pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Looks great! Are those claw-shaped things in the back a second pickup mechanism or are they for catching?

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Seeing this robot working was really exciting. Great job! Definitely a great contender for championship. Can't wait to play with you guys more in central Illinois.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Yes. It started out as two different groups of students working on concepts. I was a bit skeptical that the students could get this concept working because you can't reverse the rollers and have the ball land in the flipper. By accident they rotated the arms apart while prototyping and the ball landed in the flipper. So that's what we did - the two arms are independently controlled and stay in sync until it's time to drop the ball then they separate and the ball drops in. Turns out that it works well for our 2 ball autonomous mode also.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

We had a great time today. Watching your drive time and ours practice catching the ball over the truss was fun - we actually caught one!

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Thanks for inviting us FTC teams! We really had a blast, especially with that FRC video game! Our boys were addicted to that.
Feel free to check out my pics @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/runneal...7641034384935/

Yup, I think all of the Iowa teams have a good chance of going to champs.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

I couldn't agree more!

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

By chance do you know where to find the 2014 game simulator that is featured in your pictures? I believe it was in img_1866

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Two of our students created that - they will try to make it available.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Here is a link to the file:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...lAssistSim.zip

From the students:

A simulation of this year's game with our robot, created in Unity3d. The menu has 4 buttons. Practice modes are not timed and can be exited from the pause menu (Esc). Double screen requires 2 monitors with the same resolution to be setup in extend mode (extend mode is when the desktop only shows up on 1 screen). Single screen is an overhead view, and double will put the 2 views in both teams' driver stations. Joysticks will be assigned based on the order they are plugged in. It will fill blue's team first, then red's. Controls are set up to use the 3rd axis (twist) on the joystick. These controls will not work with a 2 axis joystick or most controllers, so if you have any of those you can press the button the menu to toggle using the 2nd axis (side to side) instead of the third. Shoot on joysticks is the trigger, and the side button will pass. If you don't have those buttons, or are on a controller, they should be button 1 and 2 respectively (xbox controller uses A and B). To pick up the ball, back into it and the pickup will deploy automatically. If you don't have a enough joysticks you can use this handy chart for keyboard controls: http://www.imgur.com/wr8NwGR

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

Thanks a lot. very nice job.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

We had a couple of questions at CIR about the render - it was done in Creo.

The robot ran well for most of the event and our drive team was outstanding.

We had one issue late in the eliminations rounds. One of our pots came loose and we lost the preset positions for our main ball pickup. This interfered with some auto and teleop shots. By the time we figured out what was wrong it was too late to fix it. We ran the last finals matches with out shooting at all -1986 picked up the shooting roll and were awesome!

I'm not sure if the pot was never tightened properly or if the heavy defense helped work it loose - we'll consider adding threadlocker to the pots for Queen City.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

We were curious why you guys weren't shooting in auto in elims. That explains it

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I was up in the stands at the time and feared the worst - I'm glad it wasn't some sort of catastrophic failure.

Re: pic: FRC525 2014 Robot Render
 

About halfway through the timeout between F2 and F3 we discovered the pot body had rotated slightly causing the pickup arm to be out of position. The few minutes remaining were not enough to tighten it and reset the zero point.
At Queen City we will hot glue the body to the gear box and use threadlock.

We also had a battery retaining bracket break during F2 and we spent most of the timeout zip tying the battery in place.

Overall it appears we survived the finals carnage without significant damage.