So from what I’ve heard those with v5 only have four motors. Vex’s bad timetable aside I’d like to start a veainstormung thread for ward to create an effective bot with only four motors
Upon further though pneumatics are available to v5 users too so include those
Still doable…
But think the robot can only either do balls or caps.
I bet you could use a two motor drive one motor shooter and one motor intake combined with a pneumatic lift with passive cap intake Not the best lineup , but good if you can only access four motors
A 2 motor v5 base can apparently push a 6 motor 393 base, plus you get pneumatics, so in terms of raw power you’re better off using v5 motors.
However, there are a very limited set of things you can do with just 2 motors assuming 2 on the chassis. If you’re interested in specializing in balls, I’d probably go for a 1 motor double catapult and a 1 motor feeder system. Another feasible design is a 1 motor flywheel, 1 motor feeder, pneumatic “blocker” (basically a passive indexer, 6007 tested it very early season in NBN to decent success), and a descorer. A single puncher and a 1 motor flywheel is also a possibility, but single punchers haven’t seen much use so far.
If you’re interested in focusing on caps instead, I could see a 1 motor lift, 1 motor ground flipper, and passive intake or a 1 motor lift and 1 motor wrist working well.
With the remaining pneumatics, you could build a 1 time deploy catapult for a robot focused mostly on caps, a 2 piston descoring arm, deploying and retracting wedges for heavy defense, or a full robot puncher to defend the parking space.
All in all, most teams have some form of a 393 robot already built, and obviously a full 8 motor v5 robot is much better than a 4 motor robot once the remaining motors ship. However, you do get a significantly larger total power output with 4 v5 motors and pneumatics as opposed to 12 393s, so if you’re really determine to win an early season competition coming up before November, I would definitely go for this option. You also get some hands on experience building, programming, and competing with the first ever v5 competition robots, so you’ll be a little more experienced with the new interface once 8 motor v5 bots become possible.
You could do a 2 motor base with a 1 motor launcher (either catapult or flywheel your choice) with a 1 motor feeding system then a pneumatic lift with a pneumatic cap intake and a pneumatic cap rotating mechanism.
That’s a lot of pistons 
If you’re clever about it, you can do everything with just four motors. Use 2 motors on the base. Use 1 motor with ratchets so that spinning one way operates the firing mechanism (probably puncher or catapult) and spinning the other way sucks up balls and loads them. Use 1 motor for a descorer/flipper or for an lift/flipper.
If you pass on having aimable flywheels, you can save that intake motor by using a chain and some gears to power the intake. That would save another motor for a cap flipper.
Remember, you are allowed to use pneumatics with only 4 motors, meaning a descoring arm is easy, and you can definitely flip a cap with your intake rollers going backwards. (See 6007 and BNS Ri3d, 929u, etc.) That would probably be a lot easier than trying to feed balls into a flywheel with a ratchet, in which case your flywheel would be receiving no power when shooting because the conveyor would have to bring it up, you couldn’t spin the conveyor backwards to un-jam a ball or spit out an accidental third ball, and that one motor is running basically all match and reversing direction often. Seems a whole lot easier just to use 2 motors 
I know. I think you missed the point. If you can manage it fairly well with four motors alone, then clearly you can manage it better with anything more, be that more motors or pneumatics. I have pointed out that everything can be done with four motors alone to show that the minimum lower than 4 motors + pneumatics and lower than 5 motors.
The best 4m design is to put down your motors and wait for the other 4 motors to come
In all seriousness, just compete with 393 and plan ahead for using all your motors. You can use them to test out subsystems or even build unfinished robots. But don’t take a 4m bot to competition
Not an option for all teams to go 393, since some traded all their control systems for V5 bundles. Also, League play pushes some pressure on teams to be up an running ASAP.
not ideal.
Who in their right mind would trade in all their control systems to something that wasn’t even finished and got delayed like a million times? That was just bad planning or putting too much faith in VEX. Also, you can be up and running faster with a system that you are familiar with.
A little harsh! and this from someone who is harsh
Seriously, there are a lot of teams and organizations who have taken a leap of faith… not everything is in one’s control and some are better at rolling with it than others. In many cases, schools have budget cycles that are unforgiving, not doing it when they did the trade-in means they would miss out on the trade-in discounts altogether.
That said, I think you are a little over the top with your statement “delayed like a million times?” It is pretty well documented there were a series of unfortunate delays. This is not unique to VEX or any other companies than push the envelope and in our case, a small footprint.
I hope, instead, you can help teams by enabling them to prepare for the season despite their misfortunes… Sportsmanship at its best.
Let’s see: I have more robotics students using VEX stuff than I had before, so I didn’t even have enough Cortexes for them. Even if I had enough Cortexes, I would have to go and spend lots of money buying more 393s, motor controllers, lcd screens, and encoders, all of which are likely to be obsolete very soon. Oh, and lots of those won’t ship for quite a while, too. Plus I wouldn’t get the discounts on buying the V5 stuff, either; so we’re talking about a couple thousand dollars over a couple years, which is a big chunk of my budget. On top of this, with shifts within the departments and the whole school running on Macs, it’s highly valuable to shift to VCS. I didn’t have so much faith in VEX getting everything out right away. So I’m sorry I planned so poorly. Care to try to plan better for me???
Well, are you in your right mind?
I actually think it’s better to use 4 v5 motors than 12 393s. You get more total power, the awesome internal encoders, and pneumatics on top of it. I’d absolutely go for a 4 motor v5 bot.
I’m just personally not a fan of risking things when I don’t know whether or not I’ll get back enough to validate the risk. But you have to admit, trading in every system you had for V5 is a huge leap. Teams would be better prepared with 393 robot rather than learning an entire system in relatively a month before their fall competitions start. Well tuned > more powerful imo.
Sorry if you took my previous post with harsh connotations. That’s just how I talk lol. But, with the judgment you made alongside some assumptions, your teams most likely will not be able to compete for a while (Unless some sister teams share motors) which I’m personally not a fan of. Qualifying early then tuning designs over time is how I generally see the competition and not having a system to work with leaves you like a sitting duck for quite a bit of the planning and prototyping stage of the season, which is a bit vital lol (Sorry VEXU teams 
)
And just how would they be able to compete soon with a little more than the equipment to run one robot with Cortexes? Buy more Cortex stuff which won’t be available for just as long?
This is a silly discussion, let’s get back on topic