Hints and Observations from Breakaway - Week 1

[Karibou]

15. Be careful with your E-stop button - they do break, and there aren't extras at the spare parts table (or at least, there weren't in Traverse City). You probably won't find a team with an extra one, either.

16. Gloves were provided in the KoP for a reason - use them! They count towards the safety award. And as always, lift from your legs and not your back.

17. It's difficult to see a ball from the driver's station if it's right up against the far side of the far bump.

18. Even if you DO have a hard mechanism to keep balls out from the underside of your robot, charging at a ball too fast may still result in your robot going over it if that mechanism isn't below the center of the ball.

[rwood359]

Originally Posted by Ed Sparks

3. The Q&A indicates that it is ok to plow multiple balls as long as they are not possessing more than one. This was mis-understood at Peachtree.

At the San Diego regional, we were penalized for possessing two balls when we possessed one and were herding another. We challenged the penalty. From what our student said, the Ref that made the call said that that was the way he had been making the call all day. The Head Ref's decision was to let the penalty stand and tell the Ref to call them correctly from then on. We ended up with a 3-3 tie and 3 standing points. Without the call, the win would have been worth 10 standing points. A 7 point penalty - don't you just love the new ranking system.

Originally Posted by Ed Sparks

8. Charge your classmate every chance you get. There is a definate problem for teams that make it to the final 8 concerning this. At Peachtree, half of the classmates were just about to die when the last match was played (due to all of the delays and tie matches). Get a plan now, make someone responsible to manage this.

We had the Classmate on the charger just about every minute that we were in the pits. We were in the red at the end of the quarter finals. GP got us a battery to use for the rest of finals. Unfortunately, I don't know who to thank.

Originally Posted by Ed Sparks

11. I'll bet 75% of the teams this year used pneumatics (many for the first time). Be sure your using the FIRST supplied primary regulator(60psi). many teams don't realize that the last module on the cRIO can directly drive the solenoid valves.

Make sure that it is the primary (black ring) not the secondary (yellow ring) regulator. That slowed our inspection for a few minutes.