I absolutely feel your pain.
We started the year off very well; we came up with a design and roughed out concepts very quickly, did research and prototyping and everything. Thats when the whole thing stalled; access to our money was a major issue, and we didnt get to order any parts we needed until middle of week 2, at the earliest. During our delay, much of the team lost sight of the original design, and we sacrificed at least a weeks worth of build time pursuing complicated designs we had decided against from the beginning. This left us with about three weeks in which to build a robot- we almost did it, and were proud of it- then we weighed our robot. we realized, after projecting the weight of electronics and additional components that we needed, we would be 20+ lbs overweight. So, at 11pm on Saturday the 18th of February, we completly redesigned the thing. Our issue was that we are very weight conscientious usually, EVERYTHING was already speedholed, and we couldent really sacrifice much more weight while maintaining any function- sacrifices were made. We began brainstorming alternative ways of regaining function, and continued re-designing and fabricating the 'bot- unfortunately this meant that we shipped the robot at a status to be expected at- and this is perhaps being over-generous- the middle or end of week 4. We have a functioning drivebase(we think), and can play defense if nothing else (and we are 95% sure we can score in the corner goals).
I work on mechanical design and build. I was needed on the physical building of the robot. I helped out, and busted my $@#$@#$@# for 6 weeks on this thing, and monday night, the 20th rolls around. It's about 2:30am, and the mentors are rolling out, I catch a ride home with one of them(my dad), and the status of the robot is 100% untested and 25% unbuilt. This was especially frusturating because this is my second year as programmer and electrical, and the first year in which I really knew what I was doing; I'm confident that given the time to write and test code, we could have been aiming with the shooter, using the gyro, and all sorts of other lovely things.
As it stands now, our robot does not have a single piece of wire on it- that is right folks, I will wire our robot on thursday morning, over at Drexel regional.
Feel free to stop on by if you know how to wield a crimper
. There is not a single line of code written, because the "final" design is still being hashed out in fix-it window discussions, and the sensor situation is looking grim.
That doesnt mean I dont like the robot- I certainly get frusturated sometimes, especially when I know there are things I could and would do if I had been given the robot to wire and program by the end of week 4 or 5- but I still recognize that, at the worst, it
will drive and it
will be something that we built with our own two hands. We dont have a fancy machine shop- hell, all we have is a drill press, a miter saw, a grinding wheel, and a bandsaw, plus drills and assorted hand-tools - and we dont have professional software engineers or groups of dedicated parents. What we do have, though, is a group of kids from philly who love this stuff, a very dedicated science teacher/college admissions councillour, a very kind and useful electrical engineer, and a couple of college students. Together, we make this thing run and we enjoy ourselves- despite the occaisional moment of frusturation or tension.
It sounds like you are frusturated, and rightly so, but remember that even if you go out there and score NO balls in autonomous, it's not the end of the world. Everyone always swears that FIRST is their life, and in many ways it is; it certainly dominates my thoughts for 6 weeks, and is at least present the rest of the year. But when you get down to it, FIRST is really not so much about the robot, and actually not even about the experience. FIRST is really about opening your- and the worlds- eyes to the reality, wonder, and challenge that is inherint in science and engineering. I know that before FIRST, for me at least, robots were mystical things that I never hoped to understand; I planned on going to school for law, and being a lawyer. I hadnt even considered careers in math, science or engineering (I am now planning on dual majoring in neuroscience and engineering in undergrad and doing graduate work either in biomimetics or organic computing). Additionally, after dealing with "the build" and the stress of competitions, I will never claim or let it be claimed within my hearing, that "that science competition" or "the robotics team" is NOT a real sport/challenge. This is probably, as Woodie Flowers once put it, "the hardest thing [we've] ever done". And thats the way, uh-huh uh-huh, we like it (uh-huh uh-huh).
If nothing else, remember that you can look down on the field with pride, at something that moves (and no, not everyones robot moves- ours didn't sometimes in 2004), and at something that you built; you said you worked on the mechanical team, as well as programming. You say you are frusturated because you didnt get a chance to program it amazingly with time to test and perfect.
I say be proud, because you stepped up to the plate and built the thing- you did not go hide in the closet and write code, belligerantly believing that you would have a day, a week or more with the robot- you got out there and did what you needed to do.
I still wish we had shipped our robot in a bit more "complete" of a stage, and i'm sure you wish the same, but that doesnt mean it isnt an accomplishment or worthwhile; if you, or anyone, learned something from this experience, it has been justified.
Good luck this year, and feel free to stop by 1394's pit at Drexel or Nationals, or to email or AIM me, if you need some cheering up
-Dillon Compton
Team 1394
Edit: Holy crap, that sure is long!