Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Some of the students made a bunch of these Attachment 14579, which were given as gifts to alliance members. They were stored in the orange picker.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

I wouldn't say that a creative pit gives you an advantage with judges. I know of a few teams who have had huge success with just binders chalk full of information and a few students dedicated to answering questions. The teams pull out the binders when someone asks what their team does, but otherwise they are tucked away for the sake of space. Flash isn't the important part, it's communicating what you have done succinctly and effectively that does the trick.

Now if you are talking about trying to drum up support for your team in the eyes of other teams, flash is what it is all about (behind just plain being an amazing team that is)

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

http://cvhsrobotics.com/gallery3/var...G?m=1363144926

Here is our pit! We have used a similar structure for the last 3 years, and have been slowly adding to and fixing it each year. There is also a projector screen on the left side that displays a slideshow of stuff such as safety tips.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Absolutely. Content is key, regardless of how you choose to communicate it.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Here are some photos of our pit in St. Louis last year.

The structure is made of 80/20, and it is modular and splits down into eight basic sections, and some connecting bars that hold the sections together.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Team 422 here:

I can't find too many good pictures of our pit, I guess we don't focus on it too much while taking pictures. Unfortunately in this one there's, uh, my family blocking out the robot, other students, and mechanical happenings. But we weren't focusing on that stuff anyway!

We made new banners this year, and hung them up on shelves. They're zip-tied to PVC which holds them on. The banner on the right has some facts about the team, our motto, past awards, etc. and the banner on the left is dedicated to our sponsors. The big banner near the top is again zip-tied to (green and silver) PVC, and it has our team name and number.

We sometimes show off unusual trophies on the top shelf of the shelves, like the "Star of the Day" award in the picture or a "Life-Saver" award a team made for us last year in NC (Thanks to Team 3763). We don't usually bring any other trophies or awards though.

We really like this setup because it's easy to setup with a couple of people. All we did was buy a couple of light-weight shelves and modify some PVC to fit over it. After that, it's just some zip-tie magic, which we're very used to with all the last minute additions at competition!

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

here are two different renditions of our pit (2012 and 2013) one thing we have found very handy is to have a partnership with a Entertainment equipment rental service. thanks to a bacon alumni and mentor we have SEAL (http://www.seal-fla.com) they supply us with some awesome beams and our bacon beacon. our pit changes every year with new ideas but one object always stays from previous years. the tv, obnoxious siren lights, and the bacon beacon are all from different years of implementation but we like too much to stop using.

One big thing to remember when making a pit is that although we usually get the 10' square be ready to shrink in to something smaller, in the 2012 picture we were in a 8' by 9' box.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Thank you :) I'm making an updated one for this season since that one's older but it's virtually the same still ::safety::

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Here's some pictures of our pit at MSC.
(Warning, the last two are very high-resolution)
http://i2.minus.com/icMtG2fjZ73OL.jpg
http://i3.minus.com/iIz45RKCEgaOt.JPG
http://i7.minus.com/ilJqwD4MgbAxE.JPG

Our pit is able to transform from 8x8 feet up to 10x10 (and anywhere in between).
As far non-engineering/marketing/business things go in the pit;
We put posters/banners on the "walls" of the pit.
The back two have our team banner and sponsor banner.
The two sides we are able to have up to six 36x26in posters (oh and apparently two blue banners ;) ) .
We like to make posters for each competition we go to, highlighting if we won any awards, and where we finished in eliminations if we made it that far.
We also make a poster with a map of the control board for the robot, which can be used to help with presenting the robot.
Not seen in the photos are our LamBot Team 3478 poster, the poster for the FTC team we mentor, or our Outreach poster which highlights the various outreach events we participate in.
New this year is that little yellow bookshelf we keep in the outside corner of the pit. Here we have shelves for our buttons, ducks, and our safety manual, business plan, and first-aid kit.
We also have a small shelf on the side of the bookshelf that holds copies of our business plan (for quick access if anyone has any questions, or if a judge comes by), business-cards, Leader Dog cards, and scouting sheets that have information about our robot.
Finally; on top of that book shelf is a small laptop playing our safety animation, and a few other commercials, on loop...

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Here's our pit:

Couple of notes:
1. There are two people on the left, not one, so......yeah
2. Foam on the floor is very comfortable in a place where you're standing all day. Only downside is that static electricity becomes a problem. Solution? Squirt the floor every few hours with a little bit of water.
3. Our battery chargers you can't really see, but they're in the lower left. I believe we carry 8 batteries with us to competitions, but the rack can hold up to 4. You NEVER want to run out. And if you have a battery that just won't give you the same voltage under load, immdiately mark it and never use it again, especially if you make it to elims.

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

Thanks so much to all the great replies! You have helped us out immensely. I hope to see some or all of you at World's! Stop by our pit 1741 Red Alert Robotics if you get a chance. We'll trade buttons, etc.!

I would of course love to continue seeing pictures and I will be taking pics of pits at World's and post them here.

Thanks again,
Chris

Re: Pictures of Pits
 

What is the ipad app?

and anything helps! Thanks!