pic: FRC Team 1501 T.H.R.U.S.T. presents

[Wayne Doenges]

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[Richard Wallace]

Very nice!

Love that turret. Leading the field in goal score and third in OPR at Tippecanoe tells me that your high shot is accurate. Did you shoot more from the batter or from the field?

32 RS with 10-2 record says you either (1) didn't miss a breach, or (2) were in on at least one capture during quals. Either way that's solid driving.

How did the Rhino track pulleys hold up?

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Did you shoot more from the batter or from the field?
How did the Rhino track pulleys hold up?

We have a two position angle adjustment on the top of the turret. During quals, we prefer to shoot anywhere on the field (no defense generally). We can shoot from the batter if we need too, so far it hasn't been a big need for it, other than if you don't do it, teams assume you can't.....It's way more fun to be unpredictable on the field, as we shoot any window, anywhere on the field. We showed the batter shot off the second day of qualifications just prove we can do it.

Actually, I am surprised...The Rhino tracks on this machine, we bought 2 hours after the game was announced on kick off day. Then 3 weeks later we ordered a second set for our practice robot. The practice robot pulleys are pretty much trashed and have been replaced. This very early Rhino track on the production robot, has not shown the same failures as the practice robot, but we have already received a complementary set of pulleys from Andymark, which we have not used. I actually need to order more, because I have already given those pulleys away to teams that needed them in North Carolina...

[EricH]

Questions:

What is this thing named?

Where are all the rivets hiding? (Seriously, you guys look like you're slipping. I can only see a few...)

[tickspe15]

Great robot, it was great competing with/against you!

If you can shoot from anywhere on the field why did you choose to shoot from the least protected place on the field when you did get defended?

[Akash Rastogi]

I'm sure this is an awesome bot and all, as usual, but I really miss your crazy sheetmetal designs

[tindleroot]

Great robot, easily one of the most competitive in Indiana. I don't think I saw the drop down collector this past weekend - were you just driving the robot over the boulders to pick them up or is my memory failing me?

I think one of the most memorable moments of Tippecanoe was when you guys shot a high goal from on top of 4103 with a few seconds left in the match. Even though I knew it was a technical as it happened, it was still impressive to watch and I hadn't heard the crowd as excited as they were up to that point.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by tickspe15

Great robot, it was great competing with/against you!

If you can shoot from anywhere on the field why did you choose to shoot from the least protected place on the field when you did get defended?

I don't recall hardly any defense at Tippecanoe. I remember two robots. The second robot was very brief, 1741. (right around 1:16 you see 1741 Dukes of Hazard) we back against the batter to shoot, but when they leave, we go back to field shooting. The second defender I remember got trapped and we took the automatic scale points because he was still there at 20 seconds to go.

https://www.facebook.com/tim.sitton....type=2&theater

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I'm sure this is an awesome bot and all, as usual, but I really miss your crazy sheetmetal designs

Robot and teams are who they are because of their mentors. Our sheet metal mentor passed away sometime ago and me being a Controls Engineering mentor struggle with sheet metal. Others pick up and we continued for a few years, but over the past two years we've had to simplify down to our current mentoring capability. I try to only push the team to the resources we have. I wished we had another sheet metal mentor and a water jet...that would be my wish list.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

Great robot, easily one of the most competitive in Indiana. I don't think I saw the drop down collector this past weekend - were you just driving the robot over the boulders to pick them up or is my memory failing me?

Nope, good catch.

We had the over the bumper collector at North Carolina. And it broke nearly every match. We struggled with harvesting in North Carolina. So for Tippecanoe, we moved the harvesting roller behind the bumper zone for protection and added a 3rd camera servo position to look at boulders going into the intake. This increased our average from 2 boulders shot in the high goal at NC to 5 boulders shot in the high goal at Tippy. If we can't see the boulders, we drive from camera feedback, so there is a brief pause sometimes when we collect a boulder, but that's better than jamming a boulder and can't shoot.

It was a design iterations we do on our team, like I am sure many other teams do. Sometimes things don't work well in the heat of the competition so we are always trying to improve a design.

PS: That's the first collector we've ever tried to make on our team, next time, we will do better and learned alot.

[carpedav000]

Man, those pesky defense bots

On a more serious note, is there any particular reason why the boulders spin while you are driving around with one? From what I saw it also happens when the turret isn't tracking.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

Man, those pesky defense bots

On a more serious note, is there any particular reason why the boulders spin while you are driving around with one? From what I saw it also happens when the turret isn't tracking.

Ha ha...1741...BTY...I'd like to point out, that was AWESOME that we agreed on the "Sally-Port Agreement". I hope you was able to do that in your next match as well.

Wow...very observant! Actually we call that "pop-corning" the boulder. On Saturday when the boulder was in the indexer and made the ball sensor, it did that automatically. On Sunday, we changed it to only popcorn when we the shooter wheel is spinning, so it was stationary on Sunday.

The reason was to eliminate driver error of position the boulder correctly on top and ensure that the boulder was still not captured in the harvesting rollers. So by pop-corning the boulder, it's rolling up on top of the harvesting wheels, frictionless, so when we launch the boulder with our air kicker, it's consistent when it hits the shooter wheel. If it was pinched on the top intake roller wheel, the air kicker will still get it out, but the exit velocity was different. So we found it best to keep the boulder rolling to make sure the shot was consistent each time.

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Ha ha...1741...BTY...I'd like to point out, that was AWESOME that we agreed on the "Sally-Port Agreement". I hope you was able to do that in your next match as well.

Wow...very observant! Actually we call that "pop-corning" the boulder. On Saturday when the boulder was in the indexer and made the ball sensor, it did that automatically. On Sunday, we changed it to only popcorn when we the shooter wheel is spinning, so it was stationary on Sunday.

The reason was to eliminate driver error of position the boulder correctly on top and ensure that the boulder was still not captured in the harvesting rollers. So by pop-corning the boulder, it's rolling up on top of the harvesting wheels, frictionless, so when we launch the boulder with our air kicker, it's consistent when it hits the shooter wheel. If it was pinched on the top intake roller wheel, the air kicker will still get it out, but the exit velocity was different. So we found it best to keep the boulder rolling to make sure the shot was consistent each time.

Wait, what was the Sally port agreement?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

Wait, what was the Sally port agreement?

"Let's both pick Sally so we can see what we're doing."

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

"Let's both pick Sally so we can see what we're doing."

Ah. Okay