"Quotes" that were said during build season

[isaacnance2014]

When ANYTHING goes wrong
"Cute"

[tStano]

Last year at championships, we had just 'fixed' autonomous. We were using bang-bang control on our shooter. The operator(and lead student programmer) ran back to the pit to get the programming laptop frantically yelling; "its bangbanging but not indexing" and the lead programming mentor knew exactly what he meant.

[Jarren Harkema]

"At least it's doing something"

[Darth Drew]

Originally Posted by kmcclary

…
FIRST wrote:
"Rule G34 - COACHES may not touch BALLS.
Inadvertent or inconsequential contact will not be penalized.
Violation: FOUL"

…

Didn't any other team notice this one? What happened when your team encountered Rule G34?

- Keith

Wow, this gave me a good laugh, can't believe I didn't notice it, I can only imagine what would've happened if my team had read the rules together.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by kmcclary

Didn't any other team notice this one? What happened when your team encountered Rule G34?

Not the rule, but in discussion about inflating the game piece. I suggested to one of our sub-team captains when they couldn't find the nozzle adapter to inflate it that he get a group of freshmen to blow up the ball, and when one was out of breath, the next could take over. Ever the hygienic worrier, his response: "I don't know, that's a lot of mouths on the same ball." Some of the other student leaders snickered. Then he realized what he'd said and turned the same shade of red as the game piece.

[kmcclary]

{in reference to team reactions, when encountering Rule G34}

Originally Posted by MechEng83

Not the rule, but in discussion about inflating the game piece. I suggested to one of our sub-team captains when they couldn't find the nozzle adapter to inflate it that he get a group of freshmen to blow up the ball, and when one was out of breath, the next could take over. Ever the hygienic worrier, his response: "I don't know, that's a lot of mouths on the same ball." Some of the other student leaders snickered. Then he realized what he'd said and turned the same shade of red as the game piece.

{Chuckle} good one!

An OT diversion, in response to solving how to blow up the ball, with a standard tire inflation nozzle:

I'm a Scouter (Scout leader). Years ago, I went on a campout with some non-scouting people who like comfort. We arrived at a rustic campsite in the middle of nowhere very late at night, after everything was closed. They had an inflatable QUEEN sized mattress, and NO way to blow it up. That would take all night to inflate it by mouth! (I brought standard Scout gear. It didn't dawn on me that someone might bring something like THAT!)

So... After setting everyone else up, we drove it to the only gas station in the entire area. It was closed, but they still had their air hose outside, and it was active. The friends started to panic. There appeared to be no way to couple them AND trigger the release on the inflation valve. Being far into the woods on a long holiday weekend Friday night, we knew that there was probably no other store open for dozens of miles in any direction to even buy a hand pump.

I simply characterized WHAT we needed as an adapter - Basically, we needed a hollow tube, with a narrowed end. I thought for about a minute.. I then calmly pulled out a cheap click pen from the car's glove compartment, unscrewed the lower section of the pen case, wrapped my hand around the screw end of it and the inflation point to make a crude coupler-seal, and stuck the pen emergent narrowed end hard into the inflation nozzle.

Sure enough. The pen emergent end of the pen case actuated the trigger on the tire valve, and pushing it hard against it caused it to seal somewhat on the valve. My hand worked well enough as a coupler-seal between the pen case and the mattress to inflate the entire mattress to close to full in a couple of minutes.

I calmly reassembled the pen and put it away. We then used breath to top off the mattress, tied the now inflated mattress to the top of the car, and took it back to camp.

Obligatory quote (in spirit of this thread):

When others just stared at my nonchalance at MacGyver-ing a solution with whatever was on hand in under a minute, I just said:

"Hey, I'm an Engineer... This kind of problem doesn't bother us at all..."

BTW... In your case, I'd just use an old bot's pneumatics. Disconnect the far end of the 1/4" hose from the primary regulator, stick it into the ball's nozzle, and fire up the robot. If they don't couple tight enough, use a few turns of tape (duct, electric, scotch, masking, etc - whatever is handy) wrapped around the hose to make them mate tightly with a jam fit. Now use the robot's primary regulator to limit pressure and adjust your flow rate. When near full, pop the connection, turn off the robot, and finish with breath. (Just don't put a tape contaminated hose end back into a standard push fitting! Clean it with alcohol first, trim the end off, or just use a scrap of hose for this procedure!)

For my teams - I made a few "robot inflation adapters", using a sports ball nozzle kit, a tire inflation nozzle, some couplers from a hardware store (or FIRST KoP), and some 1/4" push fittings. I keep a variety of them in our pneumatics bins. We can now inflate just about anything (from balls to tires) with any robot that has a pneumatics package on it.
Big Hint - ALWAYS add an air tool quick release male (open tube) fitting to the open end of your robot's vent valve. Ex:
http://www.harborfreight.com/5-piece...set-68237.html
http://www.harborfreight.com/12-piec...kit-68194.html
This allows you to still vent, yet be able to pre-fill a robot's pneumatics in the shop with (FILTERED) shop air to save time (and batteries), AND quickly tap into a robot's on-board compressor at events to do things like inflate tires and balls without having to break an air line connection on your robot. Just make a few pneumatic "quick connect" (M & F) to 1/4" push fitting adapters, and you're in business. You can use spare robot air line at events, to tie them together.

I hope that helps. (Now back to the funny quotes!)

- Keith

[haugh.allenj]

During our rules presentation: "Just to clarify, the selection of the hot goal is random?"
"Hotness is in fact random. Our dark, shadowy overlords from the Committee have written it in the manual that hotness is random."

[EricH]

Background: Day of Kickoff, I'm scanning something on the computer. Around (but mostly behind) me, some of the students are prototyping [stuff that does stuff we want the robot to do]


*BAM!* (Ball hits door of shop)
Me: "Whatever that was, I think it's going on the robot!"
Student: "Uh... That was my arm."
Various mentors and students: "Get the tinfoil!" (and other comments related to having the student act as the robot)

[DDSLoan96]

Me at the end of day one: "When do you want to start working on the electronicals?" needless to say I was tired.

[Ashley Hartley]

Something came up about using a plunger type of thing to hold the ball, and one of the team members said: "Well, plungers don't stick to crap!"

[Invictus3593]

Originally Posted by kmcclary

FIRST wrote:
"Rule G34 - COACHES may not touch BALLS.
Inadvertent or inconsequential contact will not be penalized.
Violation: FOUL"


...

... Not a chance, with this group...

Or with any gruop, by that wording. I don't care how old one is, that's funny

[Jhultink]

"I think powering a robot with a hamster is legal"

[Calvin Hartley]

Originally Posted by Jhultink

"I think powering a robot with a hamster is legal"

I told you not to post this! They might use my idea!!

[kmcclary]

Originally Posted by Jhultink

"I think powering a robot with a hamster is legal"

LOL! An interesting thought!

OOC, Lessee... {reviews rules} Darn... R34 bans them. Too bad.

OTHERWISE, if you want to have some fun with your newbies, argue this with a straight face...:

"Well according to the FIRST Manual..."
...Rule R31 only talks about legal ELECTRICAL energy sources.
So... As long as the hamster:
A) is considered a part of the Robot (no "banned materials list" this season! Hee Hee...),
B) costs less than $400 each, they meet parts cost Rule R11
C) is NOT considered a "team member" (see Rule G9), and
D) ONLY provides MECHANICAL energy (no treadmill generators),
... then you're good! (Ditto with trained dogs or ferrets on treadmills within in your robot to run your shooter, etc... Be creative! ;-)

To cap it off, tell them:
"Just make sure you don't put both male and female hamsters in the same squirrel cage. Team {xxx} did that last year, and they lost power in the middle of the Finals. Very embarrassing!"

If someone smart sees Rule R34, say:
"Oh darn, I guess FIRST finally banned the squirrel cages this year. Too bad, that's an end of an era. You should have seen the cool robots that used them compete..." and walk away...
Just be sure to come tell us the response...Have fun! {snicker}

- Keith

[Calvin Hartley]

Originally Posted by kmcclary

LOL! An interesting thought!

OOC, Lessee... {reviews rules} Darn... R34 bans them. Too bad. [snipped]

You bring up good points, which I agree with except for one exception:

I would say that a hamster would fall under part C of R34. I consider a hamster running as 'deformation of ROBOT parts'.

Therefore, it is legal. I did my research carefully!

(For reference)

Originally Posted by 2014 Game Manual

Non-electrical sources of energy used by the ROBOT, (i.e., stored at the start of a MATCH), shall come only from the following sources:
A. compressed air stored in the pneumatic system that is legal per R79 and R80,
B. a change in the altitude of the ROBOT center of gravity, and
C. storage achieved by deformation of ROBOT parts.