Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

Our team is composed of 11 high school kids, no mentors, no college kids, etc. This is our first year, and the only real reason we have a team going is b/c we got lucky with some funding. Anyway, I finished the drive system today (almost) and our robot moves, but it's loud, shaky, covered in grease, stuff falls off, it's just all around terrible. We have nothing else on our robot except for the wheels, and the motors. Which we ran for a while, didn't realize they were getting so hot, and actually melted the wire onto the frame :ahh:

So, does anyone else have a piece of junk robot? Becuase I've seen some pictures and were're getting pretty depressed.

*note Pictures can be seen here if you don't believe the crappyness, you have to copy/paste for it to work (my server sucks)
http://68.4.94.105:60000/robot/bin/

The files are compressed for you peoples with 56k's, pics are about 60 k, and just in that directory.

Please give us hope :-)

hey, be happy your robot moves. our robot isn't even close to being built. we have a bunch of random pieces from our machine shop. some chassis pieces, a bunch of the transmission, a random piece of box aluminimum, but nothing that actually goes together. that means, we have tons of pieces, but not one is put together. at the moment, your robot is 1000x better than mine, if only for the single fact that it actually works. so quit complaining.

DUDE! SCHWING! Take it easy!! NO ONE IS ACCEPTABLE IN THEIR FIRST YEAR!!! They always take a year to know/know not what to do. Our first year we just sat, hummed, and smoked!! We didn't even move. Just take it easy! You live and than learn. Just take everything in stride and you will be ok...

Just a little advice from me, "Big Grand Master Pimp"

Calm down. I wouldn't say no one is expecting you to make a National Champion, for anything is possible in FIRST. But having trouble as a first year team IS expected. It's how you deal with it.

Frankly, your robot looks fine right now. During our first few years, we kind of caught on fire more than once... and look how far we've come...

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

I may get this story's facts a little wrong cuz I wasn't there but,


have you heard of the six hour robot?

A rookie team showed up at the competition with only a box of parts. Chatsworth and Beach Bots built their robot in six hours, and guess what, it placed, from what I heard, higher than the teams who built it.

Your robot moves. Rejoice and see what a little luck brings you at the competition.

Check tis one out guys

MIA
 

Team 1077 has a piece of junk robot!!! We do not even have a moving frame!!! Our team consists of 10 kids from high school and 2 college guys.......yet only about..... 5 kids work!! Our transmissions are still being worked on, our arm is in peace's, ahhhh I dunno.... Instead of piece of junk I think our robot is going to be named MIA (Missing in Action) If we get the bot done we will kick butt, but at this rate I have no clue! Must remain optimistic.

i guess we're a blessed rookie team. we have a moving frame and our subsystems are almost ready to be put on the bot. we have about 8 high school kids, one teacher, two other adults, and three engineers.

you can see our bot at http://www.firstubergeeks.com/gallery if you're curious to see what a rookie team came up with.

just don't give up...you never know what you'll come up with and what luck will bestow upon you :)

*jeremy

We are a rookie team was well....well kindda.....We have done FIRST in the past with a pervious team. Our college guys this is there 5 year doing FIRST, and the majority of the kids this is our 3rd or 4th. We just tend to eat crap till the last week....will we ever learn... lol

We are mounting some pillow blocks and things on top of nylon spacers. We make all our gearbox mounting holes one oversize to allow for some slop in fitting. Does that count for being junk? We have 16 students, 1 teacher, four very busy at work engineers, and 1 college student. We will have our drivetrain nearly done by the end of Monday.

I can't see the pictures now, I guess whoever is running the server has it down.

But regardless of how it looks, if it moves, and you have a good driver, you have a chance.

My old team, 247, had a very ugly bot. Seriously, it looked like a shopping cart with duct tape. What'd they win? Rookie All-Star at a regional and were finalists.

Don't fret that your robot is junk unless it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, ask other teams for help. Last year with 247 we didn't have enough traction with what we had on our wheels. Team 68, Truck Town Thunder, had some really good stuff they used on their treads. We asked if we could use about 3' of it and they gave it to us. What happened from there? Semi-Finalists (losing to Truck Town and their alliance).. Next regional? Finalists (with Truck Town as an alliance member).

If other teams have resources (people, materials, knowledge) to spare, almost every single one of them will be willing to loan it out.

You gotta still have hope and get as much practice as you can in.

ya, it's my server and for some reason it has decided that it shall work no more.

Trying to get it working again.. but you're not missing much anyway.

the best advice anyone can give you is do your best, and ask anyone at your regionals who looks good for help... its my experience that almost everyone who can will help you do anything... some teams even bring miny machine shops, so if you ask around, someone can help your bot do more than shake and bake

k, I think I realized what's wrong, my server sucks so you have to copy and paste the link for it to work

I also put a little .htm file so all the pics will just show up, no directory business.

Sorry for that problem.

link is:http://68.4.94.105:60000/robot/bin

Try http://68.4.94.105:60000/robot/bin/index.htm. It worked for me. Also, http://68.4.94.105:60000/robot/bin/ gave me a directory listing.

BTW, I've seen machines that look much less professional than yours. You had a little setback. Suck it up, and get it fixed. You'll be fine.:)

ermm, chil out dude. i think your bot really looks sharp!

i noticed the way your electrical system was set up right away, looks really neat and quite spiffy. you shoulda seen the first couple of Bots our team made, we actually keep them and i shudder when i look at them, thay make that look like a Veteran bot!
just the general way your organized really lets me know your on the right track. nobody has the recources the first year to do anything magnificent. you will come back next year and have a better idea of what you are doing an maybe build something that doesnt "suck" as much

my honest opinion.. your off to a pretty darn good start!

~Pyro

It actually looks pretty good for any team. It looks solid enough to do some good pushing and knocking over stacks, pushing boxes. If you have a bot that can move right now you're probobly ahead of the majority of teams. You still have a few weeks to work on it. As for being a rookie team, if you've never seen a competition or at least a few dozen bots you don't know what to expect or whats possible. Good Luck.

It looks pretty clean. The 3/8" chain will probably never break either. However, I would check to make sure that you are using the right wire guage as specified in the manual, and also check to make sure that you aren't violating the light visability rules in update #5 because the battery may block too much from one angle. you may also want to move the breaker to prevent it from being accidently tripped. I'm curious why you cut the battery connector in half as well.

Help??
 

To the origional poster:

I see that you are in Irvine. Rather than just complaining, why don't you ask for some help. My school is about one hour away from you and if you need advice, feel free to call or e-mail me. It looks like you have some good stuff and I realize that we have about 2 weeks left, but if you need help, its not too late.

If you (or any other team) would like advice or help, contact me:

(818) 248-TECH (This is my school--ask for Chris Kilpatrick and tell tham its about robotics or leave a message as to how I can contact you back)

cdk@1stnetusa.com (e-mail)

Hope this helps...

-Chris

For a rookie team with just 11 members you did pretty good.

I'd try and loose some of the wood though. Your drive train is pretty diesel, and I don't think the wood will hold up under battle conditions.

I'd also add that it looks pretty heave for just a drive train what do you currently weigh in at? Take in to consideration what other sub-systems you still want to add.

Overall, I wouldn't be too hard on your selves, I've seen a lot worse...

hey, don't be dissing the wood! we have always built our chassis out of wood, and it always works. you'd be surprised at how strong wood can be if you put the cassis together correctly. the good thing about it is that it flexes when it gets hit. as long as it doesn't snap (which is rare if it is properly reinforced), a wooden chassis will always return to the state it was in before it got hit - unlike aluminum, which has a nasty habit of bending if you whack it hard enough. Wood is also really light.


i might also point at that another team who also has a long history of using wooden chassis is RAGE (173). And they did kinda win the national championshis last year, didn't they?

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

That's easy enough.

Our team is in practically the same shape - 11 seniors with a couple of teachers and our parents. We're extraordinarily lucky in that our teacher knows a guy who welds Battlebots together (he did the frame of the one that killed Ziggo in the most recent season) and one of our team member's fathers is a master electrician, so our wiring is ultra-neat.

And in spite of that, our robot isn't even to the "moving" point yet. We're getting there, but not quite. And when we finally test it for the first time I fully expect our drill motors to explode or melt or something because no one on our team knew about all the technical problems they tend to encounter before mounting them (it was practically the first thing we did) and now it's too late to change things without practically tearing the bot apart. Fun. :D

Re: Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

Was this at SVR in 2001?

I dont believe chatsworth was there in 01' im not sure about 330 though

[edit]you guys may want to consider putting your wheels on the bottom of the frame. I dont think youll have enough clearance that way when you go up the ramp. You may bottom out. [edit]

Cory

Rookies are called rookies for a reason - especially if you don't have much help, you're bound to have it rough from the start.

I think your robot looks great, and I hope you come from behind and do wonderfully this season!

Tip: Don't ever give up on your robot, especially this early in the season. That robot is what you make of it. If you give it your all, something good is bound to come your way. Best of luck.

Amanda

hehe i think my post came across differently than i wanted it too. I'm not trying to complain, i'm just trying to get a feel for if there are any other teams out there in the same shape. With 1000 teams i was hoping they wouldn't all be as good as some of the ones i've seen in the gallery

and about the bottoming out issue, we calculated that before mounting the wheels, we have about .46 inches of clearance going over the top.

And the wiring isn't done yet, that was a hasty job i did just to see if it ran, we will wire it neatly when it's time to finalize.

We are considering drill some holes in the wood if we go over weight, but I don't think that will be a problem with the design we have now.


thanks for all the good advice

ok, I'm sorry, I'm an aluminum type person... Wood just scares me, I would be afraid that it would crack, but you're right, it is is assembled properly it should be ok. And yes it is lighter...

Speaking of which, we'll be sheding some weight this week......

Aluminum worked for us 380 for 3 years str8, in this 4th year, we're going for METAL :cool: ........

hey rookie teams, don't b depress if your robot dosn't look like the ones in the gallery, becase remember that some teams have more than 3 engeneers workin' in their robot, and the fact that ya'll did it by yourself, erns a lot of respect from my part...... if you ever c 380 in the NY or any other regenal, look for us and let me know who you are, and mayb we can work something out, if u know what i mean ;)

---===~~Ariel ( Xperience Driver/ COACH )~~===---

Ok, I can see the pictures now and it's a beautiful chassis. You'll have some trouble if nothing is added, but you can still be good if it's not.

As I said, get a lot of practice driving, a good driver is often better than a good bot. Those look like 8 x 3 wheels which will give pretty good traction too.

Be optimistic and work with what you have, you could be a regional champ or rookie all star

I saw the six hour robot. It did move - but since it was only a wedge with 2 wheels it kinda got stuck a lot going through the barrier - I don't think it placed or was selected to go on. This was at the 2001 SVR.

Also team's 255 robot in 1999 was a welded iron bedrail framed, FP 2 wheel drive that barely could move. It placed 192 out of 212
at the Nationals (I think). The next year well...


Moral of the story - there is a reason they give out the rookie of the year awards. Most of these rookies have got a lot of help from veterans. So if you move, every time - you have done great!
You make the most progress and learn the most during your rookie year - and by all means get help if you need it.

What are you being so negative about? Robotics is supposed to be fun, remember? We don't build just to win, or even to perform exceptionally well.

We build because we can.

Your 'bot
 

That is actually pretty nice for a chassis, but here is some advice on your wheels. It ooks as if you have 4 wheel drive with the grey wheels, and on carpet you may have "dancing" problems. For those of you who were at the practice competition last year in Sussex, WI you may have seen us, team 706, watching in horror as our robot danced as it turned. Not cool. Find some carpeting that is like the competition stuff, and try turning on it. If you dance, don't despair, just grind down that black strip on the black wheels that came with the kit and put them on the front or back, and that :should: solve your problem.

I noticed in those pics that your victor fans don't seem to be wired up. If you're drawing as much current as it sounds like you are, they're definately necessary! Don't cook your victors.

I see the usual "there's two weeks to go and we can't move yet!" panic is setting in. Probably about half the teams have gotten their robot to move under it's own power, barely. 75% of the rest of you will probably get there in the next week. It really will be OK.

If it doesn't look like you will be able to move by the end of next weekend (2/9) PLEASE contact a veteran team NOW! We can do a lot to help but we have to know about the problem. Team 1047 should contact Beach Cities robotics team 294 (try a PM to Redhead_jokes) as I think they are supposed to be helping you. They will also know what a drive should sound like.

Now for a few corrections:

The six hour robot was The Fembots at Silicon Valley in 2001. The primary co-ordination was actually done by Gunn robotics, team 192. (maybe because they are so easy to spot in a large crowd?;) ) They had major help from Team 22, Chatsworth High. Various other teams including 330, the BeachBots (my team), provided assistance as needed. In our case, we were asked to make the wheels. This used our process of grinding the top flat and attaching a custom tread. We were good at it having already done several sets of four wheels.

As I recall, the Fembots seeded #10 which was higher than we did, but they were not in the finals.

I am more impressed by what they have accomplished since then. When I talked to one of their mentors last year, they were running that little guy AUTONOMOUSLY. They had a huge enthusiastic support team. Their school was behind them (unlike the first year) and I look for great things from them in the future.

The only reason this robot was possible was that the Veteran teams involved were warned ahead of time and began planning in advance. The use of direct, van door motor drive didn't hurt either, but it's not an option this year.

BTW we haven't moved yet either. We thought we had the right size chain in our spares but alas it was not so. Should be moving tonight or tomorrow though, after we go buy some chain.

[quote]Originally posted by ChrisH
[b]If it doesn't look like you will be able to move by the end of next weekend (2/9) PLEASE contact a veteran team NOW![quote]

They've had all our contact numbers, Mark's called them several times. They've emailed when they needed help. Haven't seemed to want visits or to visit us. We invited them to send 2 student reps with us to Phoenix, but they replied they "didn't see the point". I pm'd him when he first posted here, but never heard back.

Hey guys, I think you can tell from all the answers on this forum many teams are willing to give you help and support. You don't have to do this on your own, and you're probably doing better than you thought.

Hey guys! Mark and our robotics engineer were just looking at the pics you sent Mark, and they BOTH said you guys are doing great. Mark said he already sent you his ideas.

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

I'm glad to hear that we're remembered. :) I wasn't quite sure if that six hour robot that was mentioned was ours or not, so I didn't want to stick my foot anywhere if it wasn't. Although, I wasn't on the team that year, I heard many things about our rookie year.

Just a little story for all those rookies out there, we were once you, in fact all the other teams were once you:

2001: I haven't the foggiest as to what the girls did that year for the six weeks, but obviously nothing got done. They were about ready to drop the competition completely because they had nothing. But they were encouraged to go anyways as they did pay $5,000. So, they traveled from Sacramento to San Jose (2 hour drive) each morning and home each night, for they didn't have any reservations for a hotel. They just brought with them their kit of parts. Our teacher last year told us that it was awesome to see the veteran teams helping out in the creation of our little six hour robot. Thank you so much to teams 22, 330, and 192 (I heard people on my team were rather fascinated by the red hair)! Oh, and I thought my team placed 26th that year. *shrugs* I'm not too sure on that though. We still have it. We have dubbed it "the-piece-of-wood-on-wheels." And it works beautifully in autonomous mode. :)

2002: This was our "second" rookie year. All members were new as the previous year consisted of solely seniors. It was kind of rough to begin with since all members needed to be trained in workshop etiquette. We went well beyond our piece-of-wood-on-wheels, or six hour robot as the rest of the populous had called it. Major improvement. But we didn't place quite as high as we did the year before, but the experience and satisfaction of six weeks well spent was the best part.

2003: Those who do remember the six hour robot will be shocked to see us this year. But I'm not going to give anything away. :p You shall all see at SVR and/or Sac. It's simpler than last year's, but it works and I'm happy with it.

So, rookies out there, don't worry so much. This is a learning experience. Teams have to start somewhere and then learn from that for the next year. Every year is a gradual progression from the year before. Hope the story of the Fembots shines a ray of hope in people. :)

Team 990 is also running into the usual late-stage design problems. We just found out that our stacker can't put one box on top of the other. Thus, we modified the design a little, and promised to fix the downsides in programming.

As far as I know, we haven't even tried to get it to move. Electrical is still mounting components on the whiteboard (will this setup be tournament legal? Who knows?) and we haven't connected it to the motors.

Finally, our chassis (Mad of channel and angle iron), while looking fairly sharp and providing lots of empty space, is surprisingly heavy. We're probably going to have to swiss-cheese our 'bot, even though it already is built like a catwalk.


Even so, we can see a marked improvement from last year. Now, we have a few dedicated college freshmen who worked on it last year, several involved seniors, and two sophomores who give a $@#$@#$@#$@# [wow. didn't know $@# was censored]. No adults take part in it other than our combination physics teacher/team leader. I'm a little scared for next year, but I think they'll (not me; I'll be somewhere in the Midwest) pull through.

Last year, our robot ED, the laundry basket on wheels, didn't do so well. I think the main reason it didn't do so well is because we didn' t keep it simple (and for this I do not blame the students, I blame the engineers... ) And we are not a rookie team, so robot problems don't just occur with new teams. We have over 30 students, and a handful of engineers, and we talked about keeping it really simple this year as well, but it was sort of decided that if we did, the students wouldn't get as much (? experience, fun, knowledge, enjoyment, inspiration- choose any they all fit) out of building it. It's still too early to tell what our robot is going to be like. It may be great, but there's a chance it will run just as poorly as last year's, however, I won't ever call it a bad robot because I know those who built it and I know how much time and effort went into it. Win or lose, they will always be my favorite team. Now, for second favorite, I like underdogs, so I can give you my vote... ;)

Good luck with this year, and I hope you are all hooked, and I hope you have a team next year, so as soon as your robot ships, get working on funding for next year and if you want more students and some engineers, start advertising for them now!

MissInformation

<============>
There's nothing wrong with being amazing, but being amazed is more fun.

well we got our robot built
then we started to drive it

there went one drill motor, a van door motor, and other electronics start to smoke. so just getting done fast isn't a major concern. if you take your time and do it right you are doing just fine

Don't worry bout it man. I'm actualy very impressed with ur drive train, execelnt work for a rookie team:)

Also, the great thing about this year is that a robot that just moves with a good driver can be an incredible defensive robot, knocking down a stack and shoving totes out of zones is really easy, so you might do much better than expected.

I only stayed at 247's build session today for about 2 hours, but while I was there we came across a huge problem that really made my heart sink, and later I realized the current fragility of our drivetrain. Unless our electric guys can work miracles....

Wood is a lot more durable than plexiglass as our team has discovered this year. It is odd because for the purpose we are using it for wood is an excellent choice because it is uber easy to attach stuff to it.

As a general rule I have found that the mechanical build team relies on the electronics group to work miricles in the same way that the computer group relies on mechanical to fix its problems and the electronics guys figure eveything will be fixed in software.

So I bet you ship a decent machine in spite of the set back

So many holes to drill.......

Don't mind Lord Nerdlinger, sometimes he just forgets to take his Prozac. :ahh:

(lol, I'll get in trouble for that one)

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

Try being the electronics and software guys. Then you have to fix your own problems.

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

Well, our robot really wasn't designed realistically, everything works well in theory. And bin design wasn't the greatest. Personally I thought that our team didn't really work out the glitches in our robot in time because we were too slow with the design of our robot for the first week or so. There's always next year you know. This year was my first year, I will know what to do for next year. So I will make sure that my team don't repeat what it's been doing. Like slacking off and a whole bunch of other stuff. So did you guys have any problems like that?

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

This is my teams second year and my first. We had the same problems and during regionals our drivetrain couldn't survive a whole match.

Re: Anyone else with a really bad robot?
 

14th place seems pretty good for a piece of junk robot :)