I built the basic square bot as per the instructions. It seems that a couple of steps were missing. Easy enough to figure out if you had experience, but not so obvious to a novice.

The big ones are:

1) Too much slop in the drive train. You need to add a couple of washers so the gears don't walk back and forth on the shafts.

2. The center drive gear is just a fraction smaller than the wheel diameter. The robot will run on short nap carpet, but leave nice track marks. it would get tangled in a shag rug. Also the gears will tend to pick up dust and dirt easily, so I'd never want to lubricate them. The default wheels should be about 3/8" bigger.

3. If you build the robot as shown the wheels will fall off.


Some minor pet peeves:

4. I can't figure out the antenna holder. The parts I got don't match the diagrams, and don't appear to work as designed.

5. All the screws and nuts come in plastic bags with a number on them, but there is no reference to that number in the documentation. Instead of putting 1, 2, 3 doesn't it make more sense to put 8-3/8" 6-3/4" on the bags?



Except for these minor 'nits' the kit and documentation are pretty well designed. But what I am interested in is taking the control system and using it on a full size robot. I got a bunch of globe motors and Victor 833s gathering dust. Robocup Rescue Bot - here I come! This is really important, because most wireless cameras interfere with the 900 MHz garbage band radio frequency used by FRC.

Hey Joe, How come you get to play this stuff early!