sometimes in the design notebook, I want to geek out a bit, but I’m not sure if I should or not. If you are the judge, are you gonna get annoyed about four pages of the pros and cons of a mecanum drive, including coding difficulties, engineering difficulties, etc., followed by a similar amount of pages on Xdrives, etc? (this specific instance would most likely be in the initial brainstorming part of the notebook.)
I’ve never won an award in 3 years of robotics, so I’m trying to get a perfect notebook started here.
Unless some of that content is just unnecessary, that just shows that you are really trying hard to find the right drivetrain, and going through every part. Don’t be worried about putting too much in.
As a former competitor who now volunteers at a judge at local events, please “geek out”! Judges love to see your thought process. Plus, several of the things you have mentioned (pros and cons, working through difficulties with building/coding, etc.) are elements in the Engineering Notebook Rubric which the judges use to score each notebook. There is definitely a point where the concept of “quality over quantity” becomes relevant when it comes to the notebook, but very, very few teams are including this amount of information.
As a general rule, if something is useful for understanding what you are documenting, include it. Most importantly in terms of doing well at competitions on the judging side of things, make sure you address each category on the rubric, and that each section is easily located. Judges only have 10-15 minutes to score each notebook, so if we can’t find something on the rubric, you don’t get credit for it. However, the notebook is not just for the judges; when a notebook is done well, it can prove useful as a reference for you and your team as you continue to iterate your design, and you could even reference back to your work in future seasons, so don’t hesitate to include something that doesn’t necessarily fall into a category on the rubric.
Not a judge by any means, but I would still like to help! I would say that if you are “yapping” as my teammates say, than it isn’t worth it. You should be able to get straight to the point including diagrams, charts, pictures, etc. With all this in mind, remember that saying too much is better than saying too little, meaning if you can’t decide whether the page you wrote is beneficial or not, add it in. In fact, my team did this for this year. At the beginning of the year, we put a lot of pages on game strategy and defining the game.
In my experience, judges like seeing teams have very detailed notebooks. Just make sure that you look at the engineering notebook rubric and make it easy for judges to find all the points on it.
I’d lean toward more info rather than less… however your notebook follows your challenges, thoughts, possible solutions, tests, DATA, outcomes, etc. It’s not an encyclopedia.
My best team won excellence multiple times and design with a ~80 page notebook.
As long as you don’t drown out your teammates, I think it would be fine to an extent.
I rember I did an non-robotics engenierring competition and lost because during the judging I didn’t allow my team to talk and was deducted 5 points. After that, “5 points” was said when I was blabbering about irrelevant things.