Robot Tips For Rookie Teams

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

When is it too late?


...

The day after the competition?

Senior Mentor contacts
http://www.usfirst.org/community/vol...mentor-program

Regional Director contacts
http://www.usfirst.org/regional-contacts

And if all else fails contact:
frcteams@usfirst.org

[annabananapi]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Another big suggestion - continue to raise money throughout build and competition season. You WILL need to purchase new parts, rent buses, or get hotel rooms. You most likely will run out of money, so don't stop fundraising. Money is also crucial to being able to improve your robot throughout the season if you need to change motors or transmissions or electronics. When you get to the point where you think you have enough money, keep raising money.

It's never too early to do fundraising or look for more sponsors! You'll need every penny for your robot during build season. Try to stay ahead of the bills you make.

[Joe Ross]

Set some money aside. It gets harder to fund a team beyond the first or second year, so having a reserve is important.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Set some money aside. It gets harder to fund a team beyond the first or second year, so having a reserve is important.

Agreed.

We strive to end each season with enough funds for next year's registration (including potential champs registration) on hand.

[Jon Stratis]

My thoughts for rookies:

1. There's a month until kickoff. Go read last year's robot rules! A lot of them don't change from one year to the next (wire gauges, pneumatic safety rules, etc), and being familiar with them now will help when you read the new ones in January.
2. Read the rules carefully. Do it every night for the first week, then twice a week after that while you're building just to make sure you don't miss something.
3. Follow the FRC Blog, e-mail blasts, the Q&A, and team updates carefully! You never know when a rule is going to change, or something might be said that will change your interpretation of the rule. While the Q&A and team updates are the only official source for rule updates, the blog and e-mail blasts will usually clue you in if there's something big being changed.
4. Do some brainstorming and figure out what you'd like to build. Then dial it back some. Don't try to do too much! It's better to take an approach of adding capability as time permits. Taking an "all or nothing" approach usually means you end up with nothing!
5. Before you build anything else, get your drive train together and working! Get a piece of plywood and toss on the control system so you can drive it around. This is a HUGE hurdle to get through your first season, and if you can just drive around you'll be as good as (or better than) most rookies out there.
6. Watch your size and weight! The KoP chassis WILL require some cutting to meet the size requirements. Building a robot to big or too heavy are the two worst things to do - The first means a re-build at competition (for gross violations... sometimes you can jigger things to fix a small size issue), and the second means removing whole parts from your robot to get under weight (trust me... you can't expect to lose much more than 1 lb by drilling holes in things!).
7. Get a hold of a local (or even not so local if needed) experienced team, and don't be shy about asking for help!
8. Pre-inspect your robot before bagging it, so you know ahead of time what you'll need to change/fix at competition.

[omalleyj]

Have your programming team and electronics team try everything you intend to use on a breadboard early on, don't wait for the robot, or even subsystem, to be completed.
For instance: while the drive train and base are being assembled lay out the cRIO, power distribution board, digital sidecar, a motor controller, and a motor on a piece of plywood. Wire it up. Program a basic drive and test that the motor turns in the expected direction at the appropriate times. Plug its controller into another PWM and verifiy that works, rotating in the opposite direction when appropriate.
It's so much easier to try things laid out on a table with only a few connections at a time. (TAKE NOTES!)
Repeat for any sensors, relays, etc., you intend to use. It's tempting to try and lay out everything at once, but trying one thing and learning it thoroughly, is much less confusing when you are coming up to speed.

[yash101]

Build a demobot in the offseason, with the drivetrain your team is comfortable with. That way, the programming team will have a program test target for the drivetrain and some other functions! The programmers can get big headaches when they do not have any model to build to code onto. Also, for some things like drivetrain and other small things, prototype with Vex. It is easy to use and very good for when you want to build a prototype quickly, maybe even in a single meeting!

[Mitchell1714]

For the build season:
1.determine your strategy (what you are going to do)
2.then design your robot (how you are going to do things)

Tips:
***build simple
-make everything with consistency and reliability in mind
-Make sure you can both score and aquire the scoring pieces. Many people forget about the later
- give the programmers lots of time to program the robot, drivers time to practice driving and time to debug/fix any issues. Having all your programming done before competition is good, having a good autonomous is great and giving the drivers experience driving the robot is excellent.

[yash101]

Don't overcomplicate things and don't overdo the build. Our robot for ultimate ascent had a 30 point climber and a 3-point shooter. However, since we did so much, our design was unreliable and we kept falling (hanging off one arm instead of 2 ), and our shooter kept breaking. Also, if you have a problem, before attempting to fix it, find out what went wrong. That way you can isolate the problem and make sure the rebuild gets rid of that problem!

1. If you have a mentor team, ask them to donate a previous years robot for you to study and learn from. If you don't have a mentor team - please request help from the vets in your area.
2. LTFD If you don't know what this means find out.
3. Before kickoff, establish your work area and essential tools, if you have a mentor team or sponsors get them to help you make this list and perhaps donate.
4. Before you open the KOP and start losing things, layout your strategy, schedule and the places the parts go.
5. As a rookie team, first concentrate on building a mobile reliable base and attachments that score points later.
6. In general, defense becomes more important during elimination, FIRST is a team sport you win by having your alliance out score the opposition. A mobile rugged base that can inhibit a high scoring machine by 25 to 50% can be vital to the winning alliance.
7. FIRST is a TEAM sport. Successful TEAMs utilize the Talent of Each Amazing Member.
8. Every team you meet was a rookie at some point. My first team, 255 finished 189th out of 220 at the 1999 Nationals. They were the lead seed of the National Championship in 2000. Work hard and trust each other, and you will succeed no matter how your robot performs.

Good Luck, and really enjoy your rookie year - it is special and I somewhat envy you.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by chmorroni

Pick one thing, and do it well.

I'd like to emphasize this, and expand/rephrase it slightly.

There are usually several elements to a FIRST Robotics Competition game. There are three* robots on an alliance. If you can identify one thing in the game that is value added to the alliance, and you can do that one thing better than anybody else, you will be selected and you will make the elimination rounds.

Understanding the rules and ways to score, as well as predicting what other teams will do is hugely important. There will be many teams that try to accomplish every objective in the game. There will be several teams that accomplish every objective in the game. There will be few teams that accomplish every objective in the game well. To do well in the FRC game, you don't need to accomplish every objective in it!

If the value added game objectives are XYZ, and you are the absolute best at X, you will be the perfect match for robots that are exceptional at Y and Z but weak in X.


*as far as I can tell at this point


Also, FIRST as an organization is more than a robotics competition, and while we put forth tons of time, effort, and money towards the game, the most important award a team can win has nothing to do with the game at all. So have fun competing, but always remember that FIRST is For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

[AZDevilRobot]

Hey Everyone! AZDevilRobot here from team 4111 Peace Love Robots.

My team is only 3 years old and while we may not be technically rookies, our team just received a new advisor (our old one left our school) and thus are making several changes based off experience.

Here are the changes we are making and ones we (and most teams) should have been doing since our inagural year:

1. Inventory!
We could not find anything in a crowded closet and even if we did find something, we couldn't find it again. We also bought several items multiple times because we thought we did not have it. Teams need to keep track of what they have and use.

2. Sponsors!
Our first year we had lots of money from a NASA rookie grant which covered us for our first two years. However, that and JCPenney were are only sponsors for the first two years. This year, we barely covered registration with remaining money. Luckily, we are still looking for sponsors. Teams need money or can't compete.

3. Structure!
Teams can't function with everyone doing whatever they want. Our past two years we had no agenda, deadlines or game plan. Everyone came in and either did too much work or not enough. This year, we have teams assigned to sections of the robot and leaders of the teams that meet to make sure the various parts connect. Everybody will be doing something at all times.

In closing, if you do these three things and the other tips in this forum from day one, you will be successful. Good luck and to anybody from Arizona in this forum, we'll see you at the regionals!

[yash101]

Precision in building things is good. Build a little higher than required. However, don't overdo it. Overdoing it will not give much benefit, but waste tons of time.


^^That's something that I should remind myself about while doing homework ^^

[cadandcookies]

To the end of all the fundraising for the robot post in this thread, FIRST recently released a "fundraising toolkit" which may help you figure out where to start. There's a ton of good stuff in there if you're trying to figure out where the money for those gearboxes is going to come from.

[yash101]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

To the end of all the fundraising for the robot post in this thread, FIRST recently released a "fundraising toolkit" which may help you figure out where to start. There's a ton of good stuff in there if you're trying to figure out where the money for those gearboxes is going to come from.

This thread isn't just about funding. We are talking a little about funding a little bit, though the sole purpose of this thread is to have a place for newbie teams to get advice from!