Lessons Learned - The Negative

[BurtGummer]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

I'm not blaming the volunteers, I'm just saying that some of the ruling is unnecessary. I am an individual who uses whats available. If I had the option of buying red and black wire at home depot in the correct gauge sizes, then I would have, because I do understand wiring codes. I used blue for black (not an uncommon practice for common/ground). They didn't have the red or even black wire (both surprising and not surprising in a way for Home Depot), so I used what I could buy. Having wire is better than none at all. Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.

The measuring tape idea from Sgreco is one I wish I would have thought of. Great idea, and I'll be sure to do that if we ever have this problem again.

Rookie then, should be defined, and maybe separate awards. Just an idea I'm throwing out. A team with robotics experience against a team with none at all has a large advantage, whether it's FTC or FRC, or some other robotics experience. Those are two completely different types of rookies in my opinion.