[FTC]: Autonomous?

[Andrew Remmers]

Exploding Bacon has 22 autonomous modes each doing different routines and combinations of scoring, collecting balls and defense. And thats just scratching the surface of what we could have done! :O

[NalaTI]

After going in as captain of alliance #1 and seeing the robot fail because of a faulty NXT wire, in the first round of the semifinals, I can definitely say that maintenance, and good preparation for each round is a key factor.

As far as balls shooting different, we've definitely found that the gold balls shoot different than the others, and the regular balls shoot way different (shorter) than any that are not the official ones...

[JohnFogarty]

Yeah you are right about the yellow ball flying different. though we haven't missed a shot with one yet like 5 times in one day xD.

20 AUTONOMOUS PROGRAMS!!!! WHAT IN THE HECK!!! lol, if only I didn't have to program our FRC bot I might have the time to do that, but as of now ummmm NO!! xD

Our team has something that a lot of teams don't speed at picking up balls so fast that we could gather 20 balls in 3 seconds, and our other team Atomix can do the same they are one of the only teams getting a Helix design to work.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by John_1102

Our team has something that a lot of teams don't speed at picking up balls so fast that we could gather 20 balls in 3 seconds, and our other team Atomix can do the same they are one of the only teams getting a Helix design to work.

One of our sister teams, 354, got a helix to work very nicely. It holds ~20 balls and can empty itself in ~6 seconds from what I saw this weekend. Not sure about the pickup rate, but it's not really a big deal with a passive gate mechanism.

[buddyb]

Originally Posted by John_1102

20 AUTONOMOUS PROGRAMS!!!! WHAT IN THE HECK!!! lol, if only I didn't have to program our FRC bot I might have the time to do that, but as of now ummmm NO!! xD

I second both points made here, and congratulate Exploding Bacon on having so many autonomouses.

Because of the character limit imposed by the NXT's tiny screen, making a single program with a menu of modes to pick from may help out the drivers a bit; selecting Blue, then Score Preloaded is *apparently* much easier to read than B_SPre_Auto. XD

[JohnFogarty]

There is one thing that, I hate is the FRC CRio doesn't have a LCD screen at all so if nothings in it you'll never know.

Yeah, HEY Exploding Bacon!!! is one of your FTC team programmers on your FRC team?? I'm heading down with 1102 next week to Florida so we should talk man

So I know this isn't the forums for strategy but what are your plans for nationals??

[buddyb]

Originally Posted by John_1102

There is one thing that, I hate is the FRC CRio doesn't have a LCD screen at all so if nothings in it you'll never know.

Yeah, HEY Exploding Bacon!!! is one of your FTC team programmers on your FRC team?? I'm heading down with 1102 next week to Florida so we should talk man

So I know this isn't the forums for strategy but what are your plans for nationals??

Yup. Download code, reboot, ensure "Robot code" light shows green, put on field. Otherwise, your changes may not have taken effect. [[We've had a few times where downloading the code ended up not doing anything.]]

We have a decent bot, so I think we'll do well in worlds. I really want to see other designs and learn new things, though. After all, it isn't a FIRST championship if you're not going all googly-eyed over someone else's bot/code.

[JohnFogarty]

I hate that light thing!!!! SO MUCH!!! If anything goes wrong it's like an oops oh well sort of thing.

IDK bout the code part, no one was using NXT-G last year at nationals except me when I was on 1102. Though i have to say my transition into RobotC and LabVIEW was quite easy.

Our robot at the beginning was a child, but thing is starting to grow it's wings esp. since we beat out two of our own teams 1102, and 3923 who won SC State Day 1. We got beaten by the on day 2 playing defense against 315 and burned out our right motor in the semifinals but still went on to the finals, We re geared the system to have the speed and power of ten bears. and it ended up working for us without the slightest pit stop in TN.

The best part of nationals is going to be there is a team from Maryland also called G-FORCE, and we have been talking and if we're on an alliance or against each other it's due to be a funny match. Also weirdly our robots turned our slightly similar shooter wise.

[buddyb]

Originally Posted by John_1102

I hate that light thing!!!! SO MUCH!!! If anything goes wrong it's like an oops oh well sort of thing.

IDK bout the code part, no one was using NXT-G last year at nationals except me when I was on 1102. Though i have to say my transition into RobotC and LabVIEW was quite easy.

Our robot at the beginning was a child, but thing is starting to grow it's wings esp. since we beat out two of our own teams 1102, and 3923 who won SC State Day 1. We got beaten by the on day 2 playing defense against 315 and burned out our right motor in the semifinals but still went on to the finals, We re geared the system to have the speed and power of ten bears. and it ended up working for us without the slightest pit stop in TN.

The best part of nationals is going to be there is a team from Maryland also called G-FORCE, and we have been talking and if we're on an alliance or against each other it's due to be a funny match. Also weirdly our robots turned our slightly similar shooter wise.

Yeah. The lights are annoying. >.<

You use RobotC and LabVIEW? Cool. I'm mainly RobotC, because the LabVIEW programs last year took a while to compile, and- surprisingly- quite a bit of the NXT's puny SSD. I think I was able to get 6 on there before it ran out of space. >.<

Very nice. Seeing a huge amount of progress in your robot is always a good thing.

Having multiple teams with similar names in the same match as allies or opponents is always funny. We have 4 FTC teams, and all of them used to just be called "ILITE". So, if we were partnered up to two- or even three- in the same match, it would be "And on the red alliance, ILITE robotics, with ILITE robotics!" XD

I just finished all of the FRC coding I can do for the night (see: bugtesting all that I can with a bare cRIO), so I thinks I'm going to move on to programming our FTC autonomouses. In tallying up how many I have to make, I'm seeing numbers in the mid-teens. So, might as well get to work.

[JohnFogarty]

yeah, that's hilarious >.<

I have 6 auto's for FRC
and now surprising even to me 19 auto's for FTC....I thought I couldn't do it XD

lol I need someone to shall I say robot Spar with xD.

[buddyb]

19 FTC Autonomouses?
And I need to make around 16 more.

I think our drivers are too spoiled. (And, considering we have around 5 or 6 matches in worlds, more than half of these autonomouses will never see the light of day )

Hold a mini-scrimmage, or ask one of your sister teams. If none of your sister teams want to, then make and program an FLL bot and have a rule that you can't get within 18" of it, unless it approaches you. Have someone drive it around.

If you're talking about autonomous spar, make the FLL bot a big stick that it holds in the air, and make it beep "SPARTA!" as it gets beat to shreds when it attempts to hold back your robot. XD

[JohnFogarty]

I should put a foot on it and have it spartan kick any robot that comes near it, 4 Sonar sensors. XD

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by John_1102

There is one thing that, I hate is the FRC CRio doesn't have a LCD screen at all so if nothings in it you'll never know.

Yeah, HEY Exploding Bacon!!! is one of your FTC team programmers on your FRC team?? I'm heading down with 1102 next week to Florida so we should talk man

So I know this isn't the forums for strategy but what are your plans for nationals??

Actually our "head programmer" graduated last year but he goes to UCF so he is a mentor for our FRC team. The FTC team's coach is a programmer for Simsol, he taught most of us the basics of programming and then those interested in programming, I basically CADed the entire robot, i also designed some functions of the bot just to add more automodes to the robot... lets just say that if we were going to worlds and i could build my new drive train we could easily have 50 autonomous'.

The programming section of the team basically have worked for quite a while on the automodes considering the robot hasnt changed really since the first competition.

[JohnFogarty]

having about 5-7 people on my team doesn't allow much of a team for programming.

And realizing now why would you want so many??
That would open a HUGE margin of error,
I would take 5-6 of the best ones and make the them godly perfect.

Ours are getting close to that, but I still have kinks to work out.

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by John_1102

having about 5-7 people on my team doesn't allow much of a team for programming.

And realizing now why would you want so many??
That would open a HUGE margin of error,
I would take 5-6 of the best ones and make the them godly perfect.

Ours are getting close to that, but I still have kinks to work out.

This year we designed the robot to be very adaptable having that many automodes just allowed us to be more adaptable to an alliance strategy