Hey FIRSTers, I have a quick question. Our school is going to have a pep session a few weeks after break. The “theme” of it is teams that don’t get recognized as much as others. We thought this would be a great opportunity for Cyber Blue to get known around our school. We were planning on using our '06 robot to make baskets (since it’s basketball season), but we’re not sure how to make baskets accurately, so we might just have to use the goal from the game. I couldn’t find any threads about this, and I was just wondering what you guys think about it. Any help/comments are appreciated! Thanks!
As long as you can get your shooter to the right angle, with some fine-tuning, you’d be able to make free-throws, at least with poof balls.
If your ball launcher has moderately good repeatability, then just take it to the gym and move it around until the poof ball goes into the basket fairly often. Mark that spot on the floor with masking tape.
On show day, drive it all you like, but when shooting time comes, make sure it’s driven to the tape marks… (Maybe you can start there, shoot a few balls, then drive it around - if you have a pickup mechanism, good way to clean up what you just shot. The fire a few at random and be done)
Bottom line: Please the Crowd.
Don
you could put the light up there and camoflauge it with some artificial leaves and stuff.
Nobody will ever know the difference 
If your robot has a consistent shooter, go for it! If i was sitting in the stands watching a pep rally, it would be sweet to see a robot shooting balls.
Otherwise, if your robot isn’t so consistent, bring in part of the field last year. All you’ll need is the high goal part. All that really is is a hole cut into a large piece of plywood.
And if all else fails, just drive it around and shoot balls into the audience. ^.^
We were in our pep rally for the first time in our history this year. We were gonna do baskets but decided to shoot at the administrators. It would have made it in the basket if you hit it right above the rim. But we figured that the administartors were the best target for the crowd, I mean come on how many times do you get to shoot balls at the principle? crowd loved it.
We took our '06 to an elementary school demo. The kids loved it when we shot the nerf balls into the audience!
Shooting into the audience seems to always work well. But anyway when we tried to make basked with our robot we did not have a high enough angle to shoot the ball at to make it work well. If you can get your launcher at a high enough angle you should be able to make it, but if you can’t get it higher than 45-50 degrees you’ll probably have a tough time.
poof balls do real well when bounced off the backboard. You hit that square it will go in.
we converted our robot to shoot the little plastic footballs and basketballs that the cheerleaders throw into the crowd.
We even put some of the footballs into the announcers box.
Our robot is going to start making appearances at the basketball games, shooting the little plastic balls into the crowd.
(these little plasic basketballs and footballs are the kind with advertisements on them)
The kids want to take one of the old police car rotating lights from years past, and put it on the robot, so when it is time for the robot to come out, the light will come on, and the crowd will start cheering for balls.
Our team is also going to help shoot the t-shirts into the crowd with a low-tech slingshot made from surgical tubing. The cheerleaders like it, because they don’t have to try and throw things, and the boys on the team like it, because they get to hang out with the cheerleaders.:rolleyes:
But that has helped us gain some fame in our school.