Most underrated/undervalued tools

[Jeremy Germita]

Originally Posted by Everett33

Flush cutting side cutters. Nothing worse than dragging your arm or hand over a sharp zip-tie.

My students know that I will never stop recommending this pair of cutters. Buttery smooth operation, super flush cuts, great for zip ties, wires, etc. The super narrow tip allows you to get into really tight corners. It's a must-have tool for all of our competitions.

Another underrated tool is Google Docs. I use Sheets for just about everything from BOMs, design calculations, todo lists, pick lists, packing sheets, etc.

I'm also slowly becoming attached to Wunderlist. Super useful listing app with a web interface as well as android and iOS apps. One of my favorite features is attaching pictures to list items. You can also share lists with other people. At Las Vegas, our scouting team set up a todo-list of all of the teams at the event. We were able to attach photos of all of the robots to their items on the list while adding notes and other info on teams. Extremely useful during alliance selections. Real time updating on the list allowed me and my scouts to quickly rearrange our pick list as teams became unavailable. Our field rep during selections received these updates within seconds.

Groupme is another useful app for us as it allows us to create team-wide or subteam group chats for competitions. Helped organize logistics like food plans and travel as well as discussing scouting information, robot status, and audience defense selection.