Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

OOOOO!!! A piece of Robot.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

on the bus ride back to the hotel at Queen City Regional, with CIA 291,
The wheels on the robot go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the robot go round and round, all through the game.
The Frisbees on the robot go SWISHHHHH, SWISHHHH, SWISHHHHH,SWISHHHHH, SWISHHHH, SWISHHHHH,SWISHHHHH, SWISHHHH, SWISHHHHH, The Frisbees on the robot go SWISHHHHH, SWISHHHH, all through the game!

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

We call ours "Persuasion." We sometimes "persuade" things a little bit more than necessary.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Reminds me of when a parent and I were watching as Volunteers were vacuuming the field after day 1 of the Troy Regional.

Parent: Oh, yep. The end of the day is here. Look, they're vacuuming up robot parts.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Other Mentor: "Why isn't it going nearly as far as we want it to?" *everyone scratches their head*
Me: *smacks head* "DUH....WE FORGOT ABOUT INERTIA."

Rebound Rumble quote.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

A member of our team keeps important hardware bits in his mouth.
Member: "Riley keep this keyway safe"
*Pops in mouth*
(hour later) Member: "Your still chewing on that? I dont need it yet hold onto it"
2 hours later we needed the part that Riley had kept safe, hes still chewing on it
He has kept many pieces of hardware safe in this manner and at one of our competitions we took apart our shooter for maintenance. We found a nut lodged in the shooter and blamed it for the problems we had with it.
My joke was: "It musta fallen out of Riley's mouth during build"
*That was not not the case, but it was extremely funny*

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Didnt lose a thing unless i swallowed it! :rolleyes:

And you know its bad when your on cheif Delphi on your lunch break :D

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Another mentor and I discussing changes we want to make at MCS:

"I need a pyramid and goals and a robot to confirm it but it works in my head"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"If something can't be fiixed with DUCT TAPE, it means you haven't used enough DUCT TAPE"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

One day we renamed our hammer "The Hammer of Thor". Many awesome conversations took place:
"I need to hammer this nail."
"Do you require assistance, small human?"
"....yeah...I need the hammer. "
"Did you mean THE HAMMER OF THOR?!?!"
"....uh...sure...."
"THE HAMMER OF THOR SHALL CRUSH THAT NAIL! *smashsmashsmash*

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"There are NO Saw Blades on the robot!" (Said at competition to inspector. Everything we bought was put on the BOM by accident, not just things on the robot, including our new saw blades...)

"That's MY Squid Hat!"

"Why won't the Pi work?" (we used a Raspberry Pi on the Robot)
"Because you haven't threatened to eat it yet!"

"Sort of like a dementor princess?" (looong story)

"So my threaded code is working fine. Its just a bit too stringy"

"Can't we just extract the caffeine from the soda?"

"Well we released the magic smoke on that sensor..."

"How does it shoot so accurately?"
"Sugar rush from that Pi its eating!"

"Hmmm Fried Jaguar, crispy just how I like it."

"Laying out this control board is a game of 4-Dimensional Tetris!" (We had to add a vertical board to fit everything, then where things mounted kept changing over time, so the board size/shape had to keep changing.)

"Well I think it was shorting out. It was so hot, I wanted to make a smore over the wire!"

"Hmm, I love the smell of Flux in the Afternoon"

A "Hey pass me the flux."
B "why?"
A "So I can coat this Capacitor"
C "Ok Doc Brown"

"Joe and I are in Sonic Screwdrivers Autonomous!"

"After Build Season I will teach you all the programmers to Hack, for now lets just get this robot auto-aiming!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"It's like strip poker, only with robots."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

We like to call ours "el persuador" or my favorite "the fine precision tool"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Look at me! I'm Iron Man"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Not during build season, but...we have a short girl in our team named Kristen, and we use her height as a standard measurement for length. At kickoff, when we were measuring the pyramid, I told her to go inside of it to get the measurements. Out of curiosity, I asked for her to stand next to the levels of the pyramid, and the top of her head barely touched the 2nd level! Because of that, whenever somebody asked for the measurement of the 2nd level, we told them "It's exactly 1 Kristen!" Of course, we got weird looks...
We continue to keep on using the Kristen measurement:
"How tall do you think that is?" "I would say about 2 and a half Kristens" :D

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Who's doing bumpers this year?"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"The success of a team 1806 robot is directly proportional to the speed of the rapid fire mechanism."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

I must first give context: I joined team 2077 when it was still the best kept secret in school, and have seen massive team growth over the years. My first two years, we had almost no money left after build and comp. This year, I had the pleasure of finding out we have a good deal of money left after comp and build, and running around shouting:
"GUESS WHAT!!! WE AREN'T BROKE!!!!!!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Executive Director of B&G Club my team is out of (who is involved, but not actively working on robot) walked into the workroom the Tuesday before competition while I am doing some last minute packing. Our bagged robot is sitting on the cart, with enough slack on the bag to nearly double bag the robot! She goes "Where's the robot?"

I reply "You wouldn't believe it, but there's a robot under all that plastic."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Can't remember the exat words so I'm paraphrasing here, but a person on my team said the Skunkworks (1983) skunk was sexy.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

At Bedford last week Angus(aka angusfailed) said, while putting together our shelfs, which are made of 4 posts and 4 shelves, made the genius remark 'put the corners on first' we still haven't let let him forget it. Also the week before our mentor, lordship bacon (don't ask why it just is), said 'well this just proves you don't need to make a working robot to win!' This is because our robot wasn't exactly done at the end of the 6 weeks but we still won so #notlast!!! :cool:

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

I was trying to to say opposite diagonals!

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Our WFFA mentor: "Dendrite is spelled with an 'I'!?!?!? I've been lied to my whole life!!!!!"
Yes, it's as random as it sounds. :)

And, after winning Engineering Inspiration today at Chesapeake, me to our hyperventilating drive coach: "That Industrial Safety Award winner will have to use their CPR knowledge on YOU!" Happy day!

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

You're still a failure of a sentient being.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Think like an arm. An arm follows it's drive chassis."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"It looks like a zombie PWM!"

Team Leader: It may be a good idea to build another arm.
Team Captain (while holding up a picture of Dikembe Mutombo): No no no! Not today!

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

My team has a list of all of our memorable quotes somewhere, but my favorites were when we 'advertised' our buttons while giving them away at the Wisconsin Regional.

"It's the thing you always wanted to Christmas but your parents never got you.
Guaranteed to not allow you to breathe in space.
May or may not grant immortality.
Cures you of diseases you didn't know you had.
Pays the taxes you didn't know you had to pay.
Fends of werewolves.
Deflects invisible bullets.
Fills that hole in your heart.
Guaranteed to stick to your shirt when applied properly."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"We've created A.I. Uh-oh..."


During a demo a few days ago we were showing off our robot (we're not going to St. Louis so we unbagged it), and it broke. When we disabled it, the compressor was still running somehow.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Our offseason project this year is Skynet right?"

"How many degrees are we off?"
"By my calculations...yes."

"You know what, it would help if the tray pivot was a little higher than the bottom of the goal...."

(When I was on team 562) "IZZY! WHY DO THE BUMPERS SAY 295!!!!"
"Oh my god I'm so sorry!!"
"Just kidding, it's upside down." (Our numbers were very blocky, so 2 and 5 were very similar, and obviously, the 6 upside down looks like a 9)

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

our big one from this year as talking about how to move our arm up and down

"I Think Gravity is Pretty Reliable"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

One of the parents of a team member walk in '________ your mom's/dad's here!!!"

This was then repeated by everyone in the room untill we got bored or they other person said something.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Well, it would be hard to make it bigger and heavier."
*Shouts from the other room* "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Not quite the build season anymore, but I just had to post this. For post-season, we are attaching hooks to our bot (named Kitten, mind you). So one member decides to call the robot a hooker. Eternity says this to our mentor:

"Our hooker is ramming the pyramid!"

Now the robot cart is the Pimpmobile, and the joke just keeps going.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

I used this quote at our banquet.
“Dreams are just visions of the future. But dreams will only stay dreams if you don’t put the effort into making them reality. Only then can you say you're living the dream.”- Safiq/ MC-SQUID

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

I used this quote at our banquet.
“Dreams are just visions of the future. But dreams will only stay dreams if you don’t put the effort into making them reality. Only then can you say you're living the dream.”- Safiq/ MC-SQUID

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"So... what does publicity actually do?". "Put glitters on stuff and beg for a pink robot"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

So I'm a freshman (or rather...used to be now :ahh: ) and I was the only one who wired the chassis this year...mind you before I joined FIRST I'd never even attempted to wire something. So anyway...after I had finished wiring the chassis everyone else was at dinner so I walk into the conference room sit down and stare at one of my mentors until this convo occured:

Amanda (mentor): What?
Me: I hate you
A: Why?
Me: I just finished wiring the chassis.
A: Congrats! You didn't blow up anything did you..?
Olivia (freshman programmer on our team): I was surprised she didn't walk in here on fire or with a missing limb.
Me: I blew up the cRIO (jokingly...but they didn't know that :cool: )
A: WHAT?! MEGAN WHAT THE **** I TOLD YOU NOT TO PLUG ANYTHING INTOT HE cRIO TILL I GOT BACK.
Me: (smiles and looks up at her) I know. I didn't. I just felt like getting back at you for giving me a heart attack when you made me wire the entire chassis by myself. #loveya
Olivia: And this is why we don't trust her with programming...

Also:

"Walk up in the pit like what up I got a big bot."

"Megan get me the tiny screw drivers."
"They're called voodoodoo killers"
"What??"
"You know...voodoo dolls? People stab them with little needles? That's what they look like...and I kinda...well...yeah I mispronounced voodoo so it came out voodoodoo killers instead..."

"Jocelyn where the hell did you put the Bang Bang??" (our rubber ended hammar)

"I like big bots and I can't deny. Those other teams just can't deny. When my bot walks in with an ity bity frame--Kayla help I don't know the rest of it."

So this year I was assigned to do the bumpers (cruel little hell raisers that they are...I love em :eek: ) Anyway, I finished them in 3 days so everyone on the team decided that I was the Goddess of Bumpers.

"Hey yo Goddess get over here we can't find the bumper pins."
"Her name's Megan jack#!@"
"No her names Sharpie Junior!"
(I give them the pins and as I'm walking back to the kitchen I hear)
"Okay guys look, everyone knows her names Ginger Bumper Master 2.0 DUH" (GBM for short)

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

You realize, of course, that you have to finish the lyrics to that parody now.

Just sayin'.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

when Discussing robot design at the beginning of build season...

"What if we made the robot taller than it is flat?"

*facepalm*

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

610 already did
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is6g3ct-DVQ

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

judge: "what is the spiderman sticker on the robot for?"

student: "spiderman makes our robot function we dont even use a battery just spiderman"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Oh my team finished it, I just don't have the lyrics with me xD I don't know if we were planning on making a video or not...

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

My favorite moment of the season was when one of ours programmers was having a difficult time with a 2-D drawing and I said:
"Hang on, I'll draw it for you in SolidWorks."
"Pft. You can't draw a line in SolidWorks!"

I quite literally fell off of my chair and rolled around on the floor for few minutes in a fit of laughter. Eventually I stood up and said:
"Of course you can. How do think I've been working on the robot?"
"Well, maybe you can, but I have no idea what's going on there."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

speaking of pimpmobiles...
we had a piece of plexiglass(lexan) which a student had drawn fake abs onto. Our team is big on recycling, so we used it for a prototype conveyor. thus it was, and now the final version is, dubbed the pimpveyorbelt.
Cut to later in build season. we are fixing up our gurney to carry this years drive system, and we attach some LEDs to our cart. they are declared "underlights" and are described as "incredibly swaggy". We then decided that our cart was called the pimpmobile.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Get me some hose clamps! I NEED TO CLAMP THE HOS.
(insert pimpveyor joke here)"
every time we used hose clamps...

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

My all time favorite...

"SCREW IT! Defensive robot!"

Said by our entire team after every issue. :yikes:

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Concerned Captain: "You're going to start a fire"
Team member: "Don't worry, it wont start a fire, only a small fire"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"according to the new rules update, human players can only throw the colored discs."
Human player: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Student: "Did you just eyeball all of those motor mounts?"
Mentor: "Maybe."
Student: "Why do they fit perfectly?"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Me: "What does the new autonomous do?"
Anonymous Programmer: "It.. moves and stuff and sh!t."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

(taking out rivets at MARC: E pulls out a drill and starts to drill, but it's the wrong size)

E: I need the right size drill bit!

(grabs hammer and proceeds to hammer the rivet out)

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"It's not your fault, it's his. He was driving."
"Yeah, he broke the part."
"Which part?"
(Points)
"Oh, shoot. Did I make that?"
"So it's your fault?"
"Nah, still his. He broke it. It was completely structurally sound."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

J: ow!

D: What happened?

J: I cut myself, I'll go grab the first aid kit....

(Forty Seconds later)

J: Ow!

D: What happened now?

J: I cut myself on the First Aid Kit::ouch:: ;)

And that's how I got kicked out of the pits friday at Peachtree.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

After going undefeated in quals on Friday, we were talking about other good teams at our regional. One of our drive team members has a stroke of inspiration and says:
"Guys, we haven't played against any of the undefeated teams"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Telling your mentor she should become the Doctor's companion because she's a ginger.

Telling your male mentors they should wear tiaras to the next competition.

Insisting you should play Psy's music but no one will let you.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Programmer: "When will the drive train be ready to test?"
Shop kid: "Tomorrow."

*one week later*

Programmer: "When will the drive train be ready to test?"
Shop kid: "Tomorrow!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

(while waiting for IRI finals match 2's scores to come up)

A: Look at Karthik; He's so nervous he's chewing his tablet. Someone go ask if it tastes yummy.

C: I wonder if it's an Apple.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

During our first year, 2012, Woodie Flowers kissed our robot.

Someone yelled: "No one touch Sandy(our robot), Woodie Flowers just kissed it!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

This year in the Off Season "Re-build"
Mentor's wife in a text message from the hardware store:
"How long do you need the screws?"
Mentor's reply:
"For a few months, at least...what, are they renting them now?

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Dat Feeling :(
Just like :deadhorse: until it gets the work done! :D:D:D

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Electrical subteam: "Blame the programmers."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Programming subteam: "Blame electronics."

Funny how that works.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

or have both teams blame mechanical and complain about the delays.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Mechanical says it's not our problem, ONE of you get it fixed YESTERDAY so we can install the next new feature. (And we don't care who fixes it.)



Or, the classic sequence when the robot isn't working:

"It's not a mechanical problem, we built it! Programming problem!"
"It's not a code problem, we programmed it! Electrical problem!"
"It's not an electrical problem, we wired it! Mechanical problem!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"SOFTWARE!!!"
-Everyone on my team, from the mechanical guys to the software department.

Especially when it isn't a software problem.

It became especially ironic this year because we pressured the other departments to finish so much that we had some serious code tested and running on the robot by the end of week 4, and spent most of the last week doing software calibration and driver training.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Solution: Programmers should check electrical, Electrical should check mechanical and mechanical should check Programmers.

That's real problem solving :P

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

You're assuming that mechanical can code. I might be able to understand it if programming commented enough--or to save my life--but not well enough to check it. Try mechanical checking electrical, electrical checking programming, and programming checking mechanical.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

It doesn't mean that they can code. I can read over 20 different programming languages and understand what is going on. That doesn't mean that I know that language fluently. Also, Java is taught to most students in our school so there is at least one person in each team that can code, or at least read java.
:p :D :p :cool: ::ouch::

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Assuming that your programmers can understand mechanical. When I get called in to check mechanical I peer wisely at a random part of the robot and say, "I don't see anything wrong with it."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Guys :ahh: , I am too busy to read a 3,700 post long thread about mid-season quotes. I may have to miss the 2014 season going through these!"

-Me

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Go ahead!

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"You cannot see me, I am a camera". - Said by a new member who was at the time taking photos for the team.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Oh, so that's what that button does.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Why would we need a snow-blower motor and 3 pounds of hard banana candy?"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

There was no banana candy in our KOP...or was that a FIRST Choice item that sold out before I got logged on?

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

One of our classic ones, and irritating being a programmer myself is
"Always waiting on the programmers"
Another one is
"It's irrelevant."
"Sleep is for the weak."
"We should really put some beds in here."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Funny thing about our team is that the programming and electrical teams are one and the same. So usually its: Mechanical guy:"Blame it on the programmers." or "Of course you're just waiting on code to deploy."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

HAHA it was an item we got seperately. This is the stuff

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

*Loud bang in the back of shop*
Mentor: What was that?
Student: I was testing code for the drive system
Mentor: What did you learn?
Student: If I press the trigger the robot flies backwards at full speed

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

This one requires a bit of context:

At the beginning of one of our meetings, we noticed that some of the shelves on the wall of our "programming cave" (they span the whole room and are directly above the computers) were in less-than-prime condition. In fact, they were pretty much collapsing, so we removed everything from them and put a large "OUT OF ORDER" sign up, which one would hope would discourage people from putting things on the shelf...

Fast-forward to the end of the meeting. We're cleaning up, and the programmers need to put away some of the large stools in the room, which usually go on the shelves. Of course, they completely ignore the sign, and a minute or two later we here a massive crash and run into the room to behold a scene of wanton destruction. Well, not really, but one computer was very nearly crushed by a falling stool and the whole shelf assembly had pretty much ripped itself out of its wall mounting.

At which point someone pipes up:

"It's okay, they're programmers; they're not good with hardware!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Me: "Enabling teleop now!"

The robot moves forward at full throttle and takes the leg off of a table.

Ben: "You should probably fix that."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Twist it, tape it, pray. YOLO!" when I asked how to connect to wires without soldering.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Apparently the stripper is named Margie now.


At least, I think that's the name the students used recently.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

*Testing the launcher*
-Mentor: Go up to full speed.
-Me: Full Speed?
-Mentor: Yes, let's see how far it can go.
-Me: ....okay...




Then I had to explain to my dad the sizable dent in the garage door at the end of his shop 100 yards down field. ::ouch::

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"Guys, we have to build a robot!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Two of our newer designers were in charge of designing our battery charging station. When they assembled it—

"Oh, wow, it works!"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"That's a speed controller. It controls speed. That's a power distribution board. It distributes power. That's a digital sidecar. It uh...sidecars in a digital manner." -Me trying to figure out electronics my rookie year.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

That's what management is for!:)

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Welcome to the 2014 Build Season! Oh boy... It sure didn't take long this year for the comments to start flying... (Luckily, I work with several teams. To protect the guilty, I'm not saying at which one this happened. :-)

Scene: Kickoff Saturday 2014, back at the ranch that very afternoon.
The entire team was doing their traditional "group aloud reading of the new FIRST Game Manual", to review the game rules together...

We get to Rule G34, and all progress stops for about 10 minutes...

FIRST wrote:
"Rule G34 - COACHES may not touch BALLS.
Inadvertent or inconsequential contact will not be penalized.
Violation: FOUL"

The room suddenly goes silent. Internally I thought: "Oh crap... What were the manual writers thinking, phrasing it that way to high school students? Are we ever going to sneak past this one?"

... Not a chance, with this group...

Sure enough. It started with a few stifled snickers... Tension builds.
Suddenly, the entire team explodes with riotous laughter.

... "Yea, that's VERY foul all right..."
... "Of course you're not supposed to do that. Everybody knows that!"
Etc.

Finally, after everyone got a shot at the rule, I thought we were home free.
No such luck. They then all turned and stared directly toward their on-field coach... Oh oh... Round 2...

After a pregnant pause, the comments started flying again...
... "Hey Coach... We told you not to scratch yourself so much!"
... "He's so famous, FIRST even wrote in a rule against it this year!"
Etc...

Once THAT died down, Round 3 happened... A student then turned and asked the mentors:
... "Hey {mentors}... When handling your balls, what constitutes 'inconsequential contact' ?"
This started an entire sub-discussion among the students on "ball handling and underwear straightening etiquette" in and around school, the field, and elsewhere.

Chaos reigned for several more minutes.

One of the new female students near me looked around, totally bewildered at the pandemonium in the room. She then realized the gender of most of the commenters. With an "eye roll" expression on her face, she turned to another young female student on the team, sighed, and summed it up nicely:

... "Of course... There are waaay too many guys on this team..."

And that is when *I* lost it...

The only sensible thing the mentors could do was to keep quiet and wait it out. Eventually it died down. Decorum was restored, and we could continue with the manual reading session.

But from then on, things went more slowly. Every mention of "balls" was accompanied with at least a few stifled snickers, and sotto voce comments. Example: When talking about "retrieving your ball from the pedestal when lit", you can imagine the "loudly whispered" comments ("Ooooo...That sounds painful", "What a relief", "Hey, if you tried to light mine up, I'd retrieve them too..."..., etc.)

Needless to say, we finally ran out of time and gave up.
We had to ask everyone to read the rest of the rules at home.


Didn't any other team notice this one? What happened when your team encountered Rule G34?

- Keith

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"It's like cardboard, but plastic!" (corrugated plastic)

Everyone in the room had a healthy laugh at this one. It's become quite the joke.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

When ANYTHING goes wrong
"Cute"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Last year at championships, we had just 'fixed' autonomous. We were using bang-bang control on our shooter. The operator(and lead student programmer) ran back to the pit to get the programming laptop frantically yelling; "its bangbanging but not indexing" and the lead programming mentor knew exactly what he meant.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

"At least it's doing something"

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Wow, this gave me a good laugh, can't believe I didn't notice it, I can only imagine what would've happened if my team had read the rules together.::rtm:: :yikes:

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Not the rule, but in discussion about inflating the game piece. I suggested to one of our sub-team captains when they couldn't find the nozzle adapter to inflate it that he get a group of freshmen to blow up the ball, and when one was out of breath, the next could take over. Ever the hygienic worrier, his response: "I don't know, that's a lot of mouths on the same ball." Some of the other student leaders snickered. Then he realized what he'd said and turned the same shade of red as the game piece.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

{in reference to team reactions, when encountering Rule G34}

{Chuckle} good one!

An OT diversion, in response to solving how to blow up the ball, with a standard tire inflation nozzle:

I'm a Scouter (Scout leader). Years ago, I went on a campout with some non-scouting people who like comfort. We arrived at a rustic campsite in the middle of nowhere very late at night, after everything was closed. They had an inflatable QUEEN sized mattress, and NO way to blow it up. That would take all night to inflate it by mouth! (I brought standard Scout gear. It didn't dawn on me that someone might bring something like THAT!)

So... After setting everyone else up, we drove it to the only gas station in the entire area. It was closed, but they still had their air hose outside, and it was active. The friends started to panic. There appeared to be no way to couple them AND trigger the release on the inflation valve. Being far into the woods on a long holiday weekend Friday night, we knew that there was probably no other store open for dozens of miles in any direction to even buy a hand pump.

I simply characterized WHAT we needed as an adapter - Basically, we needed a hollow tube, with a narrowed end. I thought for about a minute.. I then calmly pulled out a cheap click pen from the car's glove compartment, unscrewed the lower section of the pen case, wrapped my hand around the screw end of it and the inflation point to make a crude coupler-seal, and stuck the pen emergent narrowed end hard into the inflation nozzle.

Sure enough. The pen emergent end of the pen case actuated the trigger on the tire valve, and pushing it hard against it caused it to seal somewhat on the valve. My hand worked well enough as a coupler-seal between the pen case and the mattress to inflate the entire mattress to close to full in a couple of minutes.

I calmly reassembled the pen and put it away. We then used breath to top off the mattress, tied the now inflated mattress to the top of the car, and took it back to camp.

Obligatory quote (in spirit of this thread):

When others just stared at my nonchalance at MacGyver-ing a solution with whatever was on hand in under a minute, I just said:

"Hey, I'm an Engineer... This kind of problem doesn't bother us at all..." :)

BTW... In your case, I'd just use an old bot's pneumatics. Disconnect the far end of the 1/4" hose from the primary regulator, stick it into the ball's nozzle, and fire up the robot. If they don't couple tight enough, use a few turns of tape (duct, electric, scotch, masking, etc - whatever is handy) wrapped around the hose to make them mate tightly with a jam fit. Now use the robot's primary regulator to limit pressure and adjust your flow rate. When near full, pop the connection, turn off the robot, and finish with breath. (Just don't put a tape contaminated hose end back into a standard push fitting! Clean it with alcohol first, trim the end off, or just use a scrap of hose for this procedure!)

For my teams - I made a few "robot inflation adapters", using a sports ball nozzle kit, a tire inflation nozzle, some couplers from a hardware store (or FIRST KoP), and some 1/4" push fittings. I keep a variety of them in our pneumatics bins. We can now inflate just about anything (from balls to tires) with any robot that has a pneumatics package on it.
Big Hint - ALWAYS add an air tool quick release male (open tube) fitting to the open end of your robot's vent valve. Ex:
http://www.harborfreight.com/5-piece...set-68237.html
http://www.harborfreight.com/12-piec...kit-68194.html
This allows you to still vent, yet be able to pre-fill a robot's pneumatics in the shop with (FILTERED) shop air to save time (and batteries), AND quickly tap into a robot's on-board compressor at events to do things like inflate tires and balls without having to break an air line connection on your robot. Just make a few pneumatic "quick connect" (M & F) to 1/4" push fitting adapters, and you're in business. You can use spare robot air line at events, to tie them together.

I hope that helps. (Now back to the funny quotes!)

- Keith

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

During our rules presentation: "Just to clarify, the selection of the hot goal is random?"
"Hotness is in fact random. Our dark, shadowy overlords from the Committee have written it in the manual that hotness is random."

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Background: Day of Kickoff, I'm scanning something on the computer. Around (but mostly behind) me, some of the students are prototyping [stuff that does stuff we want the robot to do]


*BAM!* (Ball hits door of shop)
Me: "Whatever that was, I think it's going on the robot!"
Student: "Uh... That was my arm."
Various mentors and students: "Get the tinfoil!" (and other comments related to having the student act as the robot)

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Me at the end of day one: "When do you want to start working on the electronicals?" needless to say I was tired.

Re: "Quotes" that were said during build season
 

Something came up about using a plunger type of thing to hold the ball, and one of the team members said: "Well, plungers don't stick to crap!"