Extra Speed Contrls and Spikes On Bot?

[Joe Matt]

Can you have extra speed controllers and spikes on your robot, not hooked up, so if a speed or spike fails, we can just re-wire it so that the back-up one can replace the broken one? Is this legal? I assume it is, but my team wants to know 100%.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Andy A.]

Can you have extra speed controllers and spikes on your robot, not hooked up, so if a speed or spike fails, we can just re-wire it so that the back-up one can replace the broken one? Is this legal? I assume it is, but my team wants to know 100%.

Thanks ahead of time.


Yes, you may. There is no rule that says you can't, anyways.

A few cavets-

1. They must be legal, as in the victors must be 884s (not '3s)
2. You may have to account for their cost. I am still not sure exactly how you account for IF equipment- it hasn't been made clear to me.


My question is, why? It seems to me that it would be easier to just unscrew a dead victor and drop a new one in its place. No fussing with wire lengths or anything. Completely plug and play. It should only take ~5 minutes to replace one. Plus, each victor is about 1/4 of a pound.

I guess I don't really understand why you want dead wieght on the 'bot. Sure, having spares is great (although, I've only seen one truley dead victor that needed to be replaced in 4 years), but why keep them on the 'bot? I'd be intrested in hearing your reasoning.

-Andy A.

[Dave Flowerday]

2. You may have to account for their cost. I am still not sure exactly how you account for IF equipment- it hasn't been made clear to me.
You would definitely have to account for the cost of the extra speed controllers. Accounting for the cost of speed controllers is actually spelled out very clearly by R77:
The costs of additional non-spare robot control system components obtained from Innovation First Inc.
are included in the above $3500 limit. (Example: A team purchases a Victor Speed Controller from IFI
to use on its robot in addition to the Victors provided in the Kit. The cost of the additional speed
controller must be included in the above expense reporting and $3500 limit.)

[Team311]

You would definitely have to account for the cost of the extra speed controllers. Accounting for the cost of speed controllers is actually spelled out very clearly by R77:
yes but in team update 7 it says and i quote
The Cost of additional speed controllers and spike relays are excluded from the 3500 dollar limit

[Dave Flowerday]

yes but in team update 7 it says and i quote
Yes, you're correct. I forgot about that update. However, the update still says that non spare speed controllers count against the $3500. If it's on the robot but not hooked up to anything I suppose you could make a good argument that's it's a spare, right? :)