Rookie member here!

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello everyone. My name is Dan, lead programmer on Team 3015 based out of Spencerport NY and will be competing in the RIT regional this year. As stated this is our first year and we are a bit worried. We barely were able to compete this year, by getting a large grant from NASA at the last second. I’m am very excited to make a robot but I feel a bit worried.

FIRST to me seems…well, hardcore. Every piece of building this robot from the mechanics, electronics and programming is much over the education that is offered at our school. As the programmer, I am very worried about failing, and not learning labView well enough to make a program.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice for us, something to get us going a bit. We are pretty hard at work attempting to design this thing but we would appreciate some help! :slight_smile:

2

I hope you aren’t a completely student-run organization. If so, find mentors ASAP. If not, work hard and try your best. Not trying to be a pessimist or doubt your skills, but you’re not likely to see great results your rookie year anyways. Just try to have have fun.

3

I’m not in the NY area but feel free to email me at vince.lau78 at gmail.com or add me on msn at scorpions78 at hotmail.com if you need any mechanical or pneumatic help, or if you need some help on your ideas. I’ve been mentoring FIRST teams in the Toronto area since 2002

Vince

4

No, we are not student run infact as right now we have like 6 official mentors and pretty much every tech teacher is helping out if they are not officially mentors. I don’t expect to win, or do real great. We are trying to win the rookie award in our regional to go to Atlanta. We only have to beat 5 other teams so it is a possibility.

I am not trying to be pessimistic, it’s just after going through all these FIRST workshops it’s all so overwhelming!

5

RIT has a RIT FIRST group of students that go to various Rochester area teams to help them out. It’s also the main group of people that set up FLR.

I’m not in RIT FIRST (even though I go to RIT…lame bit on my part), but I know some people in RIT FIRST. I’ll send this link to one of my friends who is in that group and they’ll see if they can help.

6

Actually, I believe we do have one of those mentors from RIT. He has taught some of those workshops and he is a huge help. Thanks though :slight_smile:

7

My best advice to you is to get a really good drive base. If your robot can drive ok, you can have some fun. If your robot could do something amazing but can’t drive that well, your not going to have much fun.

Alot of teams seem to try something really big and then when one thing breaks they turn defensive. My suggestion for a rookie such as yourself is to start out defensive. Especially for a game like this one.

Similar to Vince, I’m not in your area but if you get some general physics or design questions, pm me and I’ll be glad to help as much as I can.

8

In addition to those mentors, also contact the other area Rochester teams. There are so many, you are not alone in Rochester.

Good luck this year, I’ll see you at FLR.

9

As a programmer don’t worry too much. There is a new more complicated control system this year, but the default code that’s out there will probably preform most of what you need it for with minor tweaking.

10

coughLame!cough

But yes, the above stated is true. RIT FIRST is going out to numerous teams in the Greater Rochester Area this year and are available to answer questions for you and any other team. We are also able to go out to directly help any team in and around Rochester.

You (or anyone else) can let me know if your team needs any additional support. Send me an email or a private message, or check out ritfirst.org .

11

My goodness…you would be crazy to NOT feel overwhelmed. Even us adults, who have years of experience and the confidence to back it, are overwhelmed a bit.

Breathe deep, and keep saying to yourself “it’s not as bad as I thought”.

OK, your first priority is to get something that works (drives) going. In an ideal world, you’d have that in 2 weeks - if the mechanical team hasn’t starting putting the kitbot together yet - what are they waiting for, July? (Oh, and make the bot an full inch smaller than legal. Easier now that at inspection, trust me).

Then come up with something that can take several balls (either preloaded or from a human player tossing them in) and put them into a trailer (build a trailer this week).

If you can get all that done by week 4, you’ll have 2 more weeks to write the code and give your drivers practice - which they will very much need.

Reality is that you’ll have about 10 minutes with the robot to write code, but that has a way of working itself out. You might have to fight for access to the bot.

Anyway, anything that’s not quite right at ship date can and will be corrected at the competition - simply ASK FOR HELP and you’ll have more than you can use.

You know, getting on Chief Delphi and expressing your fears takes courage, and is probably the smartest thing you could have done. The CD community will answer ALL of your questions with really good info. And, take a chance and ask some other local team for some help, I guarantee most teams will leap at the chance.

As for Rookie All-Star: It’s not about the robot. Willing RAS is more about you as a team, how you do things, how much GP you show, and if you “get” the concept of FIRST: sharing openly, giving freely, helping each other be the fiercest competitors they can be, and helping spread this to the community at large.

Good luck, but you won’t need luck - I predict good things for you and your team.

Don

12

Thank you very much Don!

Well, at the moment we have attached the electronics to motors and are able to control them with the joysticks. Also in the past two days we have created our robot transport cart, as well as a metal frame that we attached the wheels to get a feel for dimensions, and possibly test out drive methods even though I know we don’t have a lot of time for that.

One big question I have is about coming to a decision on design. We don’t have a ton of people, but the people we do have are opinionated, and we have tons of ideas on the table. This maybe an irrational fear, but I am a bit nervous that this competition to get their idea in motion will cost us time. How do most teams settle on an idea? Is there a vote? Is usually unanimous? It will probably work itself out but I think it’s something worth noting.

13

Get to know these materials inside and out -

http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=10934

(I must have pasted that link 1000 times this year… You really need to work through the 5 chapters sentence-by-sentence. It’s painful but it’s important and useful.)

and a really great new set of docs at

http://www2.usfirst.org/ftpdoc/coordination/ (actually accessible via Robot Quick Build Session materials link in the above site)

INVALUABLE!!

Good Luck!
Russ

14

I should take back my post. You’re a rookie team that’s already put together your control system and are driving motors via joysticks? You’re off to a VERY impressive start. You don’t need help :wink: You just need to work together to come up with a fun design for moving the balls around.

Russ

15

We have almost no budget (literally), and we get by. Our only mentor is our physics teacher, so I’m pretty much alone on the programming and electrical side of things, but even so we managed to successfully run every match last year, finish 21st or something, and win the Judges award. Our bank account right now is sitting around the empty mark, and we get the majority of our parts and stuff for free as donations or from team members. By the sounds of it you are well poised to do good.

  1. You joined Chief Delphi, that’s crucial
  2. You have many mentors
  3. You live around many other teams that can assist you
  4. You sound like you are willing to put in the work to get things done.

A robot doesn’t have to be super high budget to be effective (although it helps). You just need ingenuity, and if you’re low budget (as it sounds like you are, (relative)) creative solutions(hacks:)) are key.

Welcome, and good luck!

16

my biggest advice is to keep things simple (KISS).

when designing you robot expect that things will break. It is much easier to fix/replace things if it was designed to be simple (or have simple parts) in the first place.

when designing our robot we use a chalkboard heavily. We write down all possible strategies, and then write down which combination will give us the most points, while still being simple [to fix]. We then write down what features we want and vote on each system. It usually turns out okay, as long as we really do stick with the KISS method. There have been a couple things that came out pretty neat, but were actually time consuming to fix/replace, and therefore really hurt us in the long run because we forgot about KISS.

17

I agree with everything said above.

However, I think the best thing you can do to guarantee a good rookie season is to find a veteran team to mentor you. Preferably it should be in your area, but short of that there are hundreds of teams ready and willing to help out rookie students and mentors.

Edit: It just occurred to me that, for their first robot, we always tell rookies to focus on a great drivetrain so they will be valuable to their alliance. That seems to have gone out the window. This year, I think a good “starter” bot for rookies would be something to ferry/herd empty cells from the outpost to the fueling station. It’s a capability that any championship alliance must have, and it might be a task that scoring-focused members of an alliance won’t have time for/won’t be suited for.

18

I’m not really sure what kind of budget we are working on, I know at this point we atleast 4,500 to spend with some more prospects possible. So I’m not sure if that is good or bad this early in the season. Our mentor situation is good as I’ve stated and we have mentors in pretty much every field that we need. I also made a website for our team (with the help of a friend) it’s rangerrobot.com, I know it’s not great (most of the art is filler until I make something better) but it’s something.

19

Remember to save your code as different versions each day, maybe include the date in the filename. If only you could do that with robots…

20

So different for every team. Last year was our team’s second year. We had half a team of rookies and half a team of veterans. The rookies and veterans were pretty much split and had opposing ideas on what to do. The split was even and, with the people present, nothing was going to be fair. So we made our final robot to be a combination of both ideas. We were going to try to get an elevator, but if we couldn’t get it by the end of the 6 weeks, we would just be a fast robot that can bring the ball around and spit it over the line to make a few extra points. That decision came with a lot of gritting our teeth and not happy people. But with GP, it happened. We ended up having a great robot and we all laugh about our frustrations still to this day. However, by the end of our first meeting, we had our design finished and ready to build.
On the other hand, this year, at our design and strategy meeting, there was no gritting of the teeth and everyone fully supported all ideas and we improved upon them. In addition, we don’t have our “Final” design set up yet.

Both ways work. If you are gritting teeth right now, it happens. Stay calm, and don’t ruin friendships. We didn’t and we turned out to have a great team! I miss the team so much; however, I’m excited for the new group of girls we have this year.

If you have more questions about that, feel free to let me know. I’m one of the PR mentors for The Robettes and deal with management and help teach our girls the best way to handle situations and be good team members. Goodluck. You guys will do great!

~Morgann Haake