Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04
The problems which you attribute to the Vex system - such as having a motor or a transmitter that are hard to replace if broken, or diagnosing problems - aren't just a problem with Vex, they exist in any and all robotic kits or systems.
// The following is not directed towards anyone, and I apologize in advance if it is read as such.
Over the past few years, I've lost track of how many posts I've read where people complain that we need metal gears, metal chain, bigger motors, etc., and they are all quick to point to Vex as the problem. It would be a much more beneficial solution if they accepted their own fallibility, and re-investigated their own mechanism before pointing the blame on something else.
And if someone puts all their hopes that the new kit will magically solve all the issues and problems, and that flowers and rainbows will sprout from the earth and peace and prosperity will come to all, they are quite mistaken. Nothing is perfect, whether it's LEGO Mindstorms, Vex, the new FTC kit, the FRC KoP, etc., and issues will arise no matter what system exists.
There's a fine line between which problems are inherent to the kit/technology used, and which ones can be solved by a little more creative thinking.
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First off, I have to agree with you in the respect that people are often quick to place blame on things other than themselves when it comes to problems like these. Many of us (including me, at some points) have felt this way before, to a certain extent. I hold the utmost respect for teams that have succeeded in competition, and in no way regret my experiences in FTC, failure or success.
I would just like to explain where I'm coming from, as I have a pretty good memory of our team's past events. In Atlanta last year, our team completely rebuilt our competition robot from the ground up. (Picture
here.) When we tested it at home, it worked very well, both tethered and untethered. Even at Atlanta in the pits, the robot performed just fine when tethered in the pits. However, once it was placed on the competition field, we began to experience problems. The robot would start and stop, drive erratically, or just stop moving a few seconds after the match had started. This happened for the majority of our matches in Atlanta, with a few successes.
We desperately tried to find the problem, but to no avail. Every time we tested it tethered in the pits, everything worked just as it did at home. We must have switched between 5 or 6 batteries, and none of them seemed to have any effect on the robot's performance. But every time we went on the field, problems frequently occurred. We switched cables, transmitters, receivers, and even our microcontroller, but the problems continued to persist. Our tournament ended (at least, for me) with some feelings of self-inadequacy for being unable to find a solution to an agonizingly crippling problem.
This year, FTC 546 experienced a similar issue in its competition at Arizona. I'm not sure if you're familiar with our robot, but you can see it
here. The problems that we experienced here were also intermittent control issues, where our robot would stop about 15 seconds into a match without responding to any signal from the transmitter. Again, the robot worked great at home and also very well when tethered in the pits. However, we vainly tried the same things that we did at Atlanta, but were once again unsuccessful.
Today, our team still has some ideas on what the cause of these problems were. We believe that it might be a faulty transmitter, but we are unable to test that hypothesis, seeing as how we don't have an official competition field.
Now, my problem with the Vex system isn't the reliability of its components, but the difficultly in diagnosing a problem. In Atlanta, we had a FIRST official look at our robot (not tethered to the field, but with competition crystals), and it worked just fine! He was, like us, unable to provide a concrete diagnosis or propose a solution which we hadn't already tried. Even today, almost one year to the day it happened, our team still does not know if our failure was due to a faulty design or a broken electronic component. Even with as much creative thinking as we could muster, there was little that we could do.
My only hope is that next year's platform will not only be a bit more reliable, but much less difficult to diagnose the types of problems that our team has experienced. If it has taken us over a year and two competitions to learn what our problem was, then I wholeheartedly believe that there has to be a better solution. You may take our experiences as you wish, but please understand that we aren't just a group of inexperienced students who are trying to shift blame. Our team holds no blame against anyone or anything. We understand that life isn't always fair. We understand that there will be difficulties, and we understand that we just need to roll with the punches and take what life gives us. I can only hope that our team is able to overcome these obstacles and be able to succeed in the future, and that FIRST is able to give us and thousands of other students the very opportunity to do that.