[mgurgol]

I believe one of the roles of the programming team is to assist the mechanical/electrical teams with debugging the individual systems.

Develop a set of tools (the supplied examples are a great starting point) that will allow you to isolate the individual systems.

For example, you should have code that will test an individual encoder, run each motor individually (or in tandem is using two motors with a gearbox), test individual solenoids etc.. This will allow the team to debug connection problems and help isolate problems to have them corrected sooner.

When the season begins, I have the programmers look into the examples and use them for this purpose. It makes trouble shooting easier to look at only one part of the system at a time, rather than the entire robot, which can be overwhelming.