A Breakdown of the Six Weeks for Rookies

[Wayne C.]

Below is the graphic from yesterday's rookie workshop giving a breakdown of the events of the season in a general fashion. There has been much demand for it by e-mail since then so I thought the CD rookies might be interested in it too. Enjoy

WC

[Pattie]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for sharing. It is very similar to what we plan so maybe we're on the right track - I'll print this out though and see if there's anything we've missed.

Thanks again,

Pattie

[Ready_Mix]

OMG that makes me realize just how little time we have.... Are you guys successful leaving programming until the end like that? We almost shot ourselves in the foot last year doing that.

[HPA_Robotics_13]

Originally Posted by Ready_Mix

OMG that makes me realize just how little time we have.... Are you guys successful leaving programming until the end like that? We almost shot ourselves in the foot last year doing that.

I agree with Ready_Mix. Being a team from Hawaii we usually don't get our kit of parts until the beginning of the second week, and then it takes a while for us to receive any other parts we order. In the past we have followed a strategy in which we start working hard on programming after we have a completed robot to test it on, which ends up being about a week before shipping. Last year this backfired on us: we were up until 4 AM on the eve of the ship date doing driver and autonomous program testing. At the regional none of our autonomous programming worked very reliably.
At today's brainstorming and organizational meeting one of my main agenda points was that we should have a team working on programming from the first few days. Our programming team is meeting with the programming mentor tomorrow night, in fact. The plan is to construct the FIRST chassis that comes with the kit of parts within 48 hours of kit arrival (probably next week Monday) so that the programming team can use it as a platform for familiarizing themselves with the new tools/system (I'm not a programmer so I don't know much about it) and figuring out how to use the new sensors.
I think that the way this six week breakdown assigns time for programming is a bad plan, especially for rookie teams who have students who are not as familiar with programming an FRC robot. Take a lesson from us Hawaiians and get the ball rolling on your software in the first week! It's one of the few things we can do in the first week, before the kit arrives, because we have access to the software tools right away.

[Pattie]

My perception was a little different I guess - our programming team plans to start immediately - but I guess when I looked at the schedule assumed it meant integrating the programming into the robot and testing the programming.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Pattie

My perception was a little different I guess - our programming team plans to start immediately - but I guess when I looked at the schedule assumed it meant integrating the programming into the robot and testing the programming.

Definitely want to start programming immediately, at least in getting the basic algorithms and code structures in before you fully implement them.

[Aignam]

Is there some kind of key for the coloring of the boxes?

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Aignam

Is there some kind of key for the coloring of the boxes?

rough clusters by work group or topic

[ZoNeGuY]

Yeah, programming is a must from day 1, dont put it off unless your programmers like spending 2 sleepless nights before the trips......

[Cyberguy34000]

We put our programmers through hell last year, but they did an amazing job.

They programmed the robot in the last 3 days before shiping. You see, we spent the first 3 weeks dreaming about cool ideas and getting a frame. Then the following 3 weeks were pretty much full of panicking and building. That's a nightmare you want to stay away from at all costs.

So this year, we're building the Kit Bot (almost finished) to give the programmers something to work with, while we work on our own custom designed chasis.

Don't make the same mistake we made last year, settle on a design and get building as soon as you possibly can!

[sojouner06]

about the schedule, you should be prepared to be a day behind...after the first day...