What are some of your rookie/silly mistakes?

[Graciebot]

We decided it would be a great idea to bolt our bumpers down and it took 10-15 minutes and four people to change them. Not fun when we had nearly back-to-back matches! Thank goodness we went with a much easier design this year...
Also, our first year we didn't understand the importance of driver buttons and took them home the first day of competition. Then we forgot them the next day. That was a catastrophe. Luckily one of the moms ran to get them once we realized where they were. Phew!

[zzzag]

My first year, we got a brand-new Cisco wireless adapter to replace the one we had been using for the previous few years. As the only person in the shop that day who knew how to wire, I got to chop the wall connection off and wire it to a WAGO connector - but both wires were black! A little bit of magic smoke later, I realized I had guessed wrong - and we had to use the old wireless adapter.

We've accidentally sent nearly dead batteries out onto the field on several occasions.

And our Logomotion bot was an exercise in how not to design a robot: we spent most of our six weeks working on a minibot and an arm, only to realize we couldn't extend the arm far enough to pick up tubes from the ground and had no space on the robot to attach a minibot deployment mechanism.

But we've finally learned: as of today, we know that there is a tool for attaching the FlexHub snap rings for the modulox boxes that works better than the needle-nose pliers and screwdrivers we struggled with

[Garrett.d.w]

Every year at bunnybot for us. We have all of the non senior members design and build a bot with minimal help from the senior people.

My freshmen year, I, along with a group of five other students, designed this robot with a giant snow shovel on the end of a big piston. As we were driving, I bumped the controller the wrong way (our programmer plays inverted) and tilted the show shovel down into the carpet and fired the piston at the same time. We halfway did a pole jump before getting stuck. We then proceeded to trash the tread on the wheels and burn a hole in the carpet while trying to escape. I don't think the flaming chickens were too happy with that.

And for logomotion: Using a banebots 256 to 1 transmission to move a 13 foot arm without a counterbalance. It got to the point where we were rebuilding the transmission between every match and taking apart other transmissions for the gears. Ugh. Lets just say that I can now completely reassemble and re grease a transmission in the dark in under five minutes.

[orangemoore]

I remember from last year a team (not mine) left a bunch of tools on their robot and they fell off during the match. I believe that they didn't get a penalty because they were not robot parts.

[sg999]

Last year, we almost forgot to load the game pieces for autonomous for one match. Note that at that point, all (or almost all, I don't remember) of our points were scored through autonomous, as we had no functioning floor pickup, bridge operator, or driver training (so we couldn't even balance).

[nicholsjj]

I remember my second ever match on the drive team. We got the dreaded "Turn Your Robot On" index card. So as I went and re-positioned our robot. As I'm turning back to go off the field, a referee gently taped me on the shoulder and reminded me to still turn the robot on.

[Kusha]

In 2010, my rookie year I was opening this plexi lid on our robot to test the battery voltage, and I broke the plexi lid. We taped it back together, and come match time, we went over a bump and the plexi bent inwards and turned off our robot via the power switch.

[rhinobot]

Originally Posted by ehfeinberg

Well besides forgetting to plug in our radio before a match, or putting the robot on the field without a battery, or losing our robot at competition, or realizing that we left our driver station at home 6+ hours away, or weighing our robot in kilos instead of pounds and finding out that we are 25 lbs overweight a day before ship, my team hasn't made too many 'rookie' mistakes.

Personally, I broke a tap. That is pretty embarrassing.

My nickname is tap. Ive broken 5 on one job, dont feel bad hahaha.

[techkid86]

One word.... WatchDog
we just could not get this little bugger to work for us. and we were young enough to not know how to disable or work around it...

this was a funny moment of that same year...

Person: Hey, can you take a look at the code? the robot seems to be going a little slow.
Programmer: Sure.
-walks into the pit and over to the drive station. pushes both joysticks full forward and the robot jumps out of the pit, ripping the eathernet cord out-
Programmer: ... ... ... That seemed to be going pretty fast to me.

<lesson learned> put on blocks... ALWAYS </lesson learned>

[Wayne Doenges]

Last year, at Championships, we were getting ready to play a match and the MC wanted to do the wave. He was on the field and said "one, two, three GO" and the starter hit the Start button and all the robots proceeded to move in Auto. I didn't thnk he could move that fast to get off the field.

[MattC9]

Leaving the battery in during weighing and not turning the robot on.

[Jeffy]

Lefty-Loosey always eludes at least one kid each year.

[EricLeifermann]

So this is Tyler Olds favorite story to tell about me, though I wan't the only one doing it at the time...

Back when I was a freshman on 93 I was recruited to be the teams welder. I had several years experience welding but had never done TIG welding. So one night a group of us were trying to get some practice in on some new metal the shop teacher had just purchased. Nothing we did would make an arc. I mean we tried everything, change welding machines, change the gas, clean the metal, you name it we tried it. Well, after about 2 hours I had to leave, as I'm packing up my school stuff the mentor who was helping us calls me back into the shop and proceeds to show the group what he had just found... The metal had a thin clear plastic wrap on it to protect it. That is why we couldn't get an arc... Needless to say I still get needled about it today 12 years later.

So always check your metal for a protective covering before trying to weld!

[Samwaldo]

We always ask the freshmen for:
A aluminum magnet
A bucket of Steam
Left handed screw driver
Left handed wrench

We sometimes get one who looks for 10 minutes and then begins to ask mentors where they can find one.

[Sam390250]

This might not exactly be a rookie mistake but at Championships this year on one of the fields I remember a match right after a long break was halted. Turns out one of the little vacuuming robots got stuck under the bridge without anyone noticing and was being destroyed by robots attempting to balance. It was really funny when they pulled it out.

One of my rookie mistakes my freshmen year was during an inspection. The inspector was questioning one of our gear-tooth sensors and told us we needed to remove it. So as a nervous freshman I immediately cut all the wires to get it off of the robot. Turned out it was completely legal after all and I spent a good half hour putting it back in. I learned to think before acting after that incident. I also learned to cut electrical components in a way that might make them salvageable in the future.