Mini FRC Championship Challenge!

[Francis-134]

FRC Team 40, Trinity High School and intelitek from Manchester, NH is proud to announce that we WILL indeed be bringing down our Mini FRC field and all six of our robots, as shown in this thread.

With that, team 40 would like to issue a challenge to all teams attending the championship. We ask that you build or bring a 1/3 scale Vex robot designed to play this years FRC game, Aim High. I know that several teams have already built either replicas of their robots this year, or have expressed interest in making their own Mini-FRC bots.

I don't have a set of rules ready as of yet, but here are some basics. The field that will be there will be exactly 1/3 scale in every way (plus or minus 1/2 in. of course). The surface is regulation FIRST carpet, while the ramp has a diamond plate incline and a lexan and sides. The robots should be no bigger than about 15" long by 15" wide by 20" high. The balls can be found here. The balls are 2.25 inches in diameter and are made of a substance that is very similar to the poof balls.

So if anyone has any questions, feel free to drop me a line or post here. I shold have some more exact rules later on. And, if anyone is feeling ESPECIALLY adventerous, try to make an autonomous mode .

Can't wait to see you all in the Vex area of the pits at Atlanta

[Tim Arnold]

ALLRIGHT!!!! Wooohooo!!! Thank you so much for going out of your way to bring the field! MARS will definitely have Ballistic Jr. with us, and probably two other mini bots not designed like the real one. We also are using bumpers, although they are made from sponge or thin walled tubing.

One major question: Will the speed of the thrown balls be limited to 1/3? Two issues arise if it is, in that gravity is not 1/3 (uh, nothing we can do about that ), and what could we use to clock the speed anyway?

Again though, thank you for making this possible.

[gren737]

Being that we were mostly using this as a training and brainstorming tool the rules are a little lax...We never intended full on competition with these outside of our shop.

Some of our robots have non-vex parts such as lexan and cloth, some use regular FRC fisher price motors on victor speed controls running off of the primary or even a second vex controller.

This is just to have a little fun competition, try to keep it close but as far rules but you don't have to kill yourselves trying to be 100% accurate.
Only Vex controllers, and only vex batteries, mostly vex parts and be creative!!


We at intelitek are VERY excited to be bringing the field and we are looking forward to a great time at Nationals.

[Tim Arnold]

Will there be autonomous modes active? If so I got some work to do with sonar...

[Francis-134]

At this point, we are simply driving our robots during the autonomous mode. However, if you feel adventerous you can make an autonomous mode. I may suggest using easyC, because if we were to implement any sort of control, it may be with an easyC competition template. At this point, it seems that we will be running the field rather loosly, so you should have some time to fix your code.

[JakeGallagher]

You're gonna let me play with it, won't you? Come on buddy, you know you wanna hook up an old team mate! Send me and IM sometime so I can get you my cell number and you can call me. I'll get to Atlanta on friday night about 8 or so, so make sure you call me during the day on saturday.

[Freddy Schurr]

What time and when will this event be? I am going to ask the team and see if they are interesting in playing?

[Tim Arnold]

Originally Posted by Freddy Schurr

What time and when will this event be? I am going to ask the team and see if they are interesting in playing?

Although I would imagine that only a loose time frame is set, it would be very nice to plan out some match times. Most team members can't just leave whenever (well, at least I can't) so deciding some general times would be great.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to get people/teams to commit to joining in and getting a contact list together for scheduling at the event?

EDIT: Also, how many balls do you have/are needed? As long as I get them back I have 30 yellow stress balls from Century Novelty in pretty good shape that I can bring...

[Francis-134]

A signup sheet sounds interseting, but team 40 is going to be extremely busy this year the championship. We have an FRC, FVC, this field, scouting, workshops by our mentors (one actually about this subject, check it out at usfirst.org) and some other things. At this point, we have no idea when we will have enough people to do a match. However, there will be someone at the field at all times to make sure no one looses an eye . Now that I think about it, we might just be able to do some planning on Thursday, as I am under the impression at this point that the field will be up all three days. Yes, that sounds excellent .

If you would like to bring you balls, you are more than welcome to. I think we have enough at the moment, but brining your own cant hurt. Just make sure they are identifyable in some fashion and that you wouldn't mind loosing a few due to misfires and shooting damage.