New To Robotics

[The Haser]

What does FRC mean?

Oh and I skimmed thru that article and to me its just

[thegathering]

Originally Posted by The Haser

What does FRC mean?

First Robotics Competition. The FRC teams are the ones that build the large bots seen here: http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/

[The Haser]

Check out my last post. I skimmed thru that and I didn't understand it at all.

Oh and a few other questions:

Everything is done thru wiring, but that wouldn't be considered "programming" it - or no?

If you do all the work yourself, would you still be called that?

Oh and on my prof I just put the name of my bot for the team. I woke up at like 3:30 one morning thinking of designs and it stuck with me.

[thegathering]

Originally Posted by The Haser

Check out my last post. I skimmed thru that and I didn't understand it at all.

Well... that's not quite what you're wanting to do. Basically, their taking the transmission (the gearing and such as that) off the Dewalt and fitting it to one of the motors that already come with the FRC robot kit.

I think you'll be taking the housing off the motor and transmission on the drill and using both to power your battlebot thing. You can see the pricing of the drill there in the whitepaper though as well as how to assemble the drill using other motors, how to fit it for a chain, and some other random things.

[The Haser]

There are no kits or anything. We make everything from scratch. We're required to wire it and all we get are the parts, and we can buy them ourselves too. The bot has to be within 20 cm x 20 cm by 20 cm or 8" x 8" x 8" for the imperial users.

(2.54 cm = 1 inch)

Edit: And I added more to my post again before...

I didn't really know where to put this chris so I apologize.

[chris31]

Wow, small size. What is the purpose of the bot? Destroy everything?

[chris31]

This forum is meant to be about FIRST, not random battlebots. So while alot of the info will apply, certainly not all of it will.

[The Haser]

Okay I'll be a bit more specific...

The bot is for an in-class competition. There's no other schools / places competing, its just to show what we learned and stuff throughout the course. There's nothing extra at all.

The bots just supposed to compete in sumo, controlling, an obsticle course (2 of the 3 minimum) and almost everyone is putting a weapon in it, and I want mine to spin. Only one person is working on each bot, thats why they're so small, and it's a one-semester project too. Everything is done by hand, there's no computers involved at all.

[thegathering]

That actually sounds like alot of fun. An RC car can be bought for not too much. Then you just need to fix the weapon on top/front/side whatever.

[The Haser]

Yeah I suppose that, a few people are taking apart remote control cars like you said.

Just mount the drill and tweak it a bit, but we can't use the actual car itself, we can really only use parts.

[LordTalps]

I don't want to think RC cars have much torque? Make something with a bit of power and some weight, you'll own the sumo and control competitions.

[The Haser]

I basically want to have more spin on the bot than have it moving. So like, move it to a standard speed in the sumo, but have it spin a hella lot faster than its moving.

[Cuog]

You may want to check out http://robotroom.com this guy competes and runs mini-sumo competitions in the seattle area I think. His site and books have alot of very useful information for building these robotcs completely from scratch

[bear24rw]

As far as making it wireless you should look into hobby controllers

http://www.futaba-rc.com/radios/futj63.html

I have that one and iv been pretty happy with it. It comes with a receiver and batterpack. If you dont know already the receiver will out put PWM (Pulse width modulation) that will control speed controllers that will controller your motors (you can also hook a servo up directy into the receiver)

Good Luck!

If you want a high speed, yet fairly light and small weapon, May I suggest going for a cordless dremel? It's simple to wire one to a speed controller or other power source, and they also come with some nice blade choices, like zip cutters and small endmills.

As far as a driving system, I'd go with a vex tank tread kit, as it's not too expensive, yet it still has decent tourque and grip, as well as the fact that it's more maneuverable than a normal rc car (tank style turning).