As a rookie non-engineering mentor, I would like to see what other teams are doing for their non-engineering parts of their pits. (trophy display, button distribution, fliers, etc.)
If folks could post pictures and ideas of what they do, it would be greatly appreciated.
I know some feel that the pits should be for the robot and we shouldn’t display banners, etc, but in reality we want to have a chance with the judges for chairman’s, safety, entrepreneurship, etc. and the judges need to see what we do for things like outreach, etc.
Thanks for helping out a rookie! I will post pictures of our pit in a following post as reply…I am waiting to get them from our picture taker.
We are another rookie team this year and have some ideas and tips from our experiences. First thing we did was look at other pit ideas from past tournaments and see what we like and what we didn’t. Our team decided to create a 2X4 structure that can support peg boards, bulletin boards and banners (and some day down the road a monitor). We attended 2 regional tournaments this year and the first one we struggled to display items like the Chairman’s award, Entrepreneurship submission, Safety manual and other documentation. For the 2nd tournament, we went with double stacking 2 end tables we found at Target and putting side pocket holders on them and putting the monitor on top of it (bolting down the monitor to the top shelf). We received the Rookie All Star award at our first tournament, but decided not to display it when we attended our 2nd tournament. We displayed our buttons in a bin on the end table and put a sign that said “Take one”…We printed out several copies of all documentation so that the judges could take them and not return them…I hope some of this helps and you see something in the pictures that can help as well.
We’ve found that branding our image everywhere possible comes in handy when alliance selection comes up. As a result, we try to put our logo and number on everything, while still maintaining a shred of decency. I also highly recommend trading cards with stats about your robot to hand out.
The back cabinets were originally a 4x4x6 crate as per FIRST specification for our tools and power tools, which we used to ship through shepard.
In the front we have a Chairmans setup with a TV screen which we use to live stream events or hold rankings information if there are not enough displays at the event, or we will run team videos. Below the TV is another 6 drawer cabinet which holds our team buttons, extra shirts, monkey heads and other paraphanelia.
As for awards, signage, and banners we are pretty minimal. (or so we think) In the front of our pit we have two 5 gal. buckets with cement that hold sections of 1 in EMT to hold our sponsors, contributors, and community outreach banners. Then in the back of our pit build into one of our cabinets we have an aluminum rod structure that can display 2 blue banners. Our team chooses not to display any trophies since they are pretty fragile and are quite tedious to transport safely so we just leave those at home in the H.S. trophy case.
These photos were taken by a judge at Waterloo and shared with the team.
The pit is the result of a few years of design work, and the team is very proud of some of the features built into it. The pit is modified Pipe and Drape supports with Kee Clamps on the corners. The walls are felt on the inside to allow photos to be attached with velcro and easily pulled down to be shown to judges or visitors. The outsides are Fabrene material, like a sealed tarp and we can arrange them with the FIRST logo as shown or like a Canadian flag. The walls can also be setup individually at other events as a backdrop, and we have separate base plates for that.
The frame and walls can be assembled in under half an hour with some training, and completely without a ladder by jacking the corner posts up after putting together the top. The monitor up top shows live rankings from a laptop, the front ones show our sponsor logos and our chairman’s video using Western Digital players. All of the monitors and the lights you see on the front are connected to custom extension cords, and we calculated the power draw since they technically violate the “no daisy chaining” rule.
All of the furniture inside is custom built as well. The displays are kept on the table provided, and it remains a tool free space (or at least we try). This separates the display function of the pit from the “pit” function of the pit, and it’s a pretty reasonable balance. We also have some stricter pit rules than some teams, including no sitting and absolutely no food or drinks except water in sealed containers. Behavioral changes like these are much easier to implement than a new pit and can have great results.
Team 4276 pit. The reason for the canopy is two-fold: to post sponsor and communication banners, and also to hang our own lighting which I highly recommend. You never know what the lighting quality will be like at the pits.
I wouldn’t say that a creative pit gives you an advantage with judges. I know of a few teams who have had huge success with just binders chalk full of information and a few students dedicated to answering questions. The teams pull out the binders when someone asks what their team does, but otherwise they are tucked away for the sake of space. Flash isn’t the important part, it’s communicating what you have done succinctly and effectively that does the trick.
Now if you are talking about trying to drum up support for your team in the eyes of other teams, flash is what it is all about (behind just plain being an amazing team that is)
Here is our pit! We have used a similar structure for the last 3 years, and have been slowly adding to and fixing it each year. There is also a projector screen on the left side that displays a slideshow of stuff such as safety tips.
, which were given as gifts to alliance members. They were stored in the orange picker.
