Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

We have a little work to do tomorrow before we're done, but things are looking good so far! Still to do:
- Fine tune some PID constants/arm movements
- Use a battery that hasn't spent the past 2 hours trying to climb
- Fix a limit switch triggering issue
- Add a support brace for the dumper shaft (it's flexing quite a bit right now, causing the chain to jump)
- Add a second motor to the winch mechanism (oddly enough, the electrical team assumed 2 motors to start with, so the Talon and wiring is already in place. We just need to hook it up, plug it in, and drop in the breaker!)
- Remove some pauses we added so we could make sure everything was working properly, and have time to stop it if it wasn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-0zyK8FoE

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Now that you've all clicked the link above, here's the real one ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjAOGilqII

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Wow, I think this is the best one I've seen yet.

Amazing work!

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Fantastic! I believe that's the first video of the full unassisted sequence posted. Looks really great and quite fast. I think you can probably get it under 30 seconds with practice.

Are you worried about making sure you're aligned correctly with the center of the rungs to start?

The second video was great, but I'm still laughing from the first!

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Awesome job Robettes! This is going to be an amazing robot to watch out for.

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Thanks for reminding me... We still need to put the camera on the robot! It'll be pointing straight up to help us align with the tower. Yes, that certainly is a concern, but we have room to spare - our practice tower here is a little small, all the way up. One of the issues we had tonight was getting stuck climbing... by the bumpers rubbing against the uprights!

Oh, and two more notes... with the exceptions of a safety trigger (if we release, all motion immediately stops) and a manual button for the dumper, the entire sequence (once lined up) is completely automated. Also, the dumper should be able to dump into the low goal, but we haven't built one as it wasn't a priority. Maybe we'll check that out in Duluth :)

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

How long do you think (once your drivers are practiced and you have the routine down) to go from lined up to climbed to the top and frisbees scored?

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

If you're really lucky, you might be able to get that battery back into effective status, if you put it onto a charger very soon after taking it out of the robot. The climb looks very impressive, but it may have demoted that battery to practice only status. I have a great deal of trouble convincing my own team that their energy source is not disposable like AA batteries, particularly when they're having "FUN".

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

That is the big question for us as well. Tonight, we saw a climb taking about 40 seconds to the top. There are 2 seconds of "pause" built in at each level so we could check the hooks and stop if needed (4 seconds total), plus another 5-10 seconds we should be able to salvage with PID tuning (up to 9-14 seconds), and another 2 seconds per level once we get the limit switch issue fixed (13-18 seconds). The dump should take 1-2 seconds, once we get the chain jumping issue fixed.

We'll be happy with 30 seconds from floor to 50 points, but we're hoping for 20 :) We're going to double the power we have on the winch (we had 1 Mini-CIM, we're adding a second), which should help as well... we were really taxing the Mini-CIM to climb that high, and after 2 hours straight of climbing it was hot enough to fry an egg!

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Fastest climb I've seen to date. What do you plan on doing the other minute and a half of the match? (or is it a team secret? ;) )

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Surprisingly, the battery wasn't horribly depleted at that point... it had just about gotten to the point where we thought we should change it out when we climbed, meaning everything had started to slow down and drag a little. We've run batteries down further without any long term problems.

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Honestly, I don't know what the team plans. We'll be able to dump in the low goal (just back in and dump it over the arm with the same motion you saw in the video), so we could score a few points that way. Personally, I think the best bet is to get our 4 colored discs and try to disrupt the flow of scoring for the opposite alliance until we need to climb. We're too low to block most shooters, but we can do some pushing, and prevent/delay robots from traversing the field (assuming they can't shoot full court).

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

This is how side climbing should be done. Our major concern with side climbing was that the swinging would make climbing extremely slow. It's clear that you've found a great way to minimise swinging. While this isn't mind blowingly fast, it's obviously quite quick. You should do very well this season.

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Way to go, Robettes!

Andy Baker

Re: Our first climb and dump of the season!
 

Congrats to you and your team Jon! I can't wait to see it in person.