Simple things you can do to make your bot/team perform better

[KenWittlief]

now that we are getting to the last week of regionals and the championship is coming up I thought it would be good to start a thread of simple tricks and fixes or improvements people have come up with

or things you have seen at regionals that teams can do to improve their bots in the pits, or things teams can do to improve their performance on the field.

(Obviously) I have a few in mind:

1. ball herders. if you are trying to herd balls with arms or plows or panels that swing out, and find the balls jam and wedge, or if you have a problem with your bot riding up on balls, we found a simple solution. Spray the surface with silicon spray, then wipe it down good with a clean rag. The surface will not be wet or oily, and the silicon will not transfer to the balls and make then slippery, but it will greatly reduce the coeffecient of friction between the balls and your bot, and the balls will slip instead of wedging and jamming. You really have to try this to see the difference. its unbelieveable!

2. auton mode switches. We had switches on our bot to setup auton mode to turn left or right, and to disable it, and our team had an aweful time getting them right, because they were out of site on the bot and you had to reach under to set them. You can put switches on the OI input pins of an unused joystick port, and read them in the code - the code will hold the last value it saw before auton mode was enabled - its much easier to have a switch at the driver station clearly labeled AUTON L & R and to look at it and see L is Left and R is Right

3. auton mode is 1/8th of the match - have your bot do SOMETHING in auton mode. if nothing else have it dead recon forward about 20 feet to the center of the field, or to whereever you point it at the start of the match (other side is going for the release ball? you could at least get in their way) or push your mobile goal to the other side of the field? creating a sequence for auton mode is easy - set a loop counter (auton_count) = 0 on power up
and do something like this

while (auton_mode)
{
....
if (auton_count <120) // 40 = roughly 1 second, 120 = 3 S...
{
pwm1=pwm2=254; //drive motors on
auton_count++;
}
else pwm1=pwm2=127; //drive motors off
.....

4. go after the release ball in auton mode - teams have put paint stirring sticks on servos that twist out and the bot simply runs along the wall- when it get to the release ball the stick knocks the ball off

5. use the IR sensors: its incredibly simple - if you connect them to digital inputs 1 and 2, then the two flags: INTCON3bits.INT2IF and INTCON3bits.INT3IF will be set when the sensors see the beacon - you DONT have to do anything with interrupt to use these - they are already there in the hardware waiting to be used.

all you have to do is something like

if (INTCON3bits.INT2IF ==1) //sensor on rc_dig_in01 sees the beacon
{
//do what you need to when the beacon is seen
INTCON3bits.INT2IF=0; clear the flag for next time
}

to make this more robust I would wait till you see the flag set two or three times in a row (clearing it each time you see it) then you wont get mislead by a glitch or a slight reflection - it will be a good solid IR signal hitting the sensor - to use the sensor house it in a light tight box, like the black hobbie boxes from radio shack, with a hole or slit cut in one end to let the IR in from that direction only.

6. if you have a simple frame bot, put an arm on it. make an A frame on the top of your bot with 2" angle alum from homedepot, have the top be near the 5foot height limit, then put the van door motor sticking out one side and put a 4.5foot lenght of PVC pipe on it - what good is this? turn the motor on so the pipe spins upward and you can fling the 2X ball out of your mobile goal - then you can push the goal under the opponents ball drop and you will get at lest 20 or 30 points when balls fall in it

or you can knock the 2X ball off the goals after your opponent has capped them - it would take about 2 hours to add this to a frame-bot in the pits and wire the victor up to control the motor

7. bring a camcorder and put it up in the stands - have someone film your matches with the camera zoomed in close on your bot the whole match- later you can review the tape with the drive team or the pit crew - if something didnt go right in the match you got it all right there on tape, and you can review it over and over when you are not pumped full of adrenilin, and you can measure time and estimate distances if your auton mode is not working right - we did this at buckeye and it was EXTREEMLY useful - and a fringe benefit is you end up with lots of video of you bot in action to take home - do it for every match- its well worth the effort.