Philly was truly trying for us. Whatever could break on the bot DID break on the bot. We got all electrical issues figured out from VCU only to have a pneumatics sensor go bad, an encoder wire go bad, and our "upgrade" for our fork lift fingers just simply not work well at all. It makes us wonder if we've stretched ourselves too far with what we're doing in our community and how many new things we've tried this year on the bot. Pneumatics, shifting transmissions, 3-stage elevator, removable electronics board, pre-designed battery mount, are all new to us and all have caused us big problems
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That said, we will still go headstrong into Atlanta. After a rest we'll rebound and are already planning how to spend our fix-it windows to resolve these issues. The thing that impressed me the most about Philly was the energy of the crowd and the proactive helpfulness of the other teams at the event. It was very encouraging.
A special thanks to MOE for their spare pneumatics switch as well as keying a sprocket for us, the staple gun, and alot of other "small" things that made a big difference. A special thanks to REX for lending us so many things on Thursday while we tried to organize our chaos without our leadership there to direct everything. And many, many thanks to the many people that made Philly run very smoothly. Finally, a thanks to the two final alliances for that spectacular performance in the 2nd finals match that ended up 114-116. Literally, the entire field was on fire with action for a full 2 minutes, from hurdling to defense to racing around. Simply put, it was incredible.