Rule 33 Robot
 

Does this mean we can bring our Arm and Mini Bot separately to the competition

<R 33>Teams may bring a maximum of 30 pounds of custom FABRICATED ITEMS (SPARE PARTS, REPLACEMENT PARTS, and UPGRADE PARTS, plus all WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE items) to each competition event to be used to repair and/or upgrade their ROBOT at the competition site. All other FABRICATED ITEMS to be used on the ROBOT during the competition shall arrive at the competition venue packed in the shipping crate or lockout bag with the ROBOT.
There are three exceptions to this rule: A. the OPERATOR CONSOLE is not included in the incoming parts weight restriction, B. the MINIBOT is not included in the incoming parts weights restriction, and
C. any competition legal12V batteries and their associated half of the Anderson cable quick connect/disconnect pair (including no more than 12” of cable per leg, the associated cable lugs, connecting bolts, and insulating electrical tape) are not included in the incoming parts weight restriction.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Bump?

We were wondering the same thing.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

As long as your arm and any other spare parts you may bring weigh in at less than 30 pounds, yes, you can.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Sigh. Some people just don't read Q&A.

Q&A has repeatedly stated that the Minibot can be brought separately. (As have quite a few CD threads--search is in the orange bar at the top of the page, if you are wondering if your question has been asked already.) Minibot weight will not count against your 30-lb withholding allowance.

If your arm is under 30 lbs, then yes, you can bring it in the Withholding Allowance. Be advised that the Allowance is a total, so other parts that you may wish to have will cut down the maximum arm weight.

You can also ship parts in the crate or the bag and work on them Thursday at the event.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Yeah, some people don't remember the exact contents of a forum with literally hundreds of threads, able to recall this knowledge on a moment's notice.

Seriously, everyone should read the Q&A and the answer could be found by either searching the Q&A or the Manual, but being condescending just because someone doesn't have as encyclopedic of a knowledge of those documents as you is not very nice.

The poster's from a rookie team - they've probably never seen a manual and Q&A as massive and convoluted as this in their lives.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

The Q&A is there. There are several threads on this topic in there. There are several threads here on the same topic. But it seems like every other day, someone asks "Is this legal..." or "Can I do this..." on the same topic even short enough ago that it shows up on the Portal page of CD. The Q&A is actually fairly easy to navigate--if you have a guess as to what type of category the question would fall under, you can go right to all the threads on that type of topic.

And quite honestly, I am getting very annoyed that at this point in the season, people don't seem to have read the Q&A at all. Even a "I looked at the Q&A (or searched CD), but couldn't find X" would indicate that you put some effort into finding the answer. This is a real-world simulation. Sometimes, you have to look for the answers! You won't always be able to ask someone, "what's this number?"

I can't call up rules and Q&A stuff and CD threads off the top of my head, either, unless I've had to refer to it often (say, <R92>). What I can remember is "Oh, I think I've seen that before in X resource". I then spend less than 5 minutes and find the information, either with control-f for the Manual (once in the right section) or by looking up the appropriate Q&A. What bothers me is that nobody seems to take the time to look before asking. (It really, really bothers me when people say, "don't tell me to look", when they ask but that's another story.)

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

You can choose to get irritated by the perfectly rational behavior of strangers or you can choose to let it bother you to no good end.

Answer their question and kindly remind them of the additional resources available to them or move on. There's little use in criticizing them for trying to get help.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Everyone here who answers questions should always check the team number and rookie year of those asking the questions, and tailer their response accordingly.

Some of what may seem obvious or simple to veterans may be overwhelming or confusing to rookie teams or new members.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

And frankly, I'm glad that teams are asking questions... even if they've already been answered somewhere else... rather than waiting until they get to an event.

But yes, the withholding allowance can actually influence the design of your robot. We built the cRio, speed controllers and pneumatics into a removable "brain" last year. We could keep the brain at home, in a practice chassis, and work on our code, then bring it to the competition, drop it in to the "real" robot, and be up and running in less than 15 minutes.

The judges rather liked that... so use the withholding limit wisely. It is there to help.

Jason

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

The Q&A is there. There are several threads on this topic in there. There are several threads here on the same topic. But it seems like every other day, someone asks "Is this legal..." or "Can I do this..." on the same topic even short enough ago that it shows up on the Portal page of CD. The Q&A is actually fairly easy to navigate--if you have a guess as to what type of category the question would fall under, you can go right to all the threads on that type of topic.

And quite honestly, I am getting very annoyed that at this point in the season, people don't seem to have read the Q&A at all. Even a "I looked at the Q&A (or searched CD), but couldn't find X" would indicate that you put some effort into finding the answer. This is a real-world simulation. Sometimes, you have to look for the answers! You won't always be able to ask someone, "what's this number?"

I can't call up rules and Q&A stuff and CD threads off the top of my head, either, unless I've had to refer to it often (say, <R92>). What I can remember is "Oh, I think I've seen that before in X resource". I then spend less than 5 minutes and find the information, either with control-f for the Manual (once in the right section) or by looking up the appropriate Q&A. What bothers me is that nobody seems to take the time to look before asking. (It really, really bothers me when people say, "don't tell me to look", when they ask but that's another story.)
-
Not all of us are an alumni sitting at college reading the forums all day. Some of us are in the middle of a build season looking for a quick answer.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

So which is quicker - posting a question and waiting hours or even days for some kindhearted user to answer you, or searching for 5 or 10 minutes to see if it has been asked before?

Quite frankly, there's many posts that I don't answer simply because it has been answered a day or two ago. I get tired of doing the homework for someone else, and I'm not surprised Eric has as well.

It's quite something different if someone says, "We looked and couldn't find ..." or "The rule says [xxx], does that mean ...". Those questions I will look at and will give an opinion if I have one. That not only helps the fellow user, but helps me in my understanding of the rules.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

No one's obligating you to answer questions - all we're asking is that people don't treat rookie teams like they're complete idiots because they're confused. If you're tried of answering the same question repeatedly, and can't tell someone to check the Q&A and Manual in a nice way, you can just ignore the thread.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

My point was that not all of us have been reading the forums and Q&A all day to be able to think "Oh, I saw that somewhere." If you are tired of answering people then don't answer, there is no need to insult anyone.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Excuse me - I've insulted someone by pointing out why it might be in their best interest to do a simple search before asking a question?

Which I believe I pointed out I do - I simply don't answer questions that have been answered a day or two before, or have been asked repeatedly.

I don't assume rookie teams are helpless, but I do have empathy for how confusing some of the rules can be.

Every team - rookie and veteran alike - should have someone devoted to reading the Q&A. It doesn't take that long. The GDC generally answers a handful of questions at one time; the most I've seen is roughly a pageful on any given day. And they don't answer questions every day. That way when a team has a question, they can ask their Q&A specialist if they recall anything about that topic. Or you might have more than one Q&A specialist, each devoted to a different section of the Q&A, to spread the workload if it's too much for one person.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

I was not talking about you. I was just clarifying what I meant for you. From what you say that is the perfect thing to do, answer the question and then remind them of where they can find the answers themselves.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Sorry about the confusion - everything except the first line of the post wasn't intended to be directed at you in particular.

Great communication skills coming from here...

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

ITT:
Irritated posters irritate other posters leading to irritated discussion of irritated posters' posts.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Sadly this thread has gone from helping a rookie team to a bunch of veteran teams bickering over extremely pointless stuff. :yikes: I ask that a Moderator locks this thread, and each veteran member bickering on here look back on your posts. If i was a rookie, I would be confused and discouraged from all this bickering. Please, help the rookie, and move on::rtm::

Everyone, enjoy the last week of build season, and good luck, rookies and veterans :]

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

You know what would help? A search system that can handle simple "and" and "or" queries. (If the functionality exists, I've not figured it out, so it must not be all that intuitive.) Limiting search capabilities to one-word search phrases is just...well, rather useless.

Of course, we're just a rookie team, so what do we know...

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

What you should know is that this site is volunteer-run and self-funded. Kick in $50,000 and a lot of extra functionality can be added. :)

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Do COTS control devices mounted on an acrylic sheet count as a FABRICATED assembly for withholding allowance purposes? The blue-box comment in the rules docs seems to indicate the ruels favor continued programming work on the control interfaces after the bot ships...so we are wondering if we need to disassemble our collection of COTS interfaces in order to avoid our collection classified as a FABRICATED assembly.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Ha, there is nothing wrong with being a rookie team

Go search google. type in multiple words. Lets do the search, rookie team When you look at the URL (web address), it says
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=...188ee12107320c

The part i want you to focus on is the rookie + team part

In any search engine or forum, to search for more than one word, use Rookie + team, replacing those with words that you want to look for.

EX
i want to look for Blarglefish and Team 1255

1255 + Blarglefish

and that will search for both words in the forums :)


Hope this helped, and have a great build season :)

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

I easily donate that much worth of my time a year for the open source projects I'm involved in. I can tell you it doesn't cost $50K to provide decent search functionality.

Plus, you seem to miss my point: With all the griping about people not finding various threads, the obvious solution is to spend a small amount of time supporting boolean search functionality.

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

It is supported already. Just try it.

For example, I just did one on "minibot AND legal". I turned up 4 pages worth of threads, with both words highlighted in those threads. There used to be a note on one of the search pages that boolean worked--somewhere along the line, it disappeared.

You can search any number of words.

Now, on your rules question: What is the definition of Fabricated? It's a part of some form (component or mechanism) that has been modified somehow into its final form for robot use, completely or partially. (Paraphrase of the definition in Section 1.6) As such, that collection of parts on the acrylic sheet would be a Mechanism, a Fabricated Mechanism (note the definition of Mechanism in the same section). As it is Fabricated, it would indeed count against your Withholding Allowance.

P.S. If you have a suggestion for the webmaster, there is a subforum to make it in: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

That's great to know!

Sorry, we weren't doing a google search...

Doesn't seem to work on this forum. It's more of an "or" search with the "+" ignored. For instance, search on a string of words concatenated with "+" symbols. I think you'll find you will pull up many "hits" that don't include all the terms.

But no worries...I just toss the suggestion out there for whoever keeps track of such things. Don't get me wrong -- this is a great resource!

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

So the idea here is to mount all your control devices in such a way that you can pull them all off, stuff them in a box, and carry them in as COTS items to be reassembled at the contest. In this scenario, the only item that would count towards your withholding allowance would be the acrylic sheet.

Seems simple enough. Thanks!

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Brian, et al,

A search for posts with will return your post and nothing else...

Regards,

Mike

Re: Rule 33 Robot
 

Now for the rest of the story...

Said searches work best when "Show Results as Posts" is selected...otherwise, non-matching search results are returned on a per-thread basis (rather useless in threads with many posts). Maybe "Show Results as Posts" should be the default.