Quote:
Originally Posted by Bongle
Part of the challenge of FIRST is designing your team's effort to acquire more money, not simply building the robot. If you've got $100 this year, maybe do some sales/demonstrations/begging letters and try to get $300 next year. The team with $5k budgets in your example probably didn't have that money fall out of the sky with no strings attached. They probably had to go around and ask for it. Even if they got lucky with a single extremely generous donor, they still had to find a way to make the extremely generous donors in their community aware of them. Maybe there's one in your community that you just haven't found yet. Every time our team does a big fundraising push we seem to come back with substantial donations from unexpected places (last year we got some money from a beauty salon).
If a team has lots of money such that they can outsource their entire robot, that's a measure of success. If your goal is to be successful in the competition and the competition permits use of outsourcing, lots of money, and professional help and you're not using them, then it is unlikely you'll be consistently successful at the competition. FIRST has permitted all these things for its entire existence, and is unlikely to change.
Background: I'm on a consistently well-performing team whose most expensive tool is a 30-year-old drill press and whose biggest tool upgrade recently has been a vice that's bolted to a table. It takes us 4 hours to make bumper brackets because someone has to hacksaw through them and we can't afford to have it taken to a machine shop.
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Kudos to your team for finding resources in unexpected places.
However, keep in mind some teams simply reside in geographic locations where their school district has room in their budget for robotics. It's actually fantastic that they're driving money in their area towards robotics and are helping inspire people. It just seems rather unfair to me (and un-inspiring for students not lucky enough to live those areas) that they have an instant advantage at the start.
And you're right. FIRST is unlikely to change their rules. Unfortunately, it's equally unlikely that the "hate" towards successful teams will disappear overnight. (After all, it's just an irrational overreaction to an actual issue.) All we can hope to do is change people's attitudes.