Has anyone who is hosting a Week 0 event come up with a good way to implement the cargo ship behavior for pre-sandstorm and post sandstorm cargo shelves?
As a reminder, the cargo balls are supposed to stay put during the sandstorm, without hatch panels and then roll out at the end of the sandstorm if there is no hatch panel.
I’m thinking of a long pvc axle running below the shelves, with some PVC fittings that can act as a simple cam that holds up the front of the shelf (the rear of the shelf would be lifted permanently) . By rotating the axle (with a mechanism between the cargo ships) the cams would lower the front of the shelves. You’d need one axle on either side and something similar (not sure what yet) to do the same to the each end cargo bay. I guess if the axles run along about midway (front to back) of the side shelves the same axle can continue into the end bays.
Anyone come up with something different? Looking for something that is fairly simple and fool proof.
It depends on what system you’re using to control the match, user start/off-season FMS/Cheesy Arena, etc., but you could break up the match into separate Sandstorm and Teleop periods.
e.g.,
Run 15 second Sandstorm
Stop and remove Cargo balls
Run 135 second Teleop
Sounds expensive. But it would be fairly easy to implement - a large shop compressor on the side of the field with a manual solenoid valve to trigger them all at once. No programming, automation, or interface with the FMS required - just someone to flip the switch each match.
Depending on how realistic you want your scrimmage to be, you may be able to just fake it. Have the bins slanted like they will be for most of the match, and just pretend there’s a Cargo in the bins that don’t have preloaded hatch covers. If it gets a Hatch Cover in Sandstorm then the scorer just gives them credit for both. If there’s no Hatch Cover (and no robot right in front of it trying to put one one that would reasonably have kept the ball inside), then a volunteer rolls a Cargo ball from the side onto the field near where the ball would roll out.
Compared to having an actual mechanism of some sort, it’s more work on the volunteers and more prone to scoring error, but depending on how sophisticated you’re trying to be it may work well enough for your purposes.
We were thinking about this same exact thing. Perhaps you could do exactly what FIRST is doing.
It’s just a bunch of electromagnets. Of course, they’ve got an individual magnet on each bay floor, I assume that’s for modularity (so you can replace a damaged unit quickly). I’d assume you could just have one (or two), and gang an entire side (red and blue) together. Have the magnets energized during the Sandstorm period. Once the period is over, disconnect the power.
Another way to do this is with a motor with a cam. For sandstorm, set up the motor so that the cam is holding the bay floors up. During the transition, run the motor so that the motor drops the floor. (there are a million permutations with this as well)
Of course, this requires a lot of pre-work, and makes a fair number of assumptions. If you want to go with an all-mechanical approach, you can also gang each side together, and institute a “pause” between Sandstorm and Teleop where you have people run out onto the field and pull a lever, releasing the bay floors.
My personal favorite is the all-mechanical “dunk tank” method. Set up a target on the cargo ship like a dunk tank target, and have the technicians take turns off-field throwing cargo at it at the conclusion of the Sandstorm period. The Red technicians are throwing at the Blue cargo ship, and the Blue technicians are throwing at the Red cargo ship, and the target releases the bay floors in the cargo ship when hit.
I’m thinking just grab a couple of the smallest pilots (likely someones kid brother/sister) and have them “pilot” the cargo ship and kick everything out.
Make sure they wear safety glasses.
The nice thing is they’re cheaper to bribe before your own match.
I would honestly just do something human-powered like this. I think it’s what they did at the MCC competition in Texas. Considering that Week 0 events are generally for practice/testing, it should be perfectly fine. The solution that takes the least extra work beforehand is probably the one you should pick for week 0.
I like this idea a lot… no special release hardware or mechanism. We aren’t planning on keeping score anyway ! We can have the extra cargo behind the alliance wall and just let the teams be responsible to roll them onto the field if they want to do so after sandstorm.