Robotics "Hitchhiker's Guide"

[dez250]

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

No offense to FIRST but their guides have a very detached look on the work i do. I think that we should create one with a personal touch and more in depth advice. Ive found i do things that are extremely useful that you wont find in any of the guides they have and then again while they have things that would be useful to do with a robot that is larger or runs longer is completely redundant with our robots. I think that something written by the people who actually do this and constantly think about it would be extremely useful to beginning students.

Please see my post 2 above yours. All the resources i listed have been compiled and presented by professional and reliable FIRST students and mentors, not necessarily FIRST themselves. If you have done something and think it will be useful write it up to a White Paper and upload it to ChiefDelphi.com.

[mechanicalbrain]

Originally Posted by dez250

Please see my post 2 above yours. All the resources i listed have been compiled and presented by professional and reliable FIRST students and mentors, not necessarily FIRST themselves. If you have done something and think it will be useful write it up to a White Paper and upload it to ChiefDelphi.com.

I was responding to Kent i noticed your posts and was responding to someone his post and statements. Please notice while my post came right after yours i was specificially responding to someone else. Im glad you agree with me but my post didn't pertain to those links. I know this post may sound a little angry but i assure you its not just me saying to read who i respond too.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

I was responding to Kent i noticed your posts and was responding to someone his post and statements. Please notice while my post came right after yours i was specificially responding to someone else. Im glad you agree with me but my post didn't pertain to those links. I know this post may sound a little angry but i assure you its not just me saying to read who i respond too.

Just because Mike wasn't responding to you, doesn't mean he doesn't have a valid point you should read. His reply to your concern that the presentations on the FIRST website:

"have a very detached look on the work i do. I think that we should create one with a personal touch and more in depth advice. Ive found i do things that are extremely useful that you wont find in any of the guides they have and then again while they have things that would be useful to do with a robot that is larger or runs longer is completely redundant with our robots. I think that something written by the people who actually do this and constantly think about it would be extremely useful to beginning students."

seemed valid. In fact, I suggest you perhaps re-read many of the presentations on the FIRST website (all the ones written by FIRST participants).

Thank you Mike for pointing these out. They will no doubt be useful to anyone just starting in the program.

[mechanicalbrain]

Oh i agree his posts were most helpful I'm just saying that i said why beginners should look other places than just FIRST material in response to Kent's post and it seems dez250 mistook it as me saying nobody was posting material by Forster's or that their was none. but i was just telling him that my post was exclusively explaining to Kent the value of other sources.

[sanddrag]

I've said it before but I'll say it again. There is no better "guide" to FRC than to become an active member on Chief Delphi and read all the new posts every day. Where do you think I learned everything I know?

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I've said it before but I'll say it again. There is no better "guide" to FRC than to become an active member on Chief Delphi and read all the new posts every day. Where do you think I learned everything I know?

Agreed.

[EricH]

Ken and dez raise a good point that the stuff is out there. However, I have been on a team for three years and around FIRST for far longer, and I have not really known where this kind of thing is. I see a pneumatics document around our build area and it's like "Where'd this come from?" I hear of various supplemental materials for the manual and I wonder what this is and where.
If we have some sort of guide that can answer most basic questions and includes where the information came from--as NoodleKnight is starting--I think that everyone will have an easier time because the veterans can refer rookies to the guide--and go there themselves. Hey, if the current manual is listed, it becomes one of a very few places where you could individually learn the basics in one (admittedly long) session.

[Joe Matt]

Also, if I might suggest, we might want to add some tounge-in-cheek humor and jokes that are in the real HHGTTG. But that's just something to add after someone gets the main document(s) done.

[jdiwnab]

I know that when I read a how-to book, I like examples and humor mixed in with the instructional stuff. That is one reason I like the "For Dummies" books. I read a book on parlementary presedure and accually didn't hate it. (for those of you who don't know wat parlementary presedure is, let's just say while it is important, it is very, very boring). Humor and practical examples are key to a good instructional book/artical/publication/whatever.

[MrRogersRedux]

Originally Posted by EricH

Ken and dez raise a good point that the stuff is out there. However, I have been on a team for three years and around FIRST for far longer, and I have not really known where this kind of thing is. I see a pneumatics document around our build area and it's like "Where'd this come from?" I hear of various supplemental materials for the manual and I wonder what this is and where.
If we have some sort of guide that can answer most basic questions and includes where the information came from--as NoodleKnight is starting--I think that everyone will have an easier time because the veterans can refer rookies to the guide--and go there themselves. Hey, if the current manual is listed, it becomes one of a very few places where you could individually learn the basics in one (admittedly long) session.

Agreed. But now, we actually need people to post some threads that would qualify for the guide.

[George1902]

To paraphrase Douglas Adams himself...

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an FRC hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you await the start of a regional in the cold morning hours; you can lie on it out in the sun during your lunch break; you can sleep under it up in the stands; use it to cover electronics while drilling or grinding; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of Big Mike (a mindboggingly stupid animal, he assumes that if you can't see him, he can't see you - daft as a bush, but gives very ravenous bear hugs); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if another FRC participant discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a cordless drill, a tape measure, electrical tape, zip ties, surgical tubing, allan wrenches, socket wrenches, electrical connectors, PWM cables, spare pneumatic cylinders, etc. Furthermore, the FRC participant will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the FRC participant will think is that any man who can go through a six week build period, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

It's been a while since I've read the novels, but that's what they say as near as I remember.

[mechanicalbrain]

HA i laugh at your towel! No the most important tool is duct tape. Simply put what can't it be used for! You could even make a towel out of it. By the way i love that quote. Terry Pratchett is the one writer who has inspired me the most and is probably the the source of most of my disorders!