Storage Hunter Finds a FRC Robot

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

+1 this looks completely staged and I'm not surprised. Poor little guy!

based one the most recent picture, I'd agree. they fricking zip tied loose cRIO modules to the frame. also there is a random 2009 blue box of doom on there along side an IFI controller.I also note a 120A breaker with no wires going to it. to most laymen it looks like nothing but to us, it is obviously fake. last, I see two 120mm fans in honestly "random" places.

me thinks they are tossing "obscure" junk into storage bins and scripting the rest. lame.

Guess what show I'm not going to watch?

[Garrett.d.w]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

me thinks they are tossing "obscure" junk into storage bins and scripting the rest. lame.

Hit it right on the head, it has STAGED written all over the bumpers. Its kind of sad.
ANYWAY.... since we all know that it is staged, they should have at least done a good job of it, like borrowing a FIRST team's actual robot. It would have probably made a good show if they had "found" a working robot. It would have also kept the facts straight as far as to who built it. Along that line, does anyone know who's it is?

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Garrett.d.w

Along that line, does anyone know who's it is?

it is speculated to be 1277's bot, circa 2007. see page one of the thread and the picture of their 2007 bot. you might notice a similarity.

[Karibou]

+1 for staged. Anyone notice that the pneumatic tubing wrapped around the frame doesn't even go anywhere? It doesn't even attach to the air tank that also looks randomly strapped down.

However, if everything on that bot was competition legal and ready except for the IFI controller being right next to the "blue box of doom" (nice name!), I could still believe that it was a feasible practice bot. We did that with one of our old-competition-bot-turned-practice-bot because we were alltogether too lazy to take off the entire old control board.

[Travis Hoffman]

So uh where do I find the owners of this Frakensteinian monstrosity so I can buy it on the cheap, put it out of its misery, and gut it for parts?

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

So uh where do I find the owners of this Frakensteinian monstrosity so I can buy it on the cheap, put it out of its misery, and gut it for parts?

They live in Los Angeles, California
The 2011 axis camera that was on there is worth decent money, right?

[Kyoshirin]

I love the compressor that's connected to itself.
They didn't even use connectors. They just took a piece of tubing and looped it into the two exhaust ports. *shakes head*

[avanboekel]

Although it appears staged (and it probably is), is it possible that it was someone's side project and they had absolutely no clue what they were doing? Say this person got an old '07 bot that had already been gutted for parts, and tried to piece it back together into working condition year by year as they could.

The only things wrong with this theory are:
1) Why would someone spend money on trying to fix something that they obviously have no clue how to fix?
2) Why would they have that battle bot that looks as to be in good condition?

If it was staged, I just don't know why it would be staged this badly. As it was mentioned before, it would have been cool for them to have found a working FRC bot, and be able see them run it. Even a mention of FIRST would have been nice. Instead, they claimed that it was built by MIT.

Things just don't add up. There are too many unexplained details.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by avanboekel

1) Why would someone spend money on trying to fix something that they obviously have no clue how to fix?

I suspect you could ask this of many people's hobbies. How many people have tried to fix a car in their garage? Lots of times it turns into a 20 year project with little or no progress.

Jason

[Brandon Holley]

I'm kind of surprised so many of you are jumping to the conclusion that there is no way a team could've put a robot together to look like that. With our team located in the heart of Boston, we work with almost every team in the area in some fashion. There are many teams where I could see something like this being assembled.

Quite a few teams in the area are severely under-resourced when it comes to engineering support and FIRST experience.

If someone was using their 2007 bot, or practice bot and wanted to try some new code with the new control system it could easily explain why both systems are there.

I've seen quite a few bored students from time to time, and weaving pneumatic tubing through the frame seems like an extremely plausible thing for them to do.


I dunno, just seems like theres nothing so outrageous there that a team couldn't have done it.

-Brando

[Garrett.d.w]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I dunno, just seems like theres nothing so outrageous there that a team couldn't have done it.

-Brando

You do have a point. However, with all of the resources available to FIRST students, I would expect that at least some systems would be assembled semi correctly. You also mentioned boredom, it could be that this was built as a joke.

I guess its just too fun to speculate.

[Taylor]

I recall an individual with ties to MIT with more than a passing interest in FRC, who also enjoys puzzles and teasers.

Another thought: Has anybody found "IHTFP" on the robot or in the shed? We may be the recipients of a very obscure hack.