"The Little Things" - Helpful hints for all

[IndySam]

Standardize all your fasteners.

If you need more than a handful of tools to fix your robot you did it wrong.

[MichaelBick]

-This has been discussed before and there are multiple views, but I believe that crimps are better than soldering. You don't have to wait for irons to heat up(bad during elims) and is hard to mess up. We switched to all crimps this year and have had so many less problems with electrical.

[Pault]

Utilize the resources that you have.

We don't have access to a CNC machine, or a waterjet, or plasma cutter, or a welder. But we do have a laser cutter capable of cutting plastic, so you will see tons of ABS plastic on our robot.

[Caleb Sykes]

Any code with 10 minutes of driver practice is better than PID-controlled omni-directional speed-curved code without driver practice. That being said, leftmotor = joystick1.y and rightmotor = joystick2.y should be the starting point, not the ending point for drive code.

Don't be ashamed to switch to an easier strategy. For example: this year, if you were scoring less than 50% (which many teams were) in the 3-point goal, switch to the 2-point goal.

Never leave a competition before alliance selections have finished.

Don't cause silly penalties.

Make sure that at least 2 programmers understand any given section of code.

[BJC]

-Put your bumpers as low as reasonable.

-Keep your robot's center of gravity as low as possible.

-Prioritize game piece acquisition over everything except the drivetrain itself.

, Bryan

[Samwaldo]

Originally Posted by BJC

-Put your bumpers as low as reasonable.

Why?

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Samwaldo

Why?

You're more likely to win pushing matches if you have lower bumpers than your opponents. Part of their weight will shift on to your robot and you will gain traction and they will lose it. It also helps to have stiff bumpers that don't move up and down at all.

Lower bumpers also normally make it harder for your robot to tip over since your at less of an angle when your bumpers hit the ground.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by Samwaldo

Why?

While I can't speak for Bryan, I can say that the reason our team would like to do this is that lower bumpers are advantageous for CoG reasons, pushing match reasons, and avoiding tipping.

The lower CoG is quite obvious. However, less obvious are the pushing match advantages. During a pushing match, normal force is quite often transferred between the robots. Consider 2 robots with equal weight and traction capabilities, both at 145 lbs with bumpers and battery but different bumper heights. When they engage in a pushing match, it is possible that the one with higher bumpers may transfer some of its weight to the robot with lower bumpers. Now you may have the high bumper robot with 130 lbs of normal force available to "turn into" tractive force, while the low bumper robot might have 160 lbs of normal force to "turn into" tractive force. This means the robot with lower bumpers could have more pushing force due to the increased normal force on its wheels. The ground still supports the total weight of both robots, but not necessarily equally at all points. In addition the robot with higher bumpers may tend to get up-ended in this situation.

It can also help in avoiding tipping. If the bumpers are lower, they will "catch" the robot as it tips more quickly than if they are higher up. I have also seen robots tip such that their support polygon is the frame and the bumpers, which is way less probable with lower bumpers.

[vhcook]

Swarf is the devil. Protect your electronics.

Tug-test all crimps.

Program manual overrides for your fancy code so that when a sensor fails or the mechanism ends up in an unexpected state, the drivers have a way to recover or work around the problem.

Remember your robot is going to have to go through doors in the bag. Plan bumper transportation accordingly.

[bvisness]

Focus on a strong feature of your robot and just try to make it consistent.

You're more likely to get chosen in alliance selections if you have even one feature that makes your robot stand out. Our team's success this year was largely because we had a very consistent 5-disc autonomous. A team we work closely with generally seeded higher than us last year, but didn't have one particular feature they could "sell" to other teams.

[Kevin Leonard]

Plan for locations for electronics, compressors, batteries in your design, not as an afterthought.

Good scouting wins matches, great scouting wins competitions.
and related:
Good scouting is not a replacement for a good robot.
But a good robot is also not a replacement for good scouting.

Also in the thread of scouting: if you don't have the resources to scout, because you're a rookie team or have a small team, some other team does, and they are likely to accept the addition of two or three scouts into their scouting team in exchange for data.

And of course, always be graciously professional. GP in winning, GP in losing, GP on and off the field. It will get you further than any robot-related item in FRC.

[DampRobot]

I'm sure I can think of more, but a post in the thread reminds me of a major misconception most new teams have.

Playing good defense is not about ramming or pushing your opponent. It's about preventing them from accomplishing what they want to do for as long as possible.

Avoiding defense well is not about out-pushing the defending robot. It is about evading them ask quickly as possible and continuing on to scoring.

[cadandcookies]

- Talk to people. Talk to people from other teams, talk to people on your team, know what is going on at the event, know what is going on in your own shop. Building connections with other teams can be the difference between playing on Saturday and not. Building connections within your team is the difference between existing and not. People like to work with people they know.

- Welds are light. Rivets are light. Nuts and bolts are heavy. Consider which you prefer on your robot.

- For mechanical: Programmers are your friends.

- For programmers: mechanical are your friends.

[kuraikou]

Make electronics very easy to access because you never know when you need to change or replace something.

Evaluate your needs each year. Don't expect to be able to use a similar setup to a previous year just because it worked then.