[LauraN]

Too much 80-20: Yes, 80-20 is cool. Very. But it's also very heavy. We had HUGE weight problems (meaning we actually tore off whole mechanisms about 2 days before ship) that we could have avoided if we made the base out of say, extruded aluminum. (That's the plan for next year, anyway.)

Gearbox Re-design: Our gearbox...just didn't fit with what we wanted to do. It was far too powerful and we ended up being very inefficient.

More thought into autonomous: Do I really need to elaborate? =) I must say we did make the most of our situation and turned our one auton mode (full foward) into some good strategy techniques.

Fewer pneumatics: Like 80-20, pneumatics are cool. But we had WAY too much of them. Our compressor just couldn't handle it. We had to extend all our pneumatics and then wait for the pressure to build up again. Also, when we attempted to hang, we had 2 pistons to retract. The first only moved in the vertical direction and was intended to be enough. Of course, that didn't work, and the second was based around a pivot point. Obviously that's pretty inefficient; when retracted, part of the retraction moved the arm in a horizontal direction, which was of no use to us. If I could do it over, I would create an arm controlled by motors/chains/sprockets etc that had one piston at the end which would only retract in the vertical direction. Hope that makes sense. =)

It seems like a lot, but I really was pretty please with our ability to improvise and use what we had to the best of our ability. And it's always good to learn stuff for next year.