Robots in hometown parades

[ttldomination]

Back in the day, when the team carried itself with a bit more enthusiasm, we used to take part in the two local fall parades. They were awesome, but I would recommend choosing robots carefully.

For one year, we demoed the '07 robot. Wasn't very cool when you consider that the game was similar to the 2011 game, and the most we could do was raise the elevator up and down.

But the next year, we demoed our '08 robot (the one that shot the big red balls). That was HUGE with the crowd, and we met huge cheers all the way down the route.

So I would think it's common enough, just make sure to have something to please.

- Sunny G.

[Billfred]

1293 ran their 2005 robot in some parades that year. Some advice:

1) If your robot is done with competitions, consider pneumatic tires. Converting to them saved us a bit of wear and tear on the rest of the robot.
2) If you're still competing, a trick Don Rotolo mentioned involved wrapping your wheels in painter's tape, then duct tape. Similar effect, but it saves your wheels from the damage of the road.
3) Think of how you're going to handle batteries. 1293 modified their robot to add a tray to hold an extra three or four--just disconnect the dead one, plug in the new one, and roll on. (This was in the days of the IFI controller, where connections were made in seconds rather than minutes.)
4) Think of how you're going to drive it. Do you have a trailer to operate your driver station on? Hard to juggle joysticks and a classmate if you're just walking.
5) Think of how you're going to handle the robot if it dies mid-route. This happened to 1293 in the Irmo Okra Strut parade when a set screw backed out, and led to me pushing probably close to 175 pounds of robot and extra batteries a good half-mile to the finish. Be able to load it on a trailer if it fails, or draft a linebacker from your school's football team for the parade just in case.

I think they've done a couple of parades since, but I don't know the specifics (I stopped working with them full-time after the following FRC season, but still keep in touch).

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Billfred

3) Think of how you're going to handle batteries. 1293 modified their robot to add a tray to hold an extra three or four--just disconnect the dead one, plug in the new one, and roll on. (This was in the days of the IFI controller, where connections were made in seconds rather than minutes.)

On that point, could you wire multiple batteries in parallel to increase the battery life?

[NickE]

If you're looking to modify an old robot for use in PR events and parades, I'd recommend the VEX Controller. It works great, is very simple and connects almost instantly. Furthermore, the controller is completely handheld and doesn't require any external power source (a big advantage for parades). There is potential for interference when using the crystals (we've only had issues with other VEX robots around using the same frequency), but these issues seem to be gone when using VEXnet which typically connects in ~10 seconds. Our t-shirt cannon Shockwave and 2009 robot Devastator, two of our popular PR robots are both running VEX controllers with very simple code.