is proud to present our winter reveal for VRC Change Up…
4 Motor X-Drive
2 Motor Flap Intakes
1 Motor Rubber band Intakes
1 Motor Flywheel
If you have any questions or feedback, you’re welcome to post here or comment on the YouTube video and I will answer to the best of my ability.
Feedback-
You should consider maybe 40a or 60a 4 inch flex wheels on the flywheel.
On the back you basically have c-channel stacked on more c-channel. You could try replacing it with standoffs to save some weight.
Questions-
How heavy is it?
What are the rpm’s and sizes for the rollers?
We really want to test the flex wheels hopefully we can use them soon. The c-channel is kinda a purpose-built wall to ram into things, and it holds the balls in place so we don’t over use the Lexan. To answer your questions it is surprisingly light. I would say 10 pounds but I don’t have an exact number. The rollers are 24 tooth sprockets, with the motor being geared turbo. The back roller is weaved and on a high strength shaft. If there’s any other questions I would be pleased to answer them.
-One of the Builders
+1
About 15 pounds. I just weighed it.
I would recommend removing some of the c channels at the back if you can. It probably adds some unnecessary weight. Nice job launching those balls.
Do you have any difficulty with the centre goal? You have a lot of lob on those balls.
The backspin helps it fall in, so it’s pretty consistent
What causes the vision sensor to shake like that? Seems like the kind of thing you would want to keep stable.
I think it was a last second add on and it hasn’t had its perment mounting position. I believe that’s why the wires are hanging across the robot not completely tied down. Just in case it needs to move to a different place. @Golf
I think it’s the vibration caused by the flywheel that shakes the vision sensor but idk. Can you control how fast your flywheel is during driver control?
Yes we can, it’s usally stopped to not put unnecessary wear on the motor. In fact I think it speeds up right before the ball hits the fly wheel but that’s something to ask our amazing coder (@trontech569)
cool robot!
I think flex wheels or rubber band rollers are a lot more efficient at launching balls at a very short distance than an actual flywheel, might want to experiment with those. otherwise looks pretty good.
My poor building skills lol. It was a recent add-on. The screw and locknut that were holding on the vision sensor got a bit loose and I hadn’t had time to fix it.
Well we could. At the moment we aren’t because I had programmed the flywheel to spin up to shooting speed when one of the two optical sensors was triggered. Since one of them was taken off, the code runs at full speed by default. Flywheel speed is definitely high up on the list of things to work on.
Thanks!
I think that you are correct, but at the moment there are a couple factors contributing to this for us.
Having watched some of the in-person videos, I suspect that our robot would fall behind, but we are in California, with very little chance of competing in-person. However, watching the live remote tournaments, several teams are finishing before the match time limit is up, which implies to me that we could perform well in a live remote tournament. These are just speculations though.
Still @Xenon27, thanks for the suggestions!
good point. one aspect of live remote tournaments is that as long as you can max out the field in 2 minutes, there’s no point in doing it better. imo that’s the biggest flaw, but it also means you only need a somewhat decent robot, not a really good one.
Don’t forget that octobots can do more than that. 
not anymore, the touching bonus can only be applied to one goal per robot now.
True. In Live Remote from what my team has scouted, having super speed isn’t important, it’s more about the strategy you use and how you can adapt to each team.