Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

There goes almost a quater of the budget.:)

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

The 3,500 budget is fine. This is a good balance for teams that do not have much money and teams that have too much money.

If anything weight in the robot without the battery. I have seen batteries that have a weight difference of .3 pounds.

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

I have actually heard a story... not sure if it is true (I'm full of rumors this week :rolleyes: )...

There was a team who one year couldn't make the weight. In order to make weight they emptied the contents (lead, acid, whatever) out of the battery. They went to the inspection booth with their faux battery. They were snagged when the inpector asked for them to turn on their robot to verify the team number was set correctly on the robot controller.

"Could you please turn your robot on so I can verify your team number is set properly."
"Uhhh.. Uhh... hold on let us get a fresh battery from our pits."
"I don't need to see it move, I just need to see the RC turn on..."
"Uhh....Uhhh...."

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

I think what may probably yield a greater weight savings for most teams would be some really rapid finite element analysis of structures on the robot. Its amazing how many robots have such severely over-constructed parts. If we only had a couple of on demand engineers to run the software and a nice farm to do calculations quick, i bet we could eliminate all these overly heavy parts.

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

We were close to weight so I weighed our batteries. I got weights from 13.2 - 13.9. I couldn't believe it. Maybe we could have a 125 lb robot without battery.

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

I think the $3500 limit is pretty comfortable. As said in an earlier post getting rid of the electronics cap is a good idea. If a team wants to spend a good chunk of the $3500 on a custom circuit or electronics let them. Raising the $3500 limit doesn't sound like a good idea. FIRST already relaxed the rules this year, also eliminated the ban on exotic materials, AND if they decide to also raise the amount the more unfair the game will be between teams, especially rookies and teams with no or limited sponsorship.

My two cents ;)

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

This season I think the most money we spent was on food... o.O We don't have many local companies to give us money, so we have to make due without. Other teams, on the other hand have seemingly unlimited funding, so the cap is what saves smaller teams like ours.
I don't think I would add anything to our bot if they did raise the cap because we ended up with a very competitive robot on a pretty small budget.

This year we got a Leadership in Control award, and the only laptop we used was an old WinBook MIT donated to us. Judges don't care whether you have PowerMacs (as one team did) or flashy stuff like that when they are looking for the Leadership in Control Award--they're looking for the team who put the most effort into making their control system work perfectly. Though, I don't think our programmer would mind much if we had some better hardware...

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

We're using a 75 mhz laptop to program at the speed of light...
If you really wanted to get your robot under the limit, take out some code..........

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

The limit is fine, especially as many teams find ways to hide cost, anyway. Nobody can seriously tell me that the machining cost on many sponsor made parts does not exceed that amount! But that is somewhat beside the point. We are incouraged to find inventive ways to deal with that, and we do. If there was no cap, many rich teams (ones that have more than $50K at hand) would most certainly spiral the cost up, leaving the majority of teams in the dust, and without a chance to win. That could easily lead to a sponsor draught, because many medium sponsors would not want to pump money into a team with the knowledge the team doesn't have a chance to win. Such cenario currently exists in Formula One, and utlimately threatens the survival of that sport.
I like it the way it is. It's more fun, anyway.

IndyStef

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

I think you missed his point. There have been teams that invest quite a bit into their operator interface such as T3 this year with their mini arm to control their real arm. If FIRST were to include the OI into the 3500 dollars, teams might not even have enough money left of that 3500 to even build an OI and then they end up having their OI mounted on a piece of plywood with 4 joysticks. Anyway, there have been some awesome achievements when it comes to OIs, such as T3 and 25 (I think they did too) with their mini arms or 447 with their glove controls, which probably wouldnt' have been possible if FIRST were to put the OI into the $3500...so to the original person who suggested that, I disagree.

Re: Raising the $3500 limit?
 

I also believe that the OI hasn't been included because it simply doesn't matter as much. Do you seriosly believe that if a team that spent 100k on thier OI would be better than someone who spent $25? It all comes down to the robots.