Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Not designing the robot in CAD (we're working on making that better for next year)

Spending 3.5 weeks prototyping and sketching designs. - I was very busy with FTC for the first part of the build season, so I wasn't able to be around for a lot of those meetings, but I attended kickoff, and our post-kickoff brainstorm, and that went very well, but I came back over halfway through the build season, and we barely had a drivetrain! D:

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Building a key piece (our hopper) out of acrylic*, which has a tendency to shatter and break.
Yes the bright orange polycarb looked very, very pretty (especially when we cut 'FIRST Team 1912 Combustion' to it) but we took a hammer throw to the wrong place and crack a part, got into some defensive pushes and broke off a piece, etc. Between our three competitions (Bayou, Razorback, CMP) we had four hoppers. Wedneday night of Razorback we were using hotel dollys to bring tool boxes up to one of the rooms to do maintenance. One of the favorite sayings of the pit crew and drive team / one of the most hated sayings by the pit crew and drive team was "Guys, lets change the hopper!" This did however, have a silver lining that JVN would appreciate: it forced us to iterate and therefore, with each event, our hopper improved. On our team, we had never really been able to do that; to test a piece in competition, notice that there could be improvements (like making the feeder slot larger so the human player can feed faster) and making those changes. I think that process helped our students learn to analyze machine features.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Do you have a link to a picture of said hopper? Sounds like acrylic to me...

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

It is acrylic, my bad. (oy vey, I mix it up every time. To quote Annie Hall "Always the wrong answer").

Picture (with v1) - http://team1912.com/photos/slideshow/hammerhead.png

What it looked like at CMP - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

Us working on it in the hotel room - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Step 1: Don't use acrylic for that application
Step 2: See Step 1

:]

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

I think I posted this in the things you only do once thread, but, it more classifies as a mistake.

We spent our whole season making a scoop (like 1986's scoop, but way worse), that didn't even work at Waterford, our first competition.

This is what it looked like (it would just fall down during the match, unable to come back up): http://www.flickr.com/photos/daniele...57632965760216

Needless to say, we stripped the robot of it afterwards, improved our feeder intake, and we were pretty successful.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

I think deciding to go with Mechnum's cost us getting picked @ champs.
We had the 15th highest OPR in our division and nobody wanted us.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Or it might have more to do with the fact that OPR is not an accurate measure of individual robot performance. How much did you actually score per match and how did it compare to the rest of your division?

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

What did your hopper look like? Our team found a creative way to solve that problem, although we never had to deal with it at comps...

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Not true Ed, there were too many pure cyclers on our field. Our second pick had mecanum but could cycle, full court shoot and block up to 80". Versatility was why they were picked.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

I just want to point out that working on your robot outside of the competition time is illegal. Here is the rule:

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

I'd imagine it would be ruled as a part of the 30lb witholding allowance

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

They worked on the hopper between competitions and on a Wednesday night in the hotel. If it was part of their withholding allowance it is perfectly legal.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

It was part of our 30lbs allowance. (It was much, much less than 30 lbs though, and the only robot part we did bring in). IndySam and mman1506 correctly guessed that, but I wanted to confirm.

And rule-enforcing-good-guy-Gregor beat you to the punch, he double checked with me this very same question about a week and a half ago.

Re: Mistakes of 2013
 

Not everyone on the team will agree with this, but I would say our biggest mistake was focusing too much on full court shooting. It over constrained the design of our robot since the feeder tray had to be on the back of the robot, and the shooter at the front. This left too little space for other mechanisms (climber, floor pickup). We spent so much time tweaking and perfecting our full court shot, and never really used it in competition. If I had to do it again, I would put the feeder tray above the shooter at the front of the robot, and put a nice floor pickup in the back.