Im looking to gear up my drive base tonight, but I dont know if it will change my programming. All im doing is making it faster, so if I change the driver train velocity I should be fine, correct?
Unless you have tracking wheels, I’m pretty sure it’ll affect your auton. For example, if you had a 1:1 ratio, every time your motor spins once the wheel would spin once. But if you had a faster ratio, let’s say a 1:2, then every time the motor spins once the wheel would spin twice, so you’d go twice the distance per rotation. Full disclaimer, I’m not our team’s programmer, but I did do basic programming in IQ for a couple of years
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This is close. You would think that you would go twice as far, however by changing the speed you are also changing the torque of the bot which affects acceleration and other stuff. I wouldn’t recommend changing your drive unless you could recode it in a couple days.
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I was thinking since the robot measures in inches for programming (not sure how though) it would not effect anything but the speed at which it drives.
By the way, this is the second topic you’ve made today about gearing up your drive base, Could we try to keep the rest of drive-train related posts in this thread? Thanks!
So The program is calculating inches based on the circumference of the wheel and how many degrees the motor has rotated. In a 1:1 scenario, the motor rotation equals the wheel rotation but if you change the gear ratio the wheel rotations change by the same ratio. If you gear up the drive and you do not change the specified ratio of your drivetrain in your program, the robot will drive past the original target at a faster speed. I know in Vexcode V5 there is an option to set the external gear ratio of the drivetrain but you can also get a rough estimate by dividing the original target by the new ratio. ie Original target = 2 in, ratio = 1:2, new target = 1 inch. Of course as previously mentioned the acceleration does change which can affect consistency so you may have to tune your auto again. If you have a competition tomorrow I highly recommend that you wait until afterward.
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I would advise you not to change your ratio. As your state championship is taking place tomorrow. And based on how you described your code it would mess with your auton. Also, your driver will probably struggle to adjust to a new speed in one day possibly bring your driving score down.
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