Week 6 and still not finished!

[dtengineering]

"because we try to stick with the philosophy "student designed, student built", things just take a long time."

When you follow that philosophy it is hard to go wrong. Before getting involved in FIRST, we used to design and build Electrathon Race cars (1hp motor, student driven, battery-limited, 1hr race, typically 40km/hr for high school cars to 80km/hr for "pros"). Some of the most gifted students I have ever taught worked together on a team and didn't have their car ready for tech inspection by race day. I figured I had kind of let them down, after all... I could have stepped in and ensured that their car was finished on time.

It was the first time, I think, they had ever really failed at anything at school. Two years later (they all went in to UBC Engineering together) they were in a robotics competition as part of a class project. They cleaned up... their robot was ready two weeks in advance, and they were troubleshooting their sensors and code before other teams even had figured out what their wheels were going to be like. Talking to them afterwards, they described their failure at designing and building their Electrathon car as the motivation to "never let THAT happen to them again."

While I suspect your team will get their machine ready to roll by ship date, it doesn't hurt to remember that we are teachers, coaches and mentors. Our first duty is not to the robot, but to the kids.

That said, it sounds like you aren't too badly off... looking at pictures from last year we have one dated February 18th, where we are all gathered around holding a sign reading "119" signifying that we had got the robot back together AND finally met the weight limit... with four days to go until shipping. (But still with wiring problems, no armour for the circuitry, etc.) This year is another race against the clock.

Good luck,

Jason

[Dan Petrovic]

Yeah

We're pretty far behind and snow didn't help.

We don't have a running chassis yet. The only thing that works, so far, is the storage.

[LightWaves1636]

WE are still behind where we want to be but we'll make it wvwn if we have to pull an all nighter at someone's house.

[Scott Morgan]

no matter what happens it can't be worse than our robot from two years ago
it's still not finished but, we went with what we had and were second seed in the L.A. regional

edit: I noticed this quote earlier in the thread
"because we try to stick with the philosophy "student designed, student built", things just take a long time."
and I would like to say that it's not nessassarily true
the mentors on our team offer great advice and we could definatly not function as a group with out them, but we have some students who can design and/ or fabricate as fast or faster than them in some cases

[Cody Carey]

OK, It's 1:54AM on the due date of the visualization, it's not done, And I'm on chiefdelphi

[Rich Wong]

Originally Posted by Phil Paspalas

WARNING: This is a head coach venting!

It's Sunday at the beginning of week 6, 11am. 14" of the white stuff is on the ground and still falling! 2nd year in FIRST and the robot still isn't finshed. Chassis, done! Electrical panels mocked up but not fabricated in polycarbonate yet. ........

Phil Paspalas
Head Coach - Team 1676
The Pascack Pioneers
2005 NJ Rookie All-Stars
Runner-up: Montclair Mayhem
Champions: Ramp Riot (Thanks 25!)

DITTO!
So much to do.... so little time. The snow delay has hurt us.

[LightWaves1636]

Robot?! you mean we're supposed to be building a robot?! man how am I going to break the news to the team? JK lol, my mind is really racing now. we don't have an autonomous code worked out yet so I get to stay glued to my laptop all week now and still waiting for the hopper and launcher to get done. We finally had a successful launch on Saturday.

[Church59]

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT, i am church59 of team 1544, if you think you are behind...oh well. we defintaly are i know because of all the snow,volcanoes, rain, ice and wind and yet we still are far behind. CAN SOMONE GIVE US AN EXTRA WEEK PLEASE???!!!??? no we dont even have a good ball picker uper or even hopper. this is kinda stressful just like last year.

[RoboMadi]

last year, we end up breaking our whole robot two days before the shipping date. I still remember we put in straight 32 hours of work to get it done on time.
This year, we are 95% done and as of now just practicing. We kinda foreshadow the snow, and shippied our robot to one of our member's kitchen!!.
now we work there and eat at the same time......hahaha
but good luck to everyone.

Thats actually FIRST is all about..!

[TimCraig]

After the second year, we figured out the only way to have a shot at finishing is to go 7 days a week from the kickoff. Last year we were on track to have the robot done during week 5 but I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia for the last two weeks of the build. This year we're behind schedule in that the electrical isn't done so everything else can't be tested. We've been going 7 days a week but there seems to have been little urgency among the students until this past weekend. There would be students around for a few hours a day but around 5:30 pm it would be pretty quiet around the lab.

[Schneidie]

Hey man, don't worry. We've finished robots at the regionals. One year we finished the controls board between practice matches.

[pyroslev]

The Following blurb is four years old but is funny.

My freshman year, we were behind a rookie team in the pits. They literally shipped their crate with the parts in there (Details were never made known to many...). We helped build their robot and they finished not that far ahead of us in the competition.

So do not feel so bad about being behind in the sixth week!

[Winged Wonder]

dont worry... we're not as done as we'd like to be either.

in the end, everything will come together magnificiently. and if you cant finish by ship date, put everything you need in the crate and finish it at the venue. there's no shame if you're still working come the Thursday of competition--and if you really are pinched for time, dont be afraid to ask another team for help. we're all here to help each other.

[Cactus_Robotics]

Yea it Doesn't help here, all that sunshine 74 degrees today, the team always wants to throw poof balls at each other. Nah I'm kidding no snow here though, but i think everyone is struggling a bit but will all get there. Remember 2 years ago at nationals a team build their robot at Nat's due to it being lost during shipping and i believe they were in the national finals or semis so don't give up hope.

[paulcd2000]

Our mechanical team is a little farther along, as is electrical, but they won't let us programmers use the bot, so we have no idea what is and isn't working!