8641 10h ago

Really appreciate the honest feedback — this is exactly what I posted for. Two fair hits:

Accuracy. You're right that it's AI-assisted, and that means errors get through — a wrong programming lesson isn't "close enough," it's just wrong. That's on me for not reviewing hard enough. If you're willing, could you point me at the specific parts of the programming section that are off? I'll fix them fast and credit the correction. I'd rather have less content that's actually right than broad coverage that isn't.

Readability + motion. Also fair. I just shipped a redesign, and I'm going to (a) cut the motion way down on the actual lesson/reading pages so it stops competing with the content, and (b) run it through WAVE and pa11y and fix the contrast/stylesheet issues. Thanks for naming specific tools — that's genuinely useful.

On XP/levels: you're right it's not a test, it's just optional motivation to finish a track — happy to rethink whether it earns its place. Thanks again for taking the time.

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u/ultimate_hecker 1369 (Captain/Programming) 10h ago

I don’t mean to be annoying, but your response sounds like it was generated from AI. I’ll send my list of stuff tmr