Vex question for FRC teams

[hardcopi]

I am looking into Vex a little to try and give some newbies (we will lose a lot of veterans this year) some more practical experience. Is this a good idea? FRC will always be our mainstay but branching out, especially in the fall seems like a good idea.

Do the season intersect badly? The costs seem pretty reasonable. Is it as intense as FRC meetings wise or would 1 day a week be good enough?

Thanks,

Rich.

[tomead]

VEX would be a great experience for new members. With the competition being year round they could have a great deal of experience in designing and competing well before the FRC game release and build season. VEX is also much easier to change and allows you go through multiple iterations with ease. Getting used to programming with RobotC or PROS will also expose them to at least the logic needed for programming in Java, and they can get a good grasp on using sensors.

I think most teams who have students progressing from other robotics platforms to FRC can tell you that those students have a firmer grasp on building, programming, and designing robots.

[Foster]

I'm a big fan of the VEX program and it makes a good intro into FRC.

Sadly there is a great deal of overlap with the FRC season.

World Championships are in April (2015 in Louisville). The 2015-16 game will be announced then. So you will be able to work across the summer. Most VEX teams don't ramp up until September, so the extra time in June/July/Aug will help the team.

VEX has some pretty explosive growth, so in most cases to go to Worlds you will need to win a state level competition. Entries to the States are by winning at a local competition. The good news is that there are lots of local events.

Competitions start in October, States start in Jan and could be as late as the first week of March.

RobotC was mentioned, it's a great programming environment. PROS is more complex, but is closer to what you would find in a FRC toolchain for Java.

Expect to spend about $1,200 your first year to build a competitive robot, about $200-300 the next year. Event fees range in the $50-$75 per event range. Lots of places will give you a free entry to their event if you give them a free entry to your event. Holding a local event is easy, but that would be in the middle of build season.

You could also do FTC. Robot will cost about the same, but you have some extra flexibility on what you can machine. So if that's important that may be a bonus. I don't track how many FTC events there are or the cost, when I last looked they were more expensive ($150-$200 per event). Same season issues as with VEX.

Good luck!