Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

We're in the middle of our regular November/December project: refurbishing and reprogramming the light ball that the TechnoKats team drops in downtown Kokomo each December 31. Since we do it every year I don't think it counts as unique, but it's definitely cool.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Texas Tube - To run chain inside of 2x1 extrusion. By no means actually developed in Texas (to my knowledge) but was adapted by several top Texas teams last season. (118, 624, etc)

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

After we stripped our practice bot down to the base we reprogrammed it to run on a game-pad and put a new frame on it. We are now making a cover for that frame that looks like a sleigh to drive in Christmas parades. In addition we are making a "snowman" that sits on a tote for our 2015 robot to hold and move around during the parades.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Team 2823 built a ping pong shooting robot over the summer. We needed something fun for demonstrations, and something durable and simple enough to be driven with little training. As a bonus, custom ping pong balls are pretty cheap, and the backspin makes it very fun. It still breaks far more often than we want, but it turned out pretty well.

Also, some of our older students are mentoring a new FTC team during the "offseason".

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Team 2194 decided to use the 2014 robot chassis we didn't use to make a rubber-band shooter. It's still being made (this is what happens when we don't have a six week dead line :p ), but there has been a lot of cool progress.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Our team was also thinking of making a ping pong ball shooter for an off season project. How did you launch the ping pong balls and how fast were you able to accelerate them to? I was just curious.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

We used a wheel to fire them. It works pretty well. They go about halfway across the width of a gym, and we can make them slower if needed (so as not to harm little kids). A couple of notes: a single wheel creates massive backspin. It was really fun when we had it horizontal, but vertical is better for the bot. Also, the system will vibrate because of the wheel. Our wooden prototype from 2 years ago would vibrate so much that the ping pong balls wouldn't get sucked down into the shooter. The switch to a metal frame fixed it. We still don't have a great indexer working, so no advice there, but we are trying.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Thanks, It is a project i would really like to do. Did your team think about using pneumatics as that is what we are considering. I originally got the idea from popular science herehttp://www.popsci.com/build-300-mph-pingpong-cannon. The video at the bottom of the article is pretty cool. If our team ever made a pneumatic ping pong ball shooter for a robot we would reduce the air pressure for safety reasons of course. Thanks for the response.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

854 has stripped our 2014 robot and is building a semi-accurate Dozer as well as possibly prototyping a new Octacanum drive.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

We did consider using pneumatics. They would definitely work, and would certainly shoot farther if powered up fully. However, they have some challenges with making them safe using FIRST legal parts. We wanted our bot to be driveable by first graders (in fact, we recently brought it to a children's museum), and in close quarters (we once demoed our frisbee shooter in a hallway). Having a wheel makes it easier for us to control the speed, and allows for rapid fire, which is always fun.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with using pneumatics, and I'm certain that the challenges won't really be a problem, so I'd say go for it!

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Currently working on designing a new robot cart to build in the coming weeks for build season.

Annual VEX robots.

There's also a special little project we will be sharing later. :)

I'm also heading CAD classes for underclassmen so we have some more experience for build season.

Re: Cool/Unique Offseason Projects
 

Thanks, I was just curious. It makes sense to use the wheel in that case, easy to control the speed and rapid fire. Firing rapidly is a lot harder with pneumatics.