What's the Stupidest/Funniest Thing you did in Robotics during the '06 Season?

[Bcahn836]

This is a video from the 2005 season. We just mounted our motors and trans and wanted to take a test drive. So we quick rigged an electronics board, and well the rest was just awesome.
The Test Video

[JaneYoung]

I got a speeding ticket, going 40 in a 35.

It was 6:30 in the morning and I was driving in the hills of Austin, trying to find the all night Kinkos out there to do some stuff for the team. I wanted to be able to get it to one of the leads when the team met @ 8a.m. I was trying to find the speed limit signs (lots of trees) and was thinking 40 was probably about right when I went around a curve..just as I went around a curve, I thought, 'hmm, this might be a 30 or 35 mph zone, it's a little wind-y and curvy here..' and as I slowed to 35, I saw a 35mph sign and also the red lights in my rear view. I pulled over, got my ticket and then asked directions to the Kinkos. The officer was very helpful.

sidenote: the Kinkos couldn't do what I needed even though I had called. I ended up going to one in by the university where I work that opens at 8 and I got to the team mtg. @ 9 - late anyway...

[Bill_Hancoc]

Originally Posted by Bcahn836

This is a video from the 2005 season. We just mounted our motors and trans and wanted to take a test drive. So we quick rigged an electronics board, and well the rest was just awesome.
The Test Video

The best part of that video was at the end seeing all the adults watching

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Bcahn836

This is a video from the 2005 season. We just mounted our motors and trans and wanted to take a test drive. So we quick rigged an electronics board, and well the rest was just awesome.
The Test Video

Yea we did something similar to that, we got really bored pre-season one day and decided to attach a classroom chair on to one of our robots with zip-ties

Oh and at the Waterloo regional our team member who was representing us during the playoff picking ceremonies had the biggest voice crack ever.. imagine "610 graciously ACCEPTS (in a high pitch girly screech..)" I was in the pits and could barely hear what was going on, but i definitely could hear this horrible screech

[X-Istence]

Originally Posted by RoboMadi

uhhh....... In robotics?

Well, stupidest mistake a programmer can make : miss a semi colon ';'

And i bet all the programmers out there has done it

Anyone that says they have not is lying!

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

Well, for prototyping and testing purposes, we had allowed our pwm cables from live speed controllers just hang unplugged while we tested. Well, I went to turn on the bot, and a massive cloud of smoke rolled out from our eelctronics. I had completely burned the ground insulation off when a cable shorted the power screws to a victor. Luckily, the brain was unharmed.

Same thing happened to my mentor.


Stupidest mistake I made? When I was supposed to disconnect the battery from a running motor I automatically just let it fall and stepped back. In this case though, the two wires fell into the connector completing the circuit and the rest is history . (Caused our welds to break!)

[Donut]

This year the stupidest thing was spending 20 minutes trying to test with the camera and looking at all the values on the dashboard to figure out why it wasn't working, only to realise we never removed the lens cap.

I don't think there were any really hysterical moments this year, though the shooter testing was quite fun (it ended up turning into a game of semi-baseball with a pvc bat).

[Jaine Perotti]

I did a lot of "stupid" things in robotics, but the one that stands out most in my mind was blowing up one of the victors (not last year, but the year before), by touching the battery leads to the motor output terminals instead of the battery ones. It smelled very bad.

Trying to lighten the robot in the pit with the corded drill, accidentally going in too far after pushing out the other side of the aluminum, and snapping the 9/32 drill bit when the end of it wedged itself in some #35 chain.

Having to drill 11 different holes before I got the correct placement when building the mount for the bottom pulley in our 2004 robot.

When I was a freshman, having to teach myself "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" because I overthought it. I felt so awkward even using basic hand tools cause I knew I would turn them the wrong way... lol...

...oops, this is supposed to be for 2006. So...

All of the countless times I have had to remake parts because there was some small thing wrong with them. That happens every year.

Also, don't date anyone on your team unless you are POSITVE that you will be able to handle yourself professionally, not only during your relationship, but even after it ends. Yuck. That was a stupid mistake I made this past season.

This year I also got a blood blister when I pinched my middle finger in the arbor press. Don't ask how it happened... I know it must sound like I got angry at it and it got angry back at me, but it was more like negligence on my part.

Also, while this wasn't my fault, I got smacked in the head with a poof ball by Sean Lynch from 1782... it was an interesting first impression upon meeting him.

[Billfred]

Stupidest thing I did this season?

a) Say that I'd get a haircut if 1293 won all three of its matches on Saturday at Palmetto. (In each of those three matches, we faced either the Mech Techs, the Pi-oneers, or Metal-In-Motion with, more or less, a box on wheels. It didn't seem like things would go that way, but good strategy, good defense, and a few lucky breaks on alliance partners did the job.)

b) Relaying to Jessica Boucher the news I heard that she was working on Archimedes, not Galileo.

[Dan Petrovic]

Something along the lines of Halo 2 in an Omni Hotel room with a projector and a balcony.

Oh dear... I've said too much.

[Éowyn]

Not all that much was stupid, but there were a few things such as:

Using a deburrer left-handed--Now where did you say the band-aids were?
Leaving the chuck in the lathe.
Spending half a saturday at a mill because I kept messing up a part.
Staying up all night before the practice day in Milwaukee--and then falling asleep in the bleachers the day of.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by Éowyn

Staying up all night before the practice day in Milwaukee--and then falling asleep in the bleachers the day of.

This reminds me of a video we have of one of our team members who did something similar in 2005. He was apparently rather tired, and after cruising around in our mascot getup for a while he sat down to watch a match. (It might have been one of ours, I don't remember) Then, tiredness struck, he fell asleep with the funniest expression on his face and kept nodding in his sleep.

[Graham Donaldson]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

Yea we did something similar to that, we got really bored pre-season one day and decided to attach a classroom chair on to one of our robots with zip-ties

Oh yeah...we've done that. I think it was in postseason or something (or after we had shipped the '06 robot), but we drilled a 2x4 onto our '05 bot and drove around school with our controller on a team member's lap. People we passed in the halls were kinda like "And this is the NJ '05 Regional Rookie All-Star team???" Yeah...we had fun.

Ahh, the fun you can have when you're not doing what you're supposed to be.

The Canuck

I'm reminded of something that happened my freshmen year. We had a small test robot sitting around, and a new member not skilled in electronics walked by. The drive motor for it's arm was off, so the output leads from a victor were hanging loose. Not knowing what was going on, the new member plugged those into the fuse board, making it so power was coming into the victor from both ends. When we plugged the bot in to test the drive train, we saw some pretty fireworks. This has been the only time that I have seen a victor spit molten slag into the air, as well as fill an entire room with smoke. All in all, the lesson learned was to check all wiring before running a bot.

[SBloodmoon]

I think 1456's stupidest moment was our Mentor-Driven trek to the outside stairway to play with a rather fast motor connected to a wheel and some electrical tape so that it was like a fan (With the electrical tape blade). It ended up going to fast and spun out of control and we ground away a good part of the inside of the wheel...Oops!