2018 AndyMark Fight Night

For those who can’t get enough robots, make sure to check out AndyMark Fight Night happening TONIGHT at 6 PM EST - Twitch

We had some fun limitations - cardboard structure, plastic weapons. It’s going to be very destructive :]

I’m bringing the Nature Bot - a tribute to the rolex wearing, jet flyin’, limousine riding son-of-a-gun. WOOOO!





Looking forward to it. If anyone there in on CD now can you let us know when the Twitch stream starts?

Anyone else not seeing it?

Fight Night Finals starting soon! Catch Trash Panda face off against SpinCycle for the 2018 Cardboard Championship!

Dominant performance by SpinCycle!

Tin Man Brewing is an ideal spot for this event.

Was that spider a game hint?

Outstanding emcee!

Great night, outstanding performance by SpinCycle. Back to back champions.

Does anyone have a recording of the fights?
I didn’t have a chance to watch them when they happened, and Twitch doesn’t seem to have one easily available.

You really wouldn’t hear it from Nick. Nick and Liz were nice enough to let me crash at their place after the event, and he was already analyzing where he almost got beat and could’ve done better. He even had some concerns about his semifinal fight against me, which were probably valid had I used a heavier wedge plate like Pun-Slinger II’s.

This week has been an utterly ridiculous one for me personally and professionally. I stuffed a chassis with mounted gearboxes into my suitcase and boarded a 7 AM flight to Indy to make this event (surprisingly, not triggering a TSA search of my checked bag), then drove to AndyMark’s amazing new facility in Kokomo where they were nice enough to let me use a workbench to finish it. I was stunned that I didn’t have to make any runs to Menard’s in this effort, just a few things from the AndyMark shelves.

I left Kokomo last year with a lot of mixed emotions, and the run-up to this trip was fraught with potential show-stoppers as late as about 6:30 the night before. I was stunned that the tournament went so well for me, and it was wonderful to catch up with a flock of Indiana people I haven’t seen in a while.

Tin Man is a fabulous host. The only bad thing I can say is that the event may well outgrow it, which I’d say is a good problem to have. And yes, Rachel Baker is a way better emcee than I was last year.

I uploaded a lot of photos from my trip, before and after the event, here: https://imgur.com/a/PeSawiI

The Fight Night concept is pretty wonderful, and I’d love to see more of it out there in the world. I’ve run the exact same electronics (Talon SRs, Cheap and Dirty radio, V-Tail mixer, UBEC for receiver power, two 5-pole Lever Nuts, Harbor Freight drill for the battery) for three years now, the motors for two (well, three for the NeveRests), and that’s made it very affordable to be able to compete even without access to the AndyMark junk pile. I think I paid more for an airport lunch today than I did in new materials for Pun-Slinger III (a large Lowe’s heavy-duty moving box, a box of 10-32 screws and nuts, a piano hinge, super glue, and Gorilla glue).

I hope to [strike]defeat Nick[/strike] [strike]lose to Nick again[/strike] make it up to Kokomo again next year!

Did anyone record the stream?

I really, really hope someone did. I only got to see my own fights, plus finals. And I want to see where things actually went off the rails against Nick.

Someone PMed me asking for my electronics BOM, so here it is:

3x Talon SR (someone found like 20 or so on the shelf before Fight Night 2016, so we all snapped them up)
2x 9015 motors, into BaneBots P60 16:1s
1x NeveRest 40, with a piece of Churro jammed on the end to make hex. (I could’ve used two under the rules, but didn’t choose to.)
1x AndyMark Cheap and Dirty controller (but with the left stick configured as a throttle instead of a spring-return stick)
1x UBEC for receiver power (it was just a 2-pack)
1x V-tail mixer, which lets me run arcade-style driving on a Cheap and Dirty.
2x 5-pole Lever-Nuts (am-2577a is the current version) for power distribution–one side handles positive, one side handles negative. One port each for battery, each Talon SR, and the UBEC for the receiver.
1x $20 Harbor Freight drill. Chop it off at the handle, use the lower part as a robust battery mount and fish the wires out.

No switches, fuses, or breakers, because adding failure points feels completely ridiculous. Connect the battery, and the robot is on. Full sends only.

The only parts that do not trace lineage back to Pun-Slinger I in 2016 are the 9015s, which only became legal for 2017.

Unfortunately due to a technical issue, the stream was not archived this year! (Bummer, we know!!!) I’m just glad that my robot was trashed after match two, because I know I would not have survived any further on my side of the bracket. Already thinking of ideas for Fight Night IV next year. Even though the rules won’t let me CAD, you can never turn off an engineer’s brain.

I also realized the bracket wasn’t posted anywhere outside of the stream. Known knockouts are listed.

Play-in Rounds
Pun-Slinger III def. LAMP (KO)
Paper Cut def. Stormbreaker & Really Spinny Nubbins
SpinCycle def. Warpath (KO)
Tidal Wave def. SHAM-bles
Trash Panda def. Tim Allen (KO)
Ginger Snap The IIIrd def. Brucie
EF-2 def. MermaCORN
Nature Bot def. Mr. DooM

Quarterfinals
Pun-Slinger III def. Paper Cut
SpinCycle def. Tidal Wave (KO)
Trash Panda def. Ginger Snap The IIIrd*
Nature Bot def. EF-2
*I know that Ginger Snap was substituted out due to damage for another one of Danny’s robots with the consent of Trash Panda, but I don’t know when that happened.

Semifinals
SpinCycle def. Pun-Slinger III (KO)
Trash Panda def. Nature Bot

Finals
SpinCycle def. Trash Panda (KO)


If I missed something, please fill it in. :slight_smile:

Little BattleBots seems like a good use for the Throttle motors we keep getting more of every year. What did you guys use for batteries?

Not being familiar with Fight Night rules, what constitutes a knockout, and what does it mean over/above a simple defeat?

From what I saw (stream only really worked Round 1 that I saw, not sure whose end that was), KO is when one robot is completely disabled by opposing robot action before match end. Match I saw, a wedge-bot got a spinny bot up onto its side and spinny bot said uncle after about a minute of flailing around trying to get back on its wheels.

How did I not see this earlier???

Throttle motors, believe it or not, would be on the wimpy side for Fight Night purposes seeing that 9015s and RedLines are allowed in certain quantities (though I wouldn’t argue against legalizing them, given their abundance).

Solutions varied for batteries (Nick even soldered up custom packs for SpinCycle), but most people took a power tool battery either from their garage or one they found cheap at stores. I chose the 18V Drill Master drill from Harbor Freight because it was $20 including the dang drill; it’s only 1.3Ah and probably the cheapest NiCad cells in all of China, but they’ve held up surprisingly well during fights. If I was trying it locally, I would spec it as “COTS power tool batteries, or up to 2 batteries legal in FIRST Tech Challenge” since they are both pretty hardened and proven. The hard rule guidance was up to 28V nominal, no LiPo packs (for safety), and if a battery was ejected, leaking, or spilling it was an automatic win for the opponent.

Eric is correct: the battery situation above, catching fire, being unable to make meaningful translational movement for 10 seconds, or conceding defeat all resulted in knockouts and an immediate win for the opponent. Also, thank you for watching my fight. :wink:

A few of us used the 24V Kobalt batteries that Lowe’s sells. 10 bucks for a 1.5 amp battery - https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-24-Volt-Max-1-5-Amp-Hours-Lithium-Power-Tool-Battery/1000090833 Hard to beat that price.

Sparks can handle 24 volts and that’s what I used this year. Some people used Talon SR’s and old Victors as well.

There’s a set number of motor points you can use that basically limits you to 1 775, a few 550s and some other wimpier motors. Most of us used NeverRests on our drive and either a combo of two 550s or one 775 on our weapon. Nature Bot ran one 775 through the 180 degree versaplanetary adapter with a 28" long blade. Blade tip speed was around 140 MPH and it’s absolutely terrifying, as you can see here: Twitch

This was my first time building any kind of combat robot and I had a blast. Will definitely be thinking about how to improve it for next year!

Any chance someone could post the full ruleset you all used? I’m possibly working on recreating this for a local tech group.