I’m with you on this. My kids did what they could for their level. This was our first year entering Robotics. They did well at the local level but were blown away at State. With winning the Innovate Award, they participated in Worlds. Whatever new team I get, I can see them working on a push-type bot. I forsee any type of propelling mechanism to be difficult. I am still in learning mode myself. In fact, I’m barely half a step ahead of my students. Still, we are here and we do our best.
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Herobot video SnapShot here:
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@Sidoti , nice to be able to put a face to the name!
I really like that y’all took the time to do these videos for IQ and VRC. Especially the second video to start kids thinking about specific things to go improve. I hope this raises the basic level, and therefore all the competition.
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Great job @Sidoti on explaining the robot, I hope people build this robot for their comp, atleast they can be helpful.
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@Sidoti sorry to keep tagging you on a Friday, but any word on when build instructions will drop?
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I don’t know anything about the timeline. They will be posted as soon as they are ready
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In lieu of instructions, you could, you know, take a cue and simply provide good pictures from many angles and see how many of these forum users can make snapshot work. 
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Yes! I like taking a cue from the Lippers and see how well roboteers can build from just a few additional pictures and a video 
That gives RECF/VEX lots of time to finish the IKEA level instructions.
(* Under full disclosure, I’m actually good with the Lipper early season release, it gets ideas out there and gets teams thinking. Still undecided about a Version 7 release in January, but I’ll see how it plays out this year. *)
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Or we could see who can create the most accurate CAD of Snapshot from the videos before the instructions come out.
@Foster I don’t think many teams will build this Lipperbot; it looks fairly complex for being able to do little more than Snapshot, which will have complete instructions. It is possible some teams will take Lipper’s contact arm and put it on Snapshot, though, to be able to reach that dumping dispenser. Only being able to access ~10 pucks is a major disadvantage.
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Difference between the Lipper video and the ‘Snapshot’ Hero bot video (video 1 and video 2) is:
- Lipper focuses on Score and Performance through a completed design.
- Snapshot focuses on teaching mechanics by delivering a starting point.
As Sidoti from VEX says in video 2: ‘It’s just a hero bot, it’s a staring point’. Then he encourages the students curiosity to improve the robot.
Even the custom made Thumbnail for that Lipper chose to upload for his YouTube video shows the focus on score and performance (Arrows added by me 
).
It’s all marketing by Lipper, teasing a completed design that delivers X performance which leads into selling other stuff like ‘training’ and ‘consultation’.
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Yes, he’s running a business of getting roboteers excited about STEM jobs via competition robotics. Same thing that I do, except I’m a non-profit and am really poor at marketing.
Maybe we can get someone to build “Slaphappy” (my name for the hero bot) and do a quick scoring run. With the arm extension, it should be well into that 110 point range.
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Trademarked that for ya. 
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it will be interesting to see what teams can accomplish with the herobot. If it can get it into the 4-point zone, with 2 robots touching it, it’ll be twice the points of a disk in the 110 point match. From the herobot videos, that doesn’t look like too hard of a modification.
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what about expansion, i see no one talking about getting those points for every tile you touch
this is a thread for the vex iq game, which does not have the same endgame bonus
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ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my fault
A old worn field being used during a competition match will behave differently from a brand new field. Teams may have an advantage depending on what field they are assigned to.
And depending on what field they tuned on.
And the exact sag of their assigned elevated field
I was going to bring that up. All year it seemed like most competitions were held on the floor. (That was another issue with making the fields bigger imo. ) Then we get to worlds and everything is on risers. I don’t know if the skills ref was just being kind to my kids but he did say that there were a lot of teams having issues with their program since the fields were sagging some after their first run struggled a bit.