Team 610 pre-season drivetrain

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Wrong video? The cars are pretty sweet though!

Try clicking it again. There was some YouTube weirdness going on with the link.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

http://youtu.be/lQLp_F88CEg

We had a chance to take the drivetrain for a spin last night. We rang out the encoders and gyro, and all seems to be in good shape.

Our driver for the upcoming 2013-2014 season had his first crack at driving it around, and the initial feedback is very positive.

Looks solid. Something I noticed is your CG is between your back two wheels, so all of your turns spin around that back point, negating one of the useful effects of the 8wd and also preventing you from turning in place with almost no displacement of the robot.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Looks solid. Something I noticed is your CG is between your back two wheels, so all of your turns spin around that back point, negating one of the useful effects of the 8wd and also preventing you from turning in place with almost no displacement of the robot.

I'm quite certain 610 understands how weight distribution works Also, check again where the raised wheel is.

Edit: One can only assume this was quite intentional, for whatever reason.

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I'm quite certain 610 understands how weight distribution works Also, check again where the raised wheel is.

Edit: One can only assume this was quite intentional, for whatever reason.

Ah, didn't see the raised wheel part. That makes much more sense. I was confused for a minute as to why 610 would have their CG in the back on a standard center dropped 8wd.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Looks solid. Something I noticed is your CG is between your back two wheels, so all of your turns spin around that back point, negating one of the useful effects of the 8wd and also preventing you from turning in place with almost no displacement of the robot.

With the smaller robot size placing your gearboxes on one end allows you to keep a nice wide electronics area open in the robot without having to break it up. Having a small square robot you won't notice this off center turning as much and depending on what is build on top of it, the weight can distribute out. Our 2013 was weighted towards the back due to where our hanger was connected to our robot and we had both our gearboxes and battery as far back as we could. Even then when we hung on the tower we were the front end of our robot hung lower. Our driver had no issues or complaints and it was one of the smoothest 6wd robots I have driven. Also, when using gears to drive your robot, adding in wheels 7 & 8 is extremely easy so as an off-season robot it makes a nice test platform.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Ether

For those who do not have, or do not care to install, a C compiler, I will look into posting a compiled executable that grabs the parameter values from the environment.

Beta release posted. Constructive feedback would be appreciated.

[Nathan4567a]

Fantastic job! I love the nice and neat cable runs. Our team needs to have clean electronics like that this year. Good choice with the talons too. I love the fact there is no annoying fan on them

[z_beeblebrox]

^Reported

[magnets]

This is pretty cool. I agree with the whole shifting is overrated thing, and the rear-turning 8 wheel drive thing is pretty neat. Where do you get the fiberglass for the bellypan?

on a totally unrelated note-that spam post 2 above this one is crazy. It has the word movie in it 445 times.

[Tem1514 Mentor]

I sure that you guys will show off that bot during the quick build as it will give all the new teams a good idea of what may be done outside of the KOP

I have my bag already packed with those must have tools ready to help all our new teams get a good start on the season with a working drive train.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by Tem1514 Mentor

I sure that you guys will show off that bot during the quick build as it will give all the new teams a good idea of what may be done outside of the KOP

I have my bag already packed with those must have tools ready to help all our new teams get a good start on the season with a working drive train.

Yes! I actually plan on using this drivetrain for the Java Workshop at Quick Build. I'll be doing code for the robot from the ground up starting from a bare laptop with no tools installed.

The goal is to progress to a driveable base, and a simple autonomous by day's end - and to touch on any additional topics the Rookie Teams are interested in learning about.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Yes! I actually plan on using this drivetrain for the Java Workshop at Quick Build. I'll be doing code for the robot from the ground up starting from a bare laptop with no tools installed.

The goal is to progress to a driveable base, and a simple autonomous by day's end - and to touch on any additional topics the Rookie Teams are interested in learning about.

Would you mind recording it? Something like that would be an awesome resource for all.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

Would you mind recording it? Something like that would be an awesome resource for all.

The Quick Build workshop is really a group of mentors helping Rookie teams get their tools setup, programming and downloading their first program to a robot, etc. It's over 8 hours long, and is just a "get work done" session where we veteran mentors help out. It doesn't make for good recordings, nor is it all that effective to watch the recordings after the fact.

We've tried to record it in the past I believe, and I don't think anyone was willing to watch 8+ hours of a lot of different teams working on their robots.

Sorry!

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

The Quick Build workshop is really a group of mentors helping Rookie teams get their tools setup, programming and downloading their first program to a robot, etc. It's over 8 hours long, and is just a "get work done" session where we veteran mentors help out. It doesn't make for good recordings, nor is it all that effective to watch the recordings after the fact.

We've tried to record it in the past I believe, and I don't think anyone was willing to watch 8+ hours of a lot of different teams working on their robots.

Sorry!

Thanks for explaining -- I obviously misunderstood. Best of luck at the workshop!