Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyingJay
^^ And RSL's are extremely expensive to buy new for some reason.
I definitely recommend the second, or even third, RoboRio and control system. Depends on how your team is set up, of course, but we had many subteams vying for time on the robot(s): the drive team, the autonomous team, the controls software team, the vision processing team, and of course fab/electrical wanted to keep working on stuff.
To the OP, have you thought about your longer term strategy for how your team is going to run? It's great that you found some money and there's a long list of things you could spend it on, but to spend it wisely you should have a plan for what your program is going to look like over the next few years. An obvious question, for example, is where you work out of, how much room there is, how much storage space you have. You obviously shouldn't buy a mill if you don't have a place to put it.
When my team started we decided pretty early on that we would always try to build a practice robot in addition to our competition robot. Knowing this helped us set our fundraising/sponsorship targets, and guided us to purchase our first RoboRio control system early in the fall. This helped because we could then start teaching students how to use it, knowing that a complete second system was coming in the rookie KOP. And of course they are now both in use in two identical robots.
|
This season we actually worked out of our school's computer lab. We built makeshift walls and occupied about 1/3 of the room but we managed to make it work for us. Our school (Young Women's Leadership Academy) is extremely small with about 150 high school students. Thus, our team consisted of 10 members this season. The good news is our storage room on campus will be our new home in a few weeks. A storage room might sound small but it's about the size of 3 classrooms.
We plan on hosting workshops and encouraging our younger students to participate in FLL events next year. We would like the workshops to be a way to encourage other students to join our team as well as teach students about FIRST and the control system. Team 457 allowed us to use their KoP from last season to teach us before going into our first build season and that definitely helped us. We went ahead and ordered a second control system to teach new students about it and we have decided on building a practice bot alongside our competition bot next season.
We're currently working on more forms of outreach and hope to gain more mentors and sponsorship soon!