Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Hey, i was just wondering how much time on average the rest of the students involved in first sink into doing this. Another team member and I on 2013 have put in a little over 500 hours since then start of build season. 320 in the 6 weeks of build and another 200 in the time since then (this involves competitions). We were both at robotics daily with few exceptions and still working very regularly after build was over.

So, how much time do you all sink into this?

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Probably too much.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Our team decided to instore a clock in system during the 6 weeks... It only counts the job done in our local. Students did between 30h and 250h each at school during the build period... Im curious about the amount of time spent working at home and after the season...

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

500-600 hours. About the same as last year.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

342 hours and 9 minutes. We clock in and out for emergency know who's there purposes as well as tracking hours.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Probably not enough :P

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

During build, sub 80 hours of shop time. Since then? Maybe another 40 hours of shop time.

Work smarter, not harder.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Quick calc gives a bit less than 400 hours a competition season for me. This doesn't include the CAD work at home though...

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Probably somewhere around 400-500 hours during build season, and easily 300+ after.

I didn't go to school...

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

That is what the other team member and i were like last year. We were both walking zombies, he got mono and missed a month of school right after all the competitions too.

Did your grades drop a lot from missing the school? Mine last year were about 10% lower than they should have been.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Yup. I finished 66% of high school in grade ten, and am now barely graduating. With a much lower average than I could make.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I love how this teaches more than we will ever learn from school but hurts our education in highschool.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I actually kept track of this during the 2014 season. I spent ~700 hours working on our robot. This involves actual build sessions, my study halls, my lunch hours, my Saturdays, my entire spring break (actually spent more time with the robot than my family, including sleep), and competitions.
I probably should have noticed that I didn't have a life around the 350~400 hour mark...,
<edit> Oh, did I mention that I didn't go into robotics at all this week, and am staying home on Saturday, just to catch up on my homework and badly-missed sack time? </edit>

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Personally, I've been there every single time during build season and I've put in 250-300 hours during the 6 weeks. I can't imagine how some people could put in 500 hours! I struggled to find time to do homework and projects (while maintaining a 94% average). I don't know how I would have survived 500 hours!

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I have over 700 hours. Our top student has over 500, with a few others over 400. All have over 180.

As a team, we've put in about 10,000 man-hours this season.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

174 hours during build season. (Class time, lunch time, after school, saturdays)
80 hours during pre season. (class, after school)

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

probably around 300 hours during build season, another 250 after season, and at least 100 pre season on programming exercises that our mentor had us do so that we had good programming techniques (good variable names, descriptive comments, strong logic, etc.,) and still logging hours! Gotta make sure the code is perfect for St. Loo-wey.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

My school would be upset if they knew. On paper, everyone was there from 5 to 9 every day, and from 10 to 10 on Saturdays. Around 40 students makes that about 8,000. I believe that accounts for about 70%. So Definitely at least 10,000 Man hours. Highest individuals...about 498. There were about 3 students like that. (None of our grades are great...) I think all of those calculations are neglecting Sundays.

P.S. All of these are just build season hours.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

How do you clock in/out? If PC what software? Trying to find a better way to track student hours.

Thanks

roger

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Its nearly impossible to get a >90% average with that many hours, my marks dropped nearly 10% last year, i tried to limit myself this year but still have done over 500. There are only 2 students on our team with over 500 hours ( clocked by me not the team sign in sheet). This includes me, the next highest amount is 180 (this is of the team sign in sheet as i only accounted for the two of us but team sign in is fairly accurate). Only a few people on our team got over 100 hours and even fewer put there time to good use. It ridiculous how one of your teams has had all of there member put in at least 180 hours.

Also my recording started right when the game was released, ide estimate another 40 hours in little pre-season things.

Connerd, what was your reason for keeping track, mine was in order to actually be able see quantitatively the amount of time put in by the captain and I compared to everyone else.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Hahaha, just kidding.
Just reviewed my hour list, and realized that I included transit times inside that 700 hours (I live over 40 miles from my school, and take public trains and busses to and from school, it takes a loooooong time). So, that lowers it ~250 hours. Sorry for not noticing it. :rolleyes:

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Our team clocks in and out for the purpose of tracking time. I had 84 hours. The next highest had 64 hours.

I love robotics, but I don't think that I could imagine myself doing 700+ hours of robotics. I know that it would be fun, but between work and school, I don't think that I had that much time even! That 84 hours doesn't count any home stuff at all.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

We use a free system called TimeTrex. It is pretty neat. It is meant for workforce management, but it works GREAT! We keep our safety test scores, our team information, our safety violations and many other things in that system as well as our time. It's reporting functionality is awesome. You can create a free online hosted edition here. If you don't need to access it online, but you would be fine with having it on one computer, then use this edition. You can still access this on computers within your network.

PM me if you want more details. I would love to help you guys out.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

We have a custom web app to track the time that students spend in the lab. Here's a screenshot showing the top few contributors.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Wait, the top one is less than 300? I'd assume these are students, not mentors...

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

We actually use a beepy thing (technical term :p ) and we made barcodes with a label maker, and beep the bar codes, which stores a timestamp on the beepy thing, and one of our parent-mentors does something with the data and excel to make our hours spreadsheet. So I'm not sure that's quite what you're looking for, but I hope it helps.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

We have a fingerprint scanner to clock in and out for emergencies and hour tracking. I'm at about 250 right not, not including competition time and the time I spent working on Chairman's at home (probably putting me way above 300, but I'm not sure exactly).

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

This comes out to 11.9 - 14.3 hours a day if you worked every day this build season.

This comes out to 9.5-11.9 hours a day if you worked every day this build season.

Now, this. 700 is roughly 16.6 hours a day if you worked every day this build season. Even if you meant the entire season, let's take a 12 week period, that comes out to 8.3 hours a day.

Now, I'm not one to deny the time we give to the program, but I don't believe any of you.

Personally, I'm staring down the barrel at around 114 hours spent in the shop during build season.

- Sunny G.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I know this year i was at robotics from usually 3-8,9,10 weeknights and later of Fridays, along with 11am until the early ams the next morning ( we pulled 1 all nighter on week 2 or 3 that was a 22 hour shift). and usually from 11 or 12 until 5, 6 or 7pm on Sundays. I know it is a stretch for 500 hours during build season but i think its possible because i know last year, i didn't even go home on weekends usually it was Friday until 3-5 in the morning and back the next morning sometimes before 11, same with the Saturday night and Sunday morning.

And btw u cant look at an average because you are not going to work the same number of hours on a weekday as a weekend. I know my longest shift this season was 22 hours. Whatever work you do on the weekend will push your average up greatly especially if you spend all your time at robotics when you are not at school.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Always too much, and never enough. I'm not gonna count the hours, but during the build season I spent more hours daily in the shop than I did in my own home. And my time at home was spent on CAD.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

We usually have a student or 2 pushing 170 for the build season. But I don't think we had a single one over 120 this season. We only meet 4 days a week throughout the build season and we built the best robot we've ever built this season. We stress to our students that your grades must come first and that robotics comes second. More hours does not always equal a better product.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I'm still a little skeptical of people around the 500 mark. I understand it is possible and that you can't really use an average to prove or disprove it but...

46 day build season, 14 of which are weekend, 32 are weekdays.

if every single weekday looks like this:
[(6 hours sleep)+(45 min time from wake up to dress and get to school and before bell rings)+(7 hours school)] * 32 days
=440 hours

if every single weekend looks like this:
[(5.5 hours sleep)+(30 min commute each day)] * 14 days
=84 hours

There are 1104 hours in 46 days so there are only possibly 580 hours available left to work. I know that many people feel like there schedules looked like this but I doubt many actually were. I also didn't include any time to get homework done. Quite a few students chimed in that their grades dropped which is a little troubling. That is definitely something my team doesn't believe in. We tell them that school is always the most important.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I'm sure all of these people were including time between the "end" of build season and competition. 8.3 hours per day is working from just before 3 (when I assume school ends) till 11 at night. This isn't factoring in that many people work a lot more on the weekends, which would reduce the time worked on weekdays.

It's a lot for sure, but knowing the commitment of some of these people personally, I don't think they're lying. Once you factor in time after build season, and time at home doing CAD (which sometimes took me far into the wee hours of the morning), your time "at" robotics during "build season" can add up pretty fast. I assume if you asked for time physically in the shop during the six week build season, you'd get different answers.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I'm asking forgiveness here people. I'm sorry I included transport times in that count. Now, if you don't believe me, you're probably right, and I miscounted some times. I might have counted all the hours at school, or something like that. I just made many many many mistakes on this, and it shows.
Sorry guys.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I completely, agree with you, Our team says "School comes first" but doesn't always work out that way , I have to make a compromise between school and robotics or else the others will not pick up the slack on my end (which is a lot). My grades are not where I want them to be because of this, but they are good enough for me to be going to school next year ( maybe not the one i wanted, but still). I constantly hear that doing robotics will teach you more than you will ever learn in school (this cant always be used as a broad statement) and i think this is a very true statement but, i hope that doing robotics wont keep anyone from having the education they are hoping to get post-secondary.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I see why you'd be skeptical. My teammates would vouch for me when I say that I really did come in 12-9 almost every single day. And as others have noted, long nights add on to that number.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

As others have explained, the time quoted is not just in 6 weeks. I counted shop time and personal time from January 4th to about now.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Based on the attendance information and rough estimates, my entire team put in just over 3500 hours during build season. I don't want to even imagine how many extra thousands of hours went in outside the six weeks of build season.

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Quick calculation puts me at just over 175 hours, not including countless CAD, programming, and grant-applying hours. You all make me feel incompetent. :ahh:

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

I had the most student hours with 130, we had less than 150 hours of access time this year. Why does everyone seem to have double to triple that?

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Some teams such as mine have shops outside of the schools, this means we have unlimited access as long as whoever owns the shop or garage consents. We build our robot in a snowmobile repair shop which is owned by our lead mentor who would probably let us build nearly 24/7 if we wanted ( as long as we have supervision). This gives us the ability to put the hours in we do. (we are also a community team meaning no school involvement)

Re: Students, Time put into start of build - end of season?
 

Probably somewhere between 250 and 300 hours during build season, plus a fair bit of time after (say another 100 hours, all told).

A bit more time than was prudent, I think. I should scale it back to where I was in 2013 to avoid compromising my performance in class.