[ratdude747]

Another thing to watch out for is heat... my team did a demo at a huge car show on a 100 degree day in the hot sun... good thing it was at the same location as our shop, two of the 4 bots needed fans added when they overheated.

one did it becaue it is not very open air. the other used IFI control parts and the back plastic caught too much sun.

lesson: make sure your stuff is well cooled. now is a good time to use those 120mm fans that often end up in the junk box (you can run them to a dedicated 20A fuse on your PD board). in a pinch, you can "creatively"use zip ties.

If using a computer to control, be aware that it might also get hot... my metal framed dell latitude d400 was silver but even it overheated in the heat.

In fact, even I overheated... I had to spend an hour in an A/C'd office napping off heat exhaustion... even worse, it was my 19th birthday. make sure people have plenty of drinks and cool places to avoid this (I was out of luck- I kept on having to troubleshoot and add fans to robots)

also learned:

be careful of concrete, it will chew up stuff if you are not careful.

most important: have fun!