Nightmare Repairs At Competition

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by thefro526

That brings back memories. I remember being in que for our Quarter Final matches when that happened. What's so impressive about that match is 1712's seemingly blatant disregard for the state of their claw. 'Can't hurdle trackballs? Better run laps'.

Memories indeed ...
Yes the drive crew did a great job with the quick adjustment to run laps. There are people that still owe me the lunch I never got that day because of the lunchtime claw replacement...

Last qual match before alliance selections, we were essentially locked into our ranking before the match began, and just as I sit down in the stands to watch the match someone tells me, "We're trying a new autonomous program for more points. We're going to turn the corner."

Knowing that the "new" auto program was most likely a glorified dead reckoning program (we never got the sensors or IR tweaked out the right way in that robot to "sense" for the corner), my response was, "WHAAAAAAAAT?????"

"Don't worry, Kressly. What could go wrong?"
Of course I'm thinking about penalties at minimum, or hitting our partners, or getting stuck, or damage...
"3, 2, 1...GO..."

If you look at the vid closely when the bot hits the wall, our human/hybrid player who put his hands on his head is the one who wrote that "improved program" and I'm happy to report we let him live and he's finishing his degree at Ga Tech. He was given half the claw as a reminder to ALWAYS test his work before USING IT for real. The other half of the claw is still in the 1712 lab somewhere.

I never saw the end of that match...as soon as the bot hit the wall I grabbed alum mentor Zac Cohen (now leading FRC1111) and a few students and we immediately went to work prepping the spare* claw (which was nowhere near ready to mount) and continued to work through alliance selection and lunch, right up to field side at the start of QF1. There may still be pics and vid of that pit repair scene floating around somewhere.

Good find, and good times indeed.

* and by "spare" I mean wood structure only, maybe the grip material was stapled on, but I doubt it. No motor, roller claw, bearings, aluminum reinforcement plates where the spring pins locked in, no wiring, no holes for the wiring to path correctly, no holes (about 30-40 of em) to get the claw within weight allowance. Yeah, it was complete surgery of the ugliest kind. The roller claw never ran in QF1-1. My heart rate was probably about 230 at the time and I couldn't debug the wiring connection issue. So we ran laps and played a little ball keep away that match. Mike Williams found that issue and solved it prior to QF1-2, so 1712 was able to at least hurdle in the Quarters where we were eliminated by a strong #1 alliance led by FRC103 (how ironic is that?).

So there's your story ... Now, where's my lunch??? :-)