Scoiuting, Conveyor Cord

[merybar]

Two questions, figured i would just link them together even though they have no relevance to eachother.

1. Do any teams only have the resources to dedicate 1 student towards scouting? What do you do? What kind of programs do you use? We would like to develop some tiem of program for a 1 person scout however anybody have any thoughts?

2. A lot of teams have an elastic cord for both dumpers and conveyors, where do you get it from/whats the actual name of it?

Thanks for your help
Matt
Team 894

[Andy L]

Originally Posted by merybar

Two questions, figured i would just link them together even though they have no relevance to eachother.

1. Do any teams only have the resources to dedicate 1 student towards scouting? What do you do? What kind of programs do you use? We would like to develop some tiem of program for a 1 person scout however anybody have any thoughts?

2. A lot of teams have an elastic cord for both dumpers and conveyors, where do you get it from/whats the actual name of it?

Thanks for your help
Matt
Team 894

1. a lot of teams dedicate 12+ students to scouting. My team does 1 person always scouting, he has a group of 5-6 people and anyone who isn't working in the pit.

2. Polyurethane tubing, is what you're thinking of. Many teams buy it from McMaster Carr, although local in our area Tap Plastics sells it

[merybar]

Thanks for the help, we have only 1 person to dedicate to scouting due to the fact we only have 8 students. What do you small teams do for scouting? any programs out there for 1 scout?

Oh ok awesome about the tubing, we are making some major modifications during our next 8 hours (michigan team) and that made the list!
Thanks
Matt

[Andy L]

Originally Posted by merybar

Thanks for the help, we have only 1 person to dedicate to scouting due to the fact we only have 8 students. What do you small teams do for scouting? any programs out there for 1 scout?

Oh ok awesome about the tubing, we are making some major modifications during our next 8 hours (michigan team) and that made the list!
Thanks
Matt

In past years we have been a small team, try to do as much scouting as possible before competition, check to see if any robots at your competition (district? not familiar with all the MI stuff) have already competed and how they did. Also, you can talk to other teams at your competition and see if they would be willing to share scouting data or work with you scouting.

[big1boom]

If you are only able to have 1 person scout at a time, It is entirely possible to succeed.

I know that at Midwest, team 2022 had 5 or 6 people assigned to scouting, however, only one did their job correctly. That one person managed to get 80+ pages of notes on other robots.
Things he took notes of

Drive system type
Pushing Power
Scoring mechanism type
Ground collection
Approx. number of balls scored
Empty Cell/Super Cell?
Overall feel of the robot/drivers/Payload Specialist.

[AlexD744]

hey I want to say that our team last year was composed of about 5-6 people I heard that 1 girl had to scout the whole regional. It took her all day Thursday, but she did a great job. We use survey and just ask the other teams question such as their robot/ human player abilities. Have a sheet for every team and them keep them in numerical order to help you find them easily. Hope it helps!

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by merybar

What do you small teams do for scouting?

Some small teams collaborate on scouting with other teams. The Purdue FIRST teams set up a network of laptop computers in the stands to collect and share scouting information.

[ChrisH]

To do an adequate job of scouting, we figured we needed 120 man-hours, minimum. This means more bodies than we have available on our team. Not only that, it means the bodies we do have do nothing but scout. That isn't very much fun, especially in the early matches.

So we are putting together a consortium of six teams to pool their data. Each team makes sure they have one student working with us whenever matches are happening.

Every team involved gets a dump of the raw data, including a rudimentary analysis to show what can be done. The rest is up to them. If there is a large or experienced team at your regional who is doing something similar you might ask if you can participate.

ChrisH

[hiimcristhian]

you can get them from McMaster Carr they should be less than a dollar a foot, what we used was 3/16'' urethane shingle belting, i think i got the measurement right

[Bob Steele]

We have had great luck with 1/4" round polyurethane belting from Fenner Drives.
You can see it (and purchase it) from MSC
Here is the catalog page:

http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNPDFF...4587&PMCTLG=00

We use the 1/4 " orange belting...look at the Fenner Drives stuff..

You weld it together yourself ... do a search on CD for round belting and you will get good info on doing this... we purchased a $250 kit from Fenner Drives directly and HIGHLY recommend using it on your system

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

You weld it together yourself ... do a search on CD for round belting and you will get good info on doing this... we purchased a $250 kit from Fenner Drives directly and HIGHLY recommend using it on your system

We have had much success joining the urethane belting using a $15 Hot Knife "For Her" from Michael's Arts and Crafts. We fabricated a custom larger blade for it, and a jig to hold each end of the belt in a clamp, and slide the two ends together with the hot knife between. Haven't broken a single splice, and the results are indistinguishable from the expensive proper welding kits.

[merybar]

Thanks everybody for the help! we will be looking into the aid of other teams both at lansing and at nationals.
Also for any teams that dont end up pooling resources, what programs do you guys use for 1 person?
Thanks everyone for the help, we are checking into the conveyor.

[Molten]

Just go to each team, talk to them, take notes on their bot in short hand.(you probably just want the big picture, not the actual mechanics of the entire bot) Then be sure to convey anything and everything of use to the drivers/coach. The last step is the most important. No sense in taking data that isn't wanted or that won't get to the target. If the coach cares about their friction coefficient, ask for it. If not, don't bother writing it down.(doesn't apply this year but seems to be something many teams brag about that I don't care about) The key to running smooth operation with limited resources is to limit the information you take in. Only take in what is needed and can be properly processed.

Sorry for repeating some, but it is important that you know what you are after. PM me for any other questions/explanations of my post.

[HighLife]

Originally Posted by merybar

Two questions, figured i would just link them together even though they have no relevance to eachother.

1. Do any teams only have the resources to dedicate 1 student towards scouting? What do you do? What kind of programs do you use? We would like to develop some tiem of program for a 1 person scout however anybody have any thoughts?

2. A lot of teams have an elastic cord for both dumpers and conveyors, where do you get it from/whats the actual name of it?

Thanks for your help
Matt
Team 894

1. Any student that is in the stands fills out a form based on each robots performance. We also have a mentor that takes these sheets and reviews them and also watches teams from the stands and rates them on a variety of criteria. The big ones being reliability, scoring, human player, and the amount of penalties they take. He then makes a list for the drive team in order. Your drive team usually has a pretty good idea of who they want on their alliance. We know which teams we work best with and which teams we trip over on the field. As a drive team we go over the list and make corrections based on our experiences. This system has worked extremely well for us in the past and worked for us at Kettering.

2. The Adambots are using the hollow polyurethane shingle belting from McMaster Carr. You can buy little plastic barbs that hold the belts together. We've gotten hours of use in practice and at the Kettering regional with ZERO failures. I don't suggest Bob Steele's method because that welder will cost you a lot more than the plastic barbs we use and a lot of the teams that weld without the welding tool have belt failures.

If you need more information just PM me.