From looking at the kitbot it seems pretty easy to build a fixed shooter that will score in the speaker from multiple positions while touching the speaker. Do you think it is beneficial to be able to score from further away by using an adjustable shooter?
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Do you mean to adjust the kit bot and put an adjustable shooter on it?
imo it depends on your team’s strategy. there could be more faults and inaccuracies in an adjustable shooter in comparison to a fixed one, but it could potentially reduce cycle time (if done correctly). it’s one of those cases where you need to pick what your team values more. quality or quantity ?
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It also may help with the amp
Not necessarily, but that could be an option.
The fact that the speaker angles down increases the value of an adjustable shooter – you can’t just rely on hitting the goal with a different part of the arc. BUT, that implies that your team knows “If we’re at this spot on the field, then we use this setting,” AND has the ability to do that in a competition (hopefully without a whole lot of fiddling.)
A good strategy would be to identify a few places on the field where you want to be able to shoot from, and then practice.
If you want to do an adjustable shooter, you should do the math and determine how fast the ring needs to be leaving your robot at a particular angle in order to be able to hit the speaker and how fast your wheel needs to turn to do that (if you use the kitbot design, then it will be about half the speed of the shooter wheel).
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What do you mean here?
that too, thats also more of a quantitative statistic considering you want to do more.
Can someone check my work, the values I’m getting seem incorrect.
(edit this can also be used to find how useful actually having a variable angle is)
So, let’s say that the tangential speed of the wheel is 100 ft per second. At best, your Note will leave your shooter at 50 ft per second.
Why? Because the other side of the note is just rolling along the other side of the shooter – its speed is effectively 0. So, the speed of the note through the air will be the average of 100 and 0, or 50. (But, at the same time, you’re imparting a lot of spin to the Note, which has a tendence to stabilize it in the air.)
I mean my team was possibly thinking about it and having presets so we would just press one button and the shooter would adjust to the distance without possibly messing it up by using joysticks or something like that.
Ok, that makes sense. I noticed the kitbot only had one side powered, but others have both. It seems like spin would be beneficial, but not sure.
That was our thought as well. That or use the April Tags to determine aiming like was done with reflective tape.
thats good for set angles for consistency.
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Yeah that’s what we were thinking and we thought that it might help with our cycle time and that we could score more into the amplified speaker.
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After looking at the design of the field I think it would be hard to shoot from farther away due to the narrow window you would have to aim at.
While it’s certainly possible, there is another consideration to shooting from distance (i.e., away from the speaker base): the angle of the speaker opening. This is practically going to limit where teams can shoot from, because as distance increases the target opening requires a flatter and flatter trajectory. Shooting from relatively close in will be much the same, but the kind of long shots that we saw in 2022 will be practically impossible. The notes won’t be able to hit the defection part of the goal at the top, but will instead hit the back (and likely at higher velocity) and may well bounce out rather than go in. This is very similar to the Infinite Recharge upper goal, but with less depth and no goal opening at the back, so no way to use a straighter shot effectively. Practically speaking, I think shooting from more than the podium distance is likely to be problematic. We’ll see how this tests out (we will be trying it as a team with our prototype shooter) but I am skeptical that it’s a viable strategy.
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Hey @MrNNP, do you happen to have any updates on this? We’re trying to figure out our exact shooter angle and trying to use your desmos 
Not sure what the orange and black line are meant to represent
Here is an updated link: Advanced Shooter Angle/Radius FRC 2024 | Desmos
The lines are red and black in this one, and there’s also a visualization to the right.
If you shot a note from the red line, it would hit the top edge of the speaker, and if you shot a note from the black line, it would hit the speaker’s bottom edge.
The area between the red and black line denotes the area from which you could make a shot, which would go between the top and bottom edge (into the goal).
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I am far from a mathematician. Can you tell me what numbers I should change and what those numbers represent? I understand a is angle, but I am unclear in the rest. Very cool tool though.