Use Velcro on your Control Board!!

[Corey Oostveen]

Attention Teams,


We overlooked the necessity of keeping our control board firmly on the control station.

We did the common, "this thing weighs like 30 lbs no way it will go anywhere"

We could not have been more wrong. In a game where teams are trying to autonomously navigate around the field as fast as they can. You are going to run into some problems.

THE STORY:
So the match starts out with our control board in Station 1. So we are looking directly at the other teams robots lined up. Hybrid starts, a team comes out going as fast as they can and slam directly into the wall. This impact causes our 30 lb plus board to go flying in the air spinning. It landed on the joysticks and shattered the one that operates our manipulator. Not only almost hitting our drivers but nearly damaging the competition port on the OI. So half the match we drove around without use of our manipulator. While I looked for a team to lend us their joystick. A team that was in queue Graciously lent one to us. So halfway through the match we gain use of our arm and manipulator again. The team came and apologized but it was something that should have been prevented by us.


SO! Moral of the story is Teams PLEASE place Velcro on the bottom of your control boards. The Velcro located on the stations is the loop/soft end and is 6 inches away from the wall. So you will need to place the Rough end of Velcro on your control boards accordingly.


Corey
Team 288