So our team is having a debate about whether to share our designs and ideas with the world or to keep everything close to the vest and only let the world see tiny snippets of what we are working. We won’t go into detail about our thought just yet but we are curious what your thoughts might be? Click here to take our facebook survey. http://www.facebook.com/questions/246056182131627/?qa_ref=qd
Our team plan to be pretty public [blog in sig].
We don’t plan to give out CAD files or anything but share general photos/videos.
You don’t have to share schematics or CAD drawings, but sharing your design concepts is definitely GP. Yes it opens the door for someone potentially “stealing” the idea, but hey, imitation is the best form of flattery. Don’t worry about it, share what you want to make public.
In general, our team has decided to ‘share’ some of our concepts on our facebook page. Not too many details, but enough to inform our sponsers which are encouraged to visit. Plus it’s open to views to everyone so we aren’t really hiding anything…or are we… 
One would hope you’re building a robot and strategy that can win whether or not everyone knows about it.
I personally like to see other teams’ robots coming together, and hope to show off at least some of our build season progress this year, too.
good luck!
Strictly speaking, there reaches a point in the season where the risk of another team stealing your idea becomes a bit of a non-issue, as it’s a bit too late for other teams to successfully change track to copy you.
It’s a team specific quandry, but if nothing else I wouldn’t worry about sharing ideas once you’re about three weeks in. At that point, only the most skilled teams will be in a position to really take your idea and you’ll still have a chance to get interesting suggestions and/or feedback.
-$0.02
I agree with everything that has been said. While our team, to our knowledge, isn’t going to be all happy-go-lucky this-is-exactly-what-we-did in our sharing, we’re still going to share the general thought process and give some insight. Then, there’s also the traditional teaser pictures week 4ish or so.
Primarily, FIRST isn’t a competition. It’s a learning experience. Share the knowledge, and you’ll learn more because there’s bound to be someone who sees something about your project that even your own team didn’t realize it can do. It’s happened before to us.
We’re usually pretty open about our build with frequent updates on our Photobucket albums.
Thanks It looks like we are going to share. We will have something up in a day or so
It seems like the key to a winning robot isn’t one super secret amazing idea. It’s about the right combination of good ideas, executed well, and play the game the most effective way. So many ideas that we have are simultaneously being discussed on CD by other teams. Nobody knows for sure what that best strategy is, and what that combination of manipulators is until competition really starts.
But yet, I’d still rather not have other teams seeing too much about our ideas so early. Every team is going to feel differently about secrecy, ranging from posting CADs nightly of their robot to banning taking pictures for personal use due to fear of leakage. It’s about what you’re comfortable with.
I can’t wait to see what you guys have come up with!!
When it comes down to it, if the thing your team is “showing” will have a significantly greater advantage at you winning regionals/champs then I personally wouldn’t show it. If it were to be other miniscule things then I wouldn’t have a problem. However, disclosure of such things would take me awhile before it either becomes deemed as miniscule or highly competitive. 
I like to be surprised by different robot configurations and strategies.
I don’t want to show up and see 7 clones of the same robot that got put up early in build at a regional, like in 2008 when there were Rhode Warrior clones all over.
I also don’t want to get beat by someone who executes my design better than I do, which is why we didn’t bring our minibot to Suffield Shakedown last year, it was to easy to duplicate so we didn’t show it until WPI week 2.
However given the current witholding allowance/COTS rules I can probably replicate any good robot design I see and assemble it at an event anyway.
In any event we keep our robot generally secret from the public until Suffield Shakedown the Saturday before ship and I encourage you to do the same. I want to be surprised by creativity not bored by a bunch of group think communally designed robots.
Coopertition, right? You want to help the new people. I’d recommend not putting up the design for the whole robot, but if you see someone’s been having problems with something, go ahead and show them how you did it. That’s how my team is doing it.
I think being open is an awesome thing, as long as you’re actually open and not giving us useless “teaser” photos of gears, sprocket, wheels, etc. People want to see pictures of something important if your going to share something. I think a great team to emulate in that fact is 842.
In my opinion, it’s a great idea to show what you have, if it’s something you want to share. Maybe you have a beautiful anodized and powder coated chassis you made. Show that off, we’d love to see it. However, if you may possibly have a game-changing revolutionary Einstein-winning idea, think before you post. It may be in the values of FIRST to help others, but sometimes there are some important things your team should keep to itself until the competitions.
Overall, it’s your choice if you share or not share, and what you share if you do. Good luck this year!
Interesting…the year we had the most stuff out in public, earliest in the season (videos, drawings, cad renderings) was also the year we won a regional because we had a really good robot.
If you post your “secret” ideas here on CD, you might get some instant feedback that will help you either improve them even more, or else show you why they might not be such a good idea after all.
Also if other teams copy your idea because it really is a good idea, you have helped another team, and having more, better performing robots at the competitions is a good thing.
We haven’t found a downside to sharing everything we’re doing.
“Ideas are cheap,The combination of ideas and execution and excellence and the whole process is what really matters.” - Woodie Flowers
The ideas and designs are out there for robots and a great many other things in life, free for the taking if one takes the time so find these things, study, and learn from other peoples designs and idea.
At the end of the day it will be how well you execute and the excellence you bring to that process.
I agree. I find ‘teaser pics’ to be really annoying and basically useless.
I also agree with all of what squirrel said, especially the bit I highlighted.
We (95) talk with 885 and 3585, the two teams local to us, and do exactly this. It helps any one of us from doing something silly.
Here is are our initial concepts http://www.atomicrobotics.com/2012/01/cad-concepts/