I think it’s high time that CD had an appropriately GP thread dedicated to bonehead plays. While there is certainly the obvious matter of the entertainment value, the **real **value of this thread will be in the general improvement of the safety and quality of the FIRST Robotics Competition as a whole. Encourage students to read the thread. Encourage mentors to read the thread. Learn from the mistakes of others!
In the interest of GP, please do not post the names of the offenders, but general descriptive terms (veteran, rookie, underclassman, upperclassman, officer, controls, mechanical, programmer, student, mentor) are in order.
Here’s an initial entry, from my first year as a full-time mentor:
The wiring on our 2013 Ultimate Ascent robot was a mess, due to a combination of several effects:
- No mentor who had ever done wiring professionally
- Wiring being left to the crew who really wanted to program
- Inadequate volume (and even less access area) in which the control system could abide.
However, possibly the neatest, best-soldered, best-shrink-wrapped, and generally least visible connections on the whole robot were executed by a rookie. Unfortunately, these were a black-to-red, red-to-black splice providing power to a jaguar motor controller. My best reconstruction of events is that the veteran/upperclassman/wiring lead fried a second and a third jag before asking any mentors for help.
