Do it over
 

If could do this game over this year what would u do different?
To change the performance of ur robot?
And action of ur team members?

Re: Do it over
 

If I could redo this season, I know that I would try to put more time into helping my team in teh build season. I worked on the 3dsmax presenatation, and I was devoted to it, but in the end we had almost nothing becasue of a hardware failure. I think that if I worked on the Max presentation as a secondary project I would have learned more about the Mech aspect of FIRST, which is why I joined the team in the first place.

Re: Do it over
 

Perhaps this is in the wrong area?

Perhaps there are other threads about this subject?

Or perhaps I am just confused and missing something.

-Andy A.

Re: Do it over
 

1) I wouldn't have crashed the robot when test-driving it.
2) I would've stood up for myself more.
3) I wouldn't have let the robot tackle me on the last build night.
4) I'd have said that this arm would never hold onto a 2X ball.

But hindsight's 20/20, right?

Re: Do it over
 

Robot designs-
Hang from floor
goal grabber
thats it...

Helped more in build
decide between the things I do around robot time
And most of all try to have taught some more newbs. I got a few this year, but the more the better. :) .

Re: Do it over
 

If i could do it over i would have set aside more time for doing schoolwork.

Re: Do it over
 

I can't change this year but next year I will work harder to convince everyone from the start that smaller points (ie. 5pt balls, herding, capping) is more important than the large points (ie. hanging), which I failed at this year. But hey, it stilled turned out well :)

Re: 'If' we could do it over again...
 

I would love a smaller, faster, lighter robot that could go up the small stairs and
hang faster than our current one. The bot would also have a scoop at the front for easy ball moving, and (I don't know if this is legal) a stick to keep the ball release from activating for more time to get a mobile goal underneath for quick points or to prevent the opponets balls from releasing. =)

Crazy idea: a snake bot that would crawl up the 10 foot bar and the coil at the top.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

Well, I would probably start the program for the bot a little before the bus ride to new jersey :rolleyes:

Re: If you could do this game over
 

#25 chain for drive, plastic roller chain and sprockets instead of rubber timing belt and pulleys for lifting arm, bigger reduction on lifting arm, omni wheels, rollers for pushing balls.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

I would have spent more time on mechanisms, made the frame lighter to begin with. Would have made sure that all of the connecting links for the chain werent hitting on anything when I replaced them. Learned more about CAD, loosened up some, and had even more fun.
-Aaron
But none of this matters......unless we apply it to next year. One of our mentors came up with the idea of having everyone write down anything that we learned, solutions to any problems we had, and tips for building the robot. This way we have hard copy and everything that is learned one year is not lost the next as we are only a two year school.

Re: Do it over
 

I think i have a pretty unique comment: i would have pushed to use our robots other capabilities more. If we hadn't just tried to hang for every single match in both of our regionals, we could have really had better results by using our herding and capping abilities. Though we were pretty consistent at hanging by our second regional, i think we could have been bringing in a lot more than 50 pts a round if we had too some more risks and not gone for those easy 50.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

if i had another chance for FIRST FRENZY... i would concentrate on building a robot to do a specific job other than being a all rounder...

Re: If you could do this game over
 

a slower high gear

closed loop steering control.

NO FISCHER PRICE MOTORS IN THE DRIVE TRAIN. useless things. torquey, but they burn out like crazy!

a more effective 2x claw
now that I've seen 45's claw, i would have done it like that. if not that, i would have at least made it power both ways. as it is, it is powered closed and then spring returns to open.

when we go to deliver the small balls, we usually always miss at least one. if we had had more time, i would have tried to eliminate the bouncing in the balls when they are fired out of the ball hopper.

we would not have wasted all those countless man-hours making a winch for hanging. it did not fit in with our strategy, and plagued us constantly until it was finally removed.

other than those, i am happy with our robot this year. it had a few flaws, but most were solved at new Jersey (yay 42nd seed out of 47) in time for UTC (2nd seed and regional champion alliance captain). Quite a turnaround if i may say so myself.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

We always finish the morning we have to ship. Next year I will try to convince the rest of the team as to why it's so important to leave a week for drive practice and programming. And also, do everything my computer engineering self can do to get the mechanicals to finish quicker.

This year we finished the robot at 3am on the day of ship. There was 0 drive time and about 30 minutes of programming time.

At our first regional, BAE, we seeded 49/52. At Annapolis we seeded 7/58. We also never realized our winch didn't have the power to lift up the robot until the last seeding round at our second regional, Annapolis.

It's painfuly obvious that we needed practice time. It's financialy stupid and quite embarassing to use your first regional as practice, and that's exactly what we did this year.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

Our robot would be faster, able to get onto the platform, and carry eight balls instead of just four...and being able to hang would be a nice bonus as well...but otherwise I feel our team had a very stong robot this year.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

we would have hung from the floor....if i could have done it differently that is

Re: If you could do this game over
 

I'd have started autonomous programming much much sooner (as in, right about this time, heh). We ended up pushing it off until we had a completed drive train (which didn't happen until week 4 or 5), and even then, didn't come up with a concrete autonomous plan until week 6. As it turned out, we wired the banner sensors in a rush, so they weren't getting the required power, and thus not working properly until the second day of our only regional (when we discovered the problem). Coding was a mess too, basically thrown together by one person, minimal to no commenting at best.

I think we can only blame our own lack of organization, especially since I was supposed to be the lead programmer. However, I've been programming in BASIC/PBASIC for so long it's infused in my blood, so I had a rough transition to C (having never done a thing in C prior to this year.. should have started practicing much much earlier). Luckily we had a new member, incredibly bright, picked up C in a week, and did 95% of the code. We ended up with only a few bugs, and not much of an autonomous, but it got us through a regional and nationals, and gave us a wealth of experience to draw on for next year. Biggest thing I'd do over- learn C long before the 6 weeks started. Needless to say, I have our edu-bot and will be playing for most of the summer.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

If i could redo the season, the only thing i would have done is to brainwash the teachers and had my team go to NATS!

And lean how NOT to tip the robot! :rolleyes:

Re: If you could do this game over
 

I would build a system to hang from the floor on our current robot...

Or, built a robot that goes onto the bar and shoots our thicker tubing or something...basically making it much harder to hang!

Re: If you could do this game over
 

Too much 80-20: Yes, 80-20 is cool. Very. But it's also very heavy. We had HUGE weight problems (meaning we actually tore off whole mechanisms about 2 days before ship) that we could have avoided if we made the base out of say, extruded aluminum. (That's the plan for next year, anyway.)

Gearbox Re-design: Our gearbox...just didn't fit with what we wanted to do. It was far too powerful and we ended up being very inefficient.

More thought into autonomous: Do I really need to elaborate? =) I must say we did make the most of our situation and turned our one auton mode (full foward) into some good strategy techniques.

Fewer pneumatics: Like 80-20, pneumatics are cool. But we had WAY too much of them. Our compressor just couldn't handle it. We had to extend all our pneumatics and then wait for the pressure to build up again. Also, when we attempted to hang, we had 2 pistons to retract. The first only moved in the vertical direction and was intended to be enough. Of course, that didn't work, and the second was based around a pivot point. Obviously that's pretty inefficient; when retracted, part of the retraction moved the arm in a horizontal direction, which was of no use to us. If I could do it over, I would create an arm controlled by motors/chains/sprockets etc that had one piston at the end which would only retract in the vertical direction. Hope that makes sense. =)

It seems like a lot, but I really was pretty please with our ability to improvise and use what we had to the best of our ability. And it's always good to learn stuff for next year.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

I'd have gotten more of the students to do some "hands-on" programming, and I would have learned how to do a good PID control early on instead of waiting until Wednesday night before the Championship.

It would also have been a very good idea to put together a pseudo-robot having at least one motor-controlled arm with potentiometer feedback, so it would have been possible to write and test programs without having to use the actual 'bot. Trying to negotiate robot time between hardware and software maintenance tasks was always more, um, interesting than it needed to be.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

Welcome to the world of being a FIRST programmer. Where software development happens in the same fashion as a Big Mac at McDonald's. Let's only hope your code has less fat :D

This year my the mechanicals were becoming annoyed with what was being accomplished in the pits. I claimed, "We have to write, test, debug, test, debug, test, repeat until new functionality is added." We can't just write something and expect it to run. When I took a stopwatch and recorded the amount of time we were able to test software on the robot, the time came to less than 10 minutes between matches.

It's important to stress that software development requires testing and tweaking. It usually takes about 20 minutes of writing (which can be done standalone), and then 20 minutes of tweaking which requires you to have access to your robot. If you don't get enough time, use a stop watch.

It's very common to lose track of time while working on the robot so it's important to know exactly how much time is being alloted to tasks. Show the appropriate person, your pit chief for example, and tell him I had X amount of time, and really need to have more time to get the job done right.

Re: If you could do this game over
 

It blows your mind. It is designed to blow your mind. The game is introduced in the winter, when everything else is ending, and it blossoms in the spring, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as you watch all your hard work pay off, it stops and leaves you to face summer alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of gears and motors alive, and then just when the days are lengthening, when you need it most, it stops. This is life. This is FIRST.

I would only have changed one thing about our robot, I'm proud of our robot and how well it competed this season.

I'd have made it a little more GREEN!!!

Re: If you could do this game over
 

-Had our drivers practice more (or rather practice with) the arm before the competition...anyone at UTC saw the negative effects of this.
- Met more people from other teams at nationals
-As for the actual game, as a designer I would have made the "bonus ball" be worth 10 points if you knocked it off. It was too much work for not enough bonus to bring it into the field while knocking it off, and then shooting it. Even if you got it to your human player, there still was the possibility of a miss.