this may seem obvious to some, yet what is the forula or steps taken to decide how many students are in your pit crew?
Depends. Your pit crew should consist of as many people as you need to fix things on the robot, either mechanical or softwarical(I don’t think that’s a word). You probably want at least one member of each sub-team. If you don’t have sub teams then you want at least one member who knows the ins and outs of a part of your robot. I would suggest a core team of between 5 and 10 people for a team of moderate size. Use the rest of your team as scouts and our team spirit people.
Start with 100 square feet minus table minus workbench minus minus toolcart minus robot, divided by elbow room.
Last year, it worked out to about five people in our pit with room to work on the robot, plus maybe three others squeezing into the corners working on other things.
I think it matters more on who the people are, not how many people there are. I believe last year we had pit schedules, where everyone took shifts in groups of four for a couple hours at a time.
Depends what needs to be done. If theres an electrical problem the electrical guys will come on. If its mechanical, mechanical guys. If its something easy like removing skins the mentors usually try to get other people to help.
The basic pit crew is usually like 3 kids plus a couple of mentors though.
we have 4 students devoted to the inner workings and repairs (when necessary) of our robot along with 1 adult. there really isn’t a lot of room in there for more.
What my team does, and it works well, is we have a senior student designated as the “pit crew chief” and he/she gets a roster of about 10 people on the pit crew. They select 1-4 other people to help fix the bot depending on what broke in the last match. This does not including programming tweaks which are ongoing.
Our team has the pit crew chief, and builders as fixers in case of repair and knowing where things are and cleanliness and neatness are big factors. I am the pit crew person in charge of neatness and cleanliness and safety glasses
Should also throw one more thing out there: the pit crew should also have two people who can answer questions from judges who roam the pits. <- hint hint
It would probably work better if everyone on your team could answer the judges questions, instead of haveing one person dedicated to doing that job. I think it might impress the judges a little more, also.
[Qoute=iCurtis] … softwarical …
if it wasn’t a word then, it is now. 
Here is the break down that we do on MOE, I know we shouldn’t really talk about people in the pits, sparky knows what i am talking about…,
1 student from
Electrical
Programing
Pneumatics
Drive train
Arm
Lifter
and i think 2 students from general mechanical stuff
Also we have between 2-4 ambassadors for the judges.
I know thats about 10 people and can get to be alot, so when the bot is looked at after the match and there is no programing problem, out they go and etc…
we have a few mentors from drives, electrical and then 2 students or 3 from each sub team like drives, electrical and elevation. also have one pit crew chief which i was last year and will be at Nats, i will be training fellow juniors on how to do the Pit Crew Chiefs job so they can do it next year when I’m off to college. good luck everyone!
On 234 we have about 10 people in the pits throughout the competition
2 manufacturing students
1 electronics student
1 programmer
2 engineers
4 students to talk to judges and run errands around the pit area.
Throughout the competition we have scouts and strategy team students in and out of the pits and more manufacturing students and engineers if there are major problems that need to be fixed.
Team 1208 has a 6 member pit crew.
2 mechanical team members
1 electrical team member
1 programming team member
1 total system expert
1 jack-of-all-trades/gofer
I know that all teams are different. Our team is a “club activity” so we have to allow any student to participate that wants to. As such, we have a number of students who have no clue about our own robot, let alone about the ideals of FIRST. We do not allow these students to meander around our pit area at all since we don’t want them talking about things they don’t know about with judges or anyone else that happens by. Only the most dedicated members are allowed to hang in our pit and even then we occasionally ask them to go elsewhere when things get crowded.
We designate certain students to talk to judges and we rehearse them so that we are sure that we know what they’re going to say.
It sounds good to allow everyone to talk to judges but, at least on our team, that is a pretty unrealistic scenario.
Our pit crew consists of our drive team, coach, and human player plus one other student. We also have our mentors present.
What we have or hope to have in the Pits is something a bit like this, we like our room, each one of these people except for the Battery Master, has the ability to kick just about anyone out of the pits if it is needed, since working in the pits, much like NASCAR is all about speed.
1-Mechanical
1-Electrical
1-Programing
Haven’t Seen this yet:
1-Battery Master
We also have backups, we call each of these guys in when, and if there is a problem, keep it small, and efficient
2-Mechanical Backups
1-Electrical Backup
1-Bonus Programmer if needed
that also doesn’t count the Scouting/Strategy, or our Mentors/Engineers/Coaches but they won’t be based out of the pits anyway.
Hi, lol well with all of 10 people or so on our team… we are all in the pits, we all have to do a little of everything, and since we have no laptops available for programming, we usually bring a whole desktop with cart - more room gone! so we balance about 10 people in the pits and that includes operators 
but this year is glad to say we have enough people to have a dedicated scout/picture taker, lol so good luck to her, and it seems like we may have about 8 people or so actually show up at the competition 
this is some fun stuff here, the pits rock!
Because of always the lack of space for S.P.A.M. we have a small pit crew. We like to put in the best workers obviously. This year I basically picked out the main crew and there is four of us. We have 3 extras that come when they are told. I allowed for the students that are in the main pit crew to have 2 hrs off. However, this is just the mechanical/electrical crew. Our software team has it’s own crew that step in to do their end.
—is that legal?