Robot Decoration Ideas/help

[Bewizardment]

You should focus more on the robot its self. Although decorations are cool, having a lazer light show will never get you to regional. Maybe, when the robot is finished, you could put on a piece of sheet metal with your team name or number on it. For now, think about the competition.

[BurkeHalderman]

Originally Posted by Bewizardment

You should focus more on the robot its self. Although decorations are cool, having a lazer light show will never get you to regional. Maybe, when the robot is finished, you could put on a piece of sheet metal with your team name or number on it. For now, think about the competition.

I'm assuming you mean win a regional? And what's wrong with thinking about decorations? Maybe they already have their robot done or are far enough along they have the time to work on fun aesthetics. Based on the OP's team role as programmer maybe he doesn't have any work to do directly on the robot right now and still wants to contribute.

Decorating is one of the best parts in my opinion, besides having a fully functional competitive robot. We integrate the decorations and "flash" of the robot into the design, by adding the signal LED's and underglow during construction. And we never leave sign plates as an afterthought as they can usually serve a function.

To the OP,
You could use thin wall tubing or small OD bars of delrin as flexible rods and rap colored tape or adhesive backed LED's around it. I highly recommend adding LED underglow if you have the time. It super easy to do and really takes your robot to the next level as far as appearance in my opinion.

[Anthony4004]

Originally Posted by BurkeHalderman

Based on the OP's team role as programmer maybe he doesn't have any work to do directly on the robot right now and still wants to contribute.

I completely agree with Burke on this, as my team's captain and mechanical I'm working on the robot constantly so my programmers can do more than work on theoretical code. Instead, I have them all working on programming individual addressable RGB LEDs with an arduino to pimp out the robot once its done.

Even tho our robot isn't done, Ive already taken time to map out where we want our underglow to make sure that it doesn't mess with any of our control boards. You want to make sure that your robot stands out, thats how teams will remember you, and decorations help with this.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Bewizardment

You should focus more on the robot its self. Although decorations are cool, having a lazer light show will never get you to regional. Maybe, when the robot is finished, you could put on a piece of sheet metal with your team name or number on it. For now, think about the competition.

I don't know, aesthetics is pretty important to some teams like us. We have the mindset that it shouldn't just work, it should work beautifully.

One of the members on our team is currently in the process of painting our competition chassis and frame pieces. The other systems are still in the prototype phase, but the competition components will get machined soon, and then will be painted before being put on the competition bot. We also bought some strip lights from amazon. These strip lights Have worked for us in the past, and we're going to try and put them on the competition bot before it's bagged.