[Tom Line]

Our robot gets more off-season play time than it does on-season. In fact our 12 comp bot spent the last week at the fair running 5 minutes every 30 minutes 12 hours a day for 7 days. We burned out more motors than we had all season and cracked 2 batteries from the continual use. We had to slow down because we short-cycled those two batteries and they protested in a most unprofessional fashion... (We were use 8 batteries total).

We always keep 1 robot up and running for demos. Usually it's that year's comp bot. It gets repaired as needed. For the last 4 years, we use beta test to rehab an old bot, or update our comp bot to the latest code.

Normally it's only 2 or 3 people working on it the week prior to a demo. It's really quite fun - no pressure and you have the time to try things and fail, throw them out and try again.

Frankly, the off-season is more fun that the build-season when it comes to the lack of stress.