For those at Worlds, swing by the ThriftyBot booth between Hopper and Johnson fields and check out our latest Thrifty product offering - the Thrifty Cycloidal Gearbox - available for pre-order now!

Just a reminder to folks that we’re also offering pit delivery to the Michigan State Championship! Those orders need to be in by Tuesday, April 1st.

Last day for Worlds orders will be Monday, April 7th.

Some new upgrades and items for those using Thrifty Swerve!

First up is our redesigned top plate - Thrifty Swerve - Top Plate v1.1 - Kraken X44 Compatible 3

After seeing the X44 motor, we wanted to give users the option of using that as an azimuth motor - so we decided to remake our top plate to add those mounting holes. Since we were already changing the design, we upgraded the top plate bearings to 6800 series and added more 10-32 threaded mounting hole options. This plate will be the new standard shipping with all Thrifty Swerve kits moving forward and the plate can be purchased separately as well for teams who want to upgrade them for this season.

We have received some 25 ft rolls of 18mm wide HTD black neoprene fiberglass timing belt for folks running continuous elevators -

We’ve received some .08" wall thickness 2" x 1" grid pattern tubing which may be nice for your robot’s elevator or other mechanisms.

A few more items have arrived -

We also have a pre-order that’s live for the next round of elevator kits. It’s looking like we will begin receiving more parts next week and we understand some teams want to get these on order. We are trying to turn other kits that are on hand around as fast as possible to teams as well. Thanks all!

We’ve put an end to end video together on building the Thrifty Elevator kit for teams who may have questions, I’d suggest watching this video first along with reading the build guide on the product page:

Just in time for kickoff, here are many new products finding their way to the website today. There are a still a few stragglers incoming that we should see within the next week or two (SDS billet motor spacer for example.)

Here’s a firehose of links, happy kickoff and good luck this season teams!

We’ve created a 2025 KitBot section that makes it easy to find parts called out in FIRST’s latest blog post-

The ThriftyCam utilizes the OMNIVISION OG02B1B B&W CMOS 2 Megapixel (1600x1304) Global Shutter Image Sensor with OmniPixel®3-GS Technology. At full resolution, the camera will present 60 frames per second over USB 3.0.

We wanted to shed some light on some new Thrifty Nova features we have been working on, so we made this video to show the Nova tuning the Azimuth on the Thrifty Swerve with a Redux encoder plugged directly into it. We have wrapping working here and a programmable offset, as well as some nice quality of life features on the app.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of The Thrifty Bot’s first-ever motor controller - the Thrifty Nova! After extensive development and testing, we’re proud to bring you a brushless DC motor controller that combines simplicity, reliability, and advanced features at a competitive price point.

All Thrifty Swerve orders have gone out so we have removed the pre-order designator. If you order swerve module kits they will ship out immediately.

We also added some more Thrifty Swerve related SKUs that will be arriving later this month

It may not look like much, but we did get some of the first Thrifty Swerve orders out this week. About half of the pre-orders have shipped and we’ll be working to get the rest out on Monday. I appreciate everyone’s patience & support on this, we’re really happy with how they turned out and think teams are going to enjoy them quite a bit.

Hope everyone had a great off-season and is getting back into the swing of things with school back in session!

New Product Announcement

Kraken Spline to 1/2" Hex Adapters

From all the swerve feedback we received after launch and at IRI, we decided to roll a couple of last minute improvements into the module as production starts. These small changes have already been rolled into the OnShape CAD model & validated by 1706:

Thanks to everyone who swung by the table and / or 1706’s pit at IRI to check out the modules & our upcoming products. It was great meeting many of you in person and just getting to chat about everything we’ve been working on. Seeing Thrifty Swerve playing in some of the best elimination matches we’ve watched all year was just too cool, big shout out to 1706 for all their amazing testing.

Finding its way to the website today - Thrifty Swerve. Available for pre-order now, estimated shipping in September.

A few more bearings up on the website today - sealed versions of some of the smaller x-contact bearings:

Powered by Grapple Robotics, the LaserCAN is a LIDAR sensor purpose-built for FRC teams! This postage-stamp sized sensor is capable of detecting objects up to 4m (13 feet!) away (or 1.35m (4.5 feet) in short range mode). It contains an adjustable FOV and Region of Interest that lets teams filter out what they do not want in a distance measuring tool.

New usb cables from the thrifty bot