Practice Robot?

[Classified*]

Last year was our first time building a second robot. We had about 15 students and we met 6 days a week (Monday-Saturday). We also met the last two Sundays of build season. We had adequate machinery: chop saw, band saw, drill press, and manual mills on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have to admit we over exerted ourselves by making two. We are still debating whether having two was better than spending more time on just one robot. One thing we might do this year is have the second bot only have the mechanisms essential for driver practice and auto. So, for example, last year we would have left out the hanger.

After bag day, though, it was totally awesome. We had lots of time to program and practice driving. The one mistake we did make though was we didn't make the control systems identical. We used victors on the practice bot and talon srxs on the comp bot. THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE!!!! We had to have two separate programs. All of the code made after bag day had to be transferred over to the comp bot's code before the competition. This caused endless headaches. Do yourself a favor. Make them identical...