Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

We have a practice bot in the back of the pickup truck. It's a spare-parts machine at the regional. I probably don't want to leave it in the back of the truck, but it might be hard to put it inside the cab on the seat. The hotel is a mile away.

Hmmm... where?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Remember, you can only bring 45 lbs of manufactured non COTS items into the arena. So having an entire robot of spare parts is not really legal.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

I might be a little wary of Q416, where a bot for a Chairman's presentation was ruled to count toward the 45 lb allowance.

How much does the bot weigh?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

You will want to have your 45lbs selected and removed prior to going to competition. The rules state that you cannot work on the robot mechanical components outside of the pit or outside of the pit operating hours (no in-hotel work).

If you are bringing the entire robot, it would be best to leave it in the hotel. Thefts from parking lots are unfortunately, not uncommon.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Store it at your school, your shop, your sponsor's facility, wherever you normally keep it. Don't bring it to a regional.

While you can use a used, unmodified, COTS part that was on an old robot, as a spare, you cannot store it on the robot until you need it. It's not a parts rack.

A manufactured part, even if it's identical to one on your competition robot, can be a spare part, but it counts under your weight allowance and must be brought into the pits as a part, not as a part of a robot.

Think about what you are asking. If every team brought a spare or practice robot to a competition, where would they put up to 60 extra robots?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Dude, if what I read here is accurate, you need to understand that that's not ok. My team has a practice bot too, which we've used for drive practice and R&D. We will take our spare parts and improvements off of it and take them to competition, leaving the rest behind. 45 pounds only, excluding the bumpers, batteries, and COTS straight from the box. That is a generous rule and it's very clear.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Sorry to say it OP, but I'm going to have to agree that this isn't legal (unless your practice bot is under 45 pounds). Also, if you declare your practice bot as part of your withholding, you can't do anything to it in the parking lot (rule T11), or after hours (rule R15).

If you think you're going to need some of the parts off that bot, you should really go talk to the officials at the event, explain the situation, and (if they allow it) strip the needed parts off the practice bot and bring them into the venue as your withholding allowance. The rest of the bot can then be left back at the hotel.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Take the top half off and bring it in (it's definitely under 45 lbs). Leave the drivetrain; as a KOP drivetrain there are bound to be folks with spare parts.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Is the KOP drivetrain not a COTS device? Granted, it is assembled, but dismantled anything unmodified will not count to the 45lbs.

What I see teams do is keep the practice bots in their trailers and send a few kids out to the parking lot to recover parts as needed, so only weight you actually need is ever brought in.

I your situation, just dismantle the systems and bring in what you expect to break (hard stops on catapult, out-of-frame ball intakes etc, and as much COTS parts you can otherwise) and perhaps leave the robot in someone's hotel room (we built our 2012 practice robot again in the hotel during an offseason event, there is definitely room)

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Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

The regional is in the building, if you keep the robot out of the building you should be ok as long as you don't bring it more than 45 pounds of it into the arena/school. Can those of you who are saying that this is illegal, can you please point to the rule that says what defines an event and what defines the 45 pound allowance that backs you up?

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

This in my opinion is against the rules and is definitely against the intention of the rule.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

The whole "practice bot in a trailer" thing may be why they added the word "static" to the definition of the withholding allowance. I don't remember that word being there before.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Is there anything left truly unmodified in the KOP drivetrain? Enlarge a hole, or make it a widebot, or a longbot, and it is modified. Stripping a wire on a CIM for crimping is modification, as has been pointed out in past threads many times.

It is not cool to have Frankenstein's Monster in your hotel room or trailer, to pull parts from as necessary. I have already said that I think the 45 pounds rule is very clear, and that it is extremely generous. It was raised from 30 to accommodate the folks whose build schedule was ruined by the weather this year. Unless you can get your practice bot down to 45 pounds or less, bringing it to competition with the intent of using it for spares is CHEATING.

Re: Were to store practice bot at regional?
 

Welcome folks, welcome to the dumbest rule in first.