A Reminder of Simplicity

[10intheCrunch]

We had about 8 batteries at competition this weekend, and kept cycling them through our three chargers...during elimination matches we ran close to out, but thankfully we didn't have to play any tiebreak matches and stayed powered through it all. If all else fails, I am almost positive another FIRST team would offer a spare battery (especially if they are not in elimination matches) if you are out of fresh ones. Even then, we had about 40 minutes between matches, so if you have 3 batteries you could have stayed powered through preliminaries...sorry if I am discounting teams that don't have the battery supply we do.

Perhaps my aversion to using sensors comes from the ease of using the whip to tap the balls off the tees. We don't have to turn and face into the ball; rather we run along the wall and in fact use the wall somewhat to correct our angle and hold straight. We are planning on putting a light sensor to detect the line and tell us where to stop to only hit one ball, but any more sensors would have only put more hardship on us programmers (we had enough to think about on the arms).

Another problem is serious sensor malfunction. Team 60, the team we collaborated with this year, lost in semifinals because their proximity sensor that was counting gear teeth was malfunctioning. Their autonomous mode, based on this sensor, then flung them into a wall, and they lost a pneumatic fitting, and all pressure. Eventually they lost the match and couldn't get repaired in time for the next one. With our dead reckoning, we can tap the wall a little hard, but we feel safer than if we were letting the robot decide things more.