"The Little Things" - Helpful hints for all

[saikiranra]

- Label everything you take to competitions. A pen, a few pieces of paper, and some tape can really help. You can easily check which box has what you need and can make other notes on the labels.

- Always take raw material to competitions. You never know what can break. At IRI, our shooter support welds cracked and we had nothing to fix them. Thankfully, 67 had some 1/8th inch thick sheet metal and was awesome enough to let us have some. Even after Battle at the Border, the shooter is still going strong.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

This is in reference to <R65> in the 2013 manual. Standard practice for many teams, including mine, is to apply hot glue to PWM connections. Was this disallowed at any events this year?

I would have have failed you at inspection when I used to inspect regularly.
See full text of the rule below for everyone elses reference.

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

R65 The Driver Station software, cRIO, motor controllers, relay modules, wireless bridge, and batteries shall not be tampered with, modified, or adjusted in any way (tampering includes drilling, cutting, machining, gluing, rewiring, disassembling, etc.), with the following exceptions:


Please note that the Driver Station application is a separate application from the Dashboard. The Driver Station software may not be modified, while teams are expected to customize their Dashboard code.




A.User programmable code in the cRIO may be customized.
B.Dip switches on the cRIO may be set (applies to cRIO-FRC only).
C.Motor controllers may be calibrated as described in owner's manuals.
D.Fans may be attached to motor controllers and may be powered from the power input terminals.
E.If powering the compressor, the fuse on a Spike H-Bridge Relay may be replaced with a 20A Snap-Action circuit breaker.
F.Wires, cables, and signal lines may be connected via the standard connection points provided on the devices.
G.Fasteners may be used to attach the device to the OPERATOR CONSOLE or ROBOT.
H.Labeling may be applied to indicate device purpose, connectivity, functional performance, etc.
I.Brake/Coast jumpers on motor controllers may be changed from their default location.
J.Limit switch jumpers may be removed from a Jaguar motor controller and a custom limit switch circuit may be substituted.
K.If CAN-bus functionality is used, the Jaguar firmware must be updated as required by FIRST (see Rule R68-D).
L.The First Touch I/O module’s firmware may be modified.

[rees2001]

- Listen to peoples' ideas. REALLY listen.

- My ideas are not better than OUR ideas. No matter how good I may think they are, we can make it better.

- Ask questions, don't make assumptions. Then listen to the answers to the questions you ask.

- Don't let your drive coach and best asset go to Texas.

[Chris is me]

- Don't be afraid to ask for help with the fear that it will "reveal your design". Honestly, there aren't a lot of unique ideas in FRC, and it's extremely rare that an FRC team would have been able to dominate with an idea if only they had thought of it. The help you need is far more valuable than the imaginary competitive advantage you get revealing that your shooter uses a bucket or that your hanger is passive.

- 4 CIMs is the minimum for a competitive drivetrain, excluding some edge cases that probably don't apply to your robot.

- In many years, the specific design you choose isn't as important as the amount of development, iteration, and practice time you put into perfecting it.

[cmrnpizzo14]

1.) Have tight, well built bumpers that match the FIRST logo color scheme. Use stencils to paint the numbers on so that they all match. Take time to make sure that said numbers are on straight. Does this necessarily make your robot function better? No. Do I consider this necessary? Yes.

2.) Have at least one "cool", "unique", or "ridiculous" looking component of your robot. Anything that identifies you is automatically going to put you a little higher in people's minds. It seems wrong in principle to think that a RI3D robot with spray painted parts is more likely to get picked than an equally performing RI3D robot without them but its true.

3.) Maintain athleticism in the robot. This is a sport, the robot is an athlete. Try to accomplish tasks smoothly and consistently rather than violently. The best teams this year pulled into the feeder station gracefully and quickly to load as opposed to crashing into the wall coming in and slamming on the joysticks pulling out. Don't make a weak robot, but sometimes more power is not what you need.

4.) Be friendly and talk to other teams. If everyone knows your name, you're doing a good job. Like point 1, does it make your robot perform better? No. Will talking to other teams and learning about their robots and how their team works in general benefit your team more than looking like a buffoon dancing to cotton-eye joe (credit to Karthik on that one)? Yes. If you have no assignments or jobs at a competition, watch some matches, cheer for some other teams, make friends. Create a team presence at the competition.

[Peter Matteson]

Here's a couple actually helpful ones:

-Inform the students to never talk to the drivers about their driving at a competition. Criticism from the other students will destroy your driver's confidence and they will question who to listen to. Let everyone know that your drive coach is the only person to make any driving comments to so everything is filtered and clear when it gets to the students.

-Never be afraid to break out the sawz-all. Most top teams have at one point realized they headed down the wrong path and were smart enough to admit it and srap everything to become competitive. If you aren't willing to do this be prepared to get left in the dust ofthe teams that adapt and improve every event they go to.

-Don't reinvent everything, LOOK AT OLD DESIGNS!!!

[JeremyLansing]

The build season isn't really six weeks long, and your withholding allowance is your best friend. Use it to continue iterating on a mechanism, or add a new mechanism to your robot. It can be difficult to keep yourself motivated after the six weeks is over, but you would be amazed how much can be changed between events. Never stop improving.

[dag0620]

- Networking, Networking, Networking. I know other have said how it's important to talk to others in terms of competition, and this is totally true. People tend to work with people they know, so make those connections, they will come in handy. Even if they don't help you for the event your at, I'm sure that connection will be useful at event later in the season or in future years come Saturday afternoon.

Also for both students and mentors sake, networking is extremely useful to help you at competition but also for your team outside of competition and for you personally. By talking to other teams, volunteers, and planning volunteers, you might just find a new sponsor for your team, discover new outreach opportunities, make contacts to carry into your career, or land an internship for the summer.

There are so many great people involved in FIRST, so try to reach out and meet a lot of them.

[ttldomination]

- Standardize your parts, drivetrains, materials, tools, pneumatics, everything. The FRC season is already a pain when it comes to manipulation systems, DT specs, packaging, etc. so, why make the game harder than you have to?

- Experiment in the off-season. I see too many teams that want to 'try item X' in the FRC season. Now, if it's for a manipulation system, that's understandable, but trying something fancy during the FRC season is unnecessary.

- Set realistic expectations of the game. That is to say that when it comes to guessing how well your opponents will run, always aim high. Overestimating your opponents is always better than underestimating them.

- Talk outside the team (aka network). Often times, a group of people can get a scary case of group-think, where the group tends to follow the ideas of one person or tends to stick to one idea. Talking to a 3rd party (parnets, other mentors, etc.) will give you new perspective and help you to break out of that group think.

- Learn from the past (games and teams). Look into similar games, look into why teams made the decisions that they did. The past is a window into the future.

- Sunny G.

[Chadfrom308]

-When designing, look at old designs that worked really well and modify them to your needs. Like our OCCRA team looked at many 2012 robots for this years game which requires shooting a ball.

-Floor pick up is not that important. The good teams in the 2011 season and 2013 season never picked up from the floor

[Nathan Streeter]

A lot of great stuff in this thread! A few things to add/repeat:

- Effective scouting and good strategy can make a significant difference in the performance of your robot/team throughout an event. In eliminations, getting the right 3rd robot and carefully understanding the strengths and weaknesses of all 6 robots on the field can make a tremendous difference.

- Don't focus all your energy into one subsystem to the exclusion of other dependent subsystems. Yes, drivetrain comes first, but don't focus all your time on the shooter (or arm/elevator) only to learn that you can't score game pieces you don't have because you failed to design an efficient and reliable acquisition system!

- Do your best to thoroughly understand the game in the first few days... and keep up with the subtle game changes/evolutions throughout the season! Designing and building the pinnacle of technical achievement won't help you on Saturday afternoon if your robot doesn't play the right game. Also, understand that Week 1 and Championships may be two dramatically different games.

Originally Posted by Chadfrom308

-Floor pick up is not that important. The good teams in the 2011 season and 2013 season never picked up from the floor

I disagree with all of the above... I would agree that floor pickup should never be a forgone conclusion (and maybe that's what you meant, but not what came out). A lot of successful teams didn't use floor pickup in 2013.. and didn't have any reason to change that. A few teams were successful without floor pickup in 2011... and more teams definitely could have, but most teams over-estimated its value. But in both years there were highly successful teams that relied on floor pickup to implement their strategy.

You need only look as far back as 2012 to see a game in which floor pickup was nearly critical to being successful.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by Chadfrom308

-Floor pick up is not that important. The good teams in the 2011 season and 2013 season never picked up from the floor

I completely disagree with that. There are no 2012 robots that would have been competitive without a floor pickup. It is completely game dependent and you should never write off an idea. This year many people wrote off a robot without an intake. Every previous year intakes have been super useful(2011 is arguable) and even this year intakes gave a huge point and seeding advantage.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by MichaelBick

I completely disagree with that. There are no 2012 robots that would have been competitive without a floor pickup. It is completely game dependent and you should never write off an idea. This year many people wrote off a robot without an intake. Every previous year intakes have been super useful(2011 is arguable) and even this year intakes gave a huge point and seeding advantage.

I'll pile on to this.

No robot necessarily needs to do every part of the game. The jack of all trades is often the master of none.

[Pault]

Originally Posted by Thunder910

I'll pile on to this.

No robot necessarily needs to do every part of the game. The jack of all trades is often the master of none.

+1

I wasn't around for 2011, but from what I've it was very rare to see a good team without a floor pickup. In 2012 you basically needed a floor pickup to be competitive. In 2013, ~50% of the top tier teams had floor pickups, as opposed to the ~5% of all teams that had one. And then look back to 2009, 2008, 2006, 2000, and I'm sure some other games I'm not familiar with.

2 conclusions:

1. Don't make assumptions about the game you haven't seen yet.
2. Even if a certain strategy isn't quite as effective as others, if you are the only robot at a competition who can execute that strategy successfully, your chances of getting picked are pretty high.

[BBray_T1296]

-Mid competition, if your strategy is not working, try something else.

We had trouble recovering shooter RPM after each shot. It took an unreasonable amount of time between 3 point shots, because the rpm had to recover to almost exactly what it was.

We tried shooting 2 pointers, and found we were far better at it because the lack of need for high precision. Our shooter could fire so fast, from the back of the pyramid all 4 disks were in the air at once before the first struck the chains. We could score 2 pointers far faster and in far greater quantity than before. Too bad we didn't try this Before Eliminations, or we may have been selected for an even better alliance.

Also it did look pretty impressive seeing a robot spewing disks