Practice Robots

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by pandamonium

Even if you try not too things will brake and you would inevitably work on your robot.

Not if you were, oh I don't know, honest?

I have always viewed practice bots as an unfair advantage that only teams with huge resources could pull off. But this year I wanted to find out so we are giving it a shot to see if it is worth it or not.

So far we have spent $500 ($435 for a roboRIO) on it and some extra time. $500 is 1/6 of our budget so this is a big risk for us. We have a small selection of tools, a high school woodshop, three mentors, and 8 regular students that productively build. So far I can honestly say that resources are not holding anyone back once you have been doing FRC for at least two years. Aside from cash we haven't struggled to come up with any of the items that we have needed yet. And one new sponsor will cover the cost we have encountered so far.

As far as how I feel about the process, well, twice the work and twice the practice building seem to equal twice the experience so far. I'll let you know how it all ends up after week one...

[Chief Hedgehog]

If I were to try to figure out why my team made a leap like we did from our rookie season to our second season I would have to put building a practice robot down as one of the most important endeavors.

We are not a 'high resource' team - every dollar we bring in the students are responsible for. The High School offers no funding - just the Tech Ed Labs (as I am the instructor). The students are responsible for how the money is allocated and against my advice they decided to invest in a practice robot in year two. The amount we were able to learn was well worth the amount of fundraising and door - knocking we had to do.

Edit: Dang it! I got sucked in anyway!