Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

They were really consistent towards the middle of the event. In playoffs they were off though.

We were off in the playoffs for several reasons.
Manual aiming because issues with our IP camera. This is also why our autonomous shooting was all over the place, being very inconsistent.
The other was the way our catapult is mounted at the fulcrum. After a while we noticed it started shooting weak, and tried to bump up pressure (using a diigital pressure gauge accurate to the 100th of a PSI in set increments. The culprit was the temperature of the event, especially after they opened the roll-away doors for teams packing up and leaving the event.
How do we know? During the playoffs, we started using a blow driver to heat up the arm joint. We started to overshoot the goal.
Without going on the practice field and doing guesses, there was really no way for us to test other than during the match.
Overall, I'd say we did OK.
As for the 1 match where our shot got blocked, it was due to our appendage not being down. It is not possible to block our shot legally if a 54" robot is up only against our appendage. Our operator forgot to bring the arm down with a defender. In the match that followed, we successfully shot two right over defenders.