It sounds like you are ready for the FIRST season to get here, just like most of the other FIRST participants. And congratulations again!
Anyone who stays up until 1am or later to work on the robot has to be enjoying themselves, and would not be there unless they wanted to. You wonât end up forcing many people to work because theyâll already be there doing the work without being asked. Have a great season!
_Alex
Glad to hear you guys made your decision. Welcome to FIRST! Oh, and make sure you buy plenty of Mountain Dew (if you guys have it over there). Itâs definitely the FIRSTerâs drink of choice at 2 AM. If you donât, just substitute any beverage of high caffeine and sugar content. Youâre gonna need it⌠
We have red bull 
Hi,
I suggest that you go for it. Our first year 2003, we didnât get the go-ahead until 12/10/02. We had our first team meeting the day after the kickoff. None of us new any programming or pneumatics. We had one teacher and one mentor. You have to start somewhere. The students that stuck with it really got a lot out of the program.
Iâve never heard of that so we probably donât have it, not that it really matters, we can always make a collar that zapps you whenever your head goes down (do they have those things for speely drivers?)
By the way, I see there is a lot of 3d modeling involved in robot design, would 3dsmax7 be good for this?
Or should I start learning Inventor? 
Inventor is the CAD program, 3dsMax is the animation program.
If you are concerned about the design, learn Inventor.
That said, you donât have to model any of your robot. Some teams donât, some do. The teams that do tend to do better, but there are other factors involved. Such as the teams that are organized enough to CAD their robot, tend to be more organized overall. Other teams model only parts of their robot. 116 has modeled parts, but the only fully CADed part that Iâve ever seen get done is the gearbox, which because of the complexity is a very good idea. The rest have been drawn up, but not as an overall robot.
With Inventor, there is also the benifit of being able to share your CAD files with everyone here.
Wetzel
Why would I want to make an animation? (besides entertainment)
And also, know any good Inventor9 tutorial sites? 
FIRST isnât just a robot building competition. It is a person building experiance, that takes the shape of a robot building competition. Included in this is business planning to organize your team and raise funding, team spirit, learning how to get along with someone after spending far too much time with them in a high stress environment and much more.
Part of this is shown in the awards FIRST give outs, one of which is the animation award. Teams create a 30 second animation, typicaly the goal has been along the lines of âshow the spirit of FIRSTâ.
These are the awards from last year. They may or may not change this year. The animation award is the Autodesk Visulization Award. My team has won it at a regional level for the past two years, thanks to the hard work of Lev to get the animation team organized, and Cohen for continuing that hard work.
Wetzel
HmmmâŚ
Whatâs included in the animation?
Would it need to be done in the 6 weeks of building?
30 second animation my friend.
According to the 2004 FRC Manual, Awards section, page 1:
âPresented by Autodesk, Inc., this award recognizes excellence in student animation that clearly and creatively
illustrates the spirit of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Autodesk will award excellence in content, creativity, and mastery of multimediaâ.
And on the same section, page 16:
The Award recognizes 30-seconds of student animation that clearly and creatively illustrates what FIRST
means to your team, meets entry requirements, and is judged to have the highest score.
So basically, you have to show how FIRST inspired the team. As usual with FIRST, itâs not just about the robots, so many winning animations donât even picture the teamâs robot.
It used to be that the animation could be submitted a few weeks after the building period, but last year it was changed. Will it remain the same for next year? Wait 'till January 8th - you gonna love it
Weâre supossed to design and build a cardboard robot for last years competition to develope designing skills and whatnot, so we were told to watch last years NASA webcasts, which happen to be very longâŚ
Why does this blue-haired freak keep air-kicking the teams?! ACK!
Anyway, I was thinking about making a shepherd robot that would be fast and have wings that would deplot to kinda plow the balls to the human players, and push around goals and robots- what do you think? any major design flaws? (keep in mind itâs just a cardboard practice robot, no need for details)
If you are watching some of the webcasts, look at how some of the other teams played the games. You should be able to see which teams did good and which ones did not. You can also see that most of them did not just push the balls.
Also, I would suggest making a new thread for a new topic such as this.
Sounds like a good plan to get some preseason work in prior to kickoff. You will already be a step ahead of some other teams.
In terms of drive train design, generally when you make something strong enough to push other robots around you will sacrifice speed. And vice versa. Might I suggest reading some of the white papers and threads about drive train design. This can help you begin to understand the differences between the different motors, advantages/disadvantages of different gear ratios, different wheel sizes, etc.
You donât have to get really fancy and do multiple speeds or anything like that. But it is good to know some of the fundamentals and learn from other peoples experiences before you start. Many times I have been on a team where we spent so much time getting a drive train to work that we had no time to make any subsystems so it is a good idea to spend some time before kickoff studying/experimenting with drive trains.
Kristin
Blue haired freak, must be Mark Leon on of the most loved of MCâs. Marks energy is passed on the the teams and that is why Curie was the best and loudest field at Championships (ducks and takes cover).
Design flaw? Not until built. One of the biggest issues with the small balls was their adhesive capacity to the field or anything they touched. Teams that plowed found that they sometimes rode up on the balls even though they only had 2" clearance from the floor. Those balls were a tricky element in the game.
tkwtzel: yeah, I noticed that in 90% of the games hanging was the difference between a win and a loss, so Iâll probably be adding a long arm to pull up the bar, plenty of space for it anywayâŚ
And I donât think it really deserves a new thread, itâs just a cardboard practise bot, I just need minimal feedback, no need for it to crush all in itâs path
kpugh: Thatâs some mighty good advice, although the cardboard bot needs no real drivetrain, It couldnât hurt to check some of that stuff out before moving on to the real thing.
Ahahahhahahahaha!!! You havenât lived till you have seen him do what he does as an MC in person⌠Then itâs just weirdâŚ