So our teams robot this year doesn’t have a “pooper” to outtake the opponents’ balls after we suck them up. We are wondering: do we really need one? Our thought was at early competitions it would be more beneficial to leave the opponents’ ball in the tower, than to spit their ball back out where it can be easily put into the top of another tower. At early competitions I would think that most teams won’t have the capabilities of cycling balls that fast, so rather than dumping their ball out, we will just leave it in the tower where it is harder to get. Please share your opinions on this subject. Thank you!
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Yes, a pooper is necessary for being able to get higher skills runs since the opposing color balls count against you.
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i would use it cause it sounds cool
but actually though, the pooper makes cycling more efficient imo. Even if the opponent is able to retrieve their ball, it’s gonna take time for them to get it.
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Necessary? No.
But seeing as there are basically no downsides to having a pooper, I’d say it’s definitely worth it.
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Ok. I was just wondering if we have to change our whole design. I think we could have a macro that we press and it discards one ball to the side or something.
There are downsides if you try to make it and it doesn’t work properly. Only make one if you think you can make it well and that it can benefit your matchplay/strategy.
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well yeah, anything can have downsides if you don’t build it properly.
but it’s really not hard at all to make. if you have the ability to make a fast hoodbot without a pooper, then you should be able to make one with a pooper no problem.
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Necessary? No. Good idea? Yes!
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Would having a pooper make driving in skills or matches as a whole easier/better?
Better, yes. But it is a bit more difficult to drive.
Forgive me for reviving this, but now that it is late season, we have seen more teams changing from a pooper to a solid ramp in favor of a faster cycle speed. So, has the general consensus of this changed? Or do we still think a pooper is better than a faster cycle speed?
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its still very divided. Poopers can be very fast if tuned properly, but the most common hole count I’ve seen everyone and their brother using (for good reason, its really good) does not have a pooper. I think its also worth noting that pooper requires more space on the back, so good hard mounted intakes that can cycle every goal are more difficult.
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I think a lot of people overlooked how difficult it would be to automate the sorting of the balls so much so that it’s actually quicker and easier to just discard unwanted balls out the top of the robot. The change in direction needed to poop out the balls also decreased the efficiency compared to a continuous and single direction set of rollers.
Here’s a scenario:
Two robots with the same roller radius, rubber bands, and angular velocity on the uptake system. One of the robots is a pooper and one just has a flat backing:
In this case (and by nature), poopers aren’t as efficient as a single set of vertical rollers (for lack of a better word) for continuous shooting because the ball travels the least amount of distance and has the fewest changes in direction with the latter. I would also argue you that could get away with an even faster uptake on the simpler system because there is less friction and load against the motors, but that’s a different argument.
I’m probably overstating a lot of the variables at play, but make no mistake, it is much easier and quicker to get a simpler system to work well. The benefits of this are evident with the current state of the meta.
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I would agree that while a pooper is still very useful, no pooper will probably be better for the large majority of teams. Only if a pooper is utilized to the fullest extent in programming and automation will it be better. They played their part well in early season, but teams have gotten very good at dealing with unwanted balls without one, and at the speeds robots function at this point, they do have significant tradeoffs. They’re still nice in skills, especially prog skills, but useless in LRT format, so I doubt we’ll see many poopers during worlds.
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I agree completely that we will not see many poopers at worlds due to the LRT format. I do however think in match plays poopers are very useful. I myself have run many different strategies off of being able to poop out balls. This past weekend at our state competition all 4 of the robots in finals had a pooper mechanism
edit: one thing I wish I was able to do is run a scrimmage with the best poopers and the best non poopers and see how that goes
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Is a pooper necessary? No. Are intakes necessary? No.
I think that a pooper when implemented correctly, can be beneficial. If implemented incorrectly, it can be a hindrance.
I have built 4 bots this year. The first one had no pooper. It was never tested on a field so I have no clue how it would have worked. The second one had a good pooper, but it used an entire motor so it wasn’t worth it. The third one had a pooper that would occasionally accidentally poop a ball if it had 2+ balls in it at once. It took a long time to get used to driving it and I would say it wasn’t worth it.
Our most recent robot we built for the super regional event has an amazing pooper. It has a reverse intake that also functions as a pooper (reveal video coming soon). It is in no way a hindrance and it allows us to intake from behind. It hasn’t ever competed though so I am not sure how big of an advantage it will be.
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is it necessary? No.
Would it be helpful? Yes.
Lol, I wish my team and I had just put in the work and made one earlier on in the season. We can still score 245 on skills without it, but descoring took a LOT of work on auton and consumes a good 10 seconds of time on driving.
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can confirm, won a competition without either
i did however, have what I believe to have been the first back intake, built just days after the game reveal.
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I think that fast rollers are better than a pooper. We have 2400rpm rollers and it is super fast and efficient. We just shoot the other color’s balls out the top when we’re done with them.
https://youtu.be/X9XwX6YaExU It’s difficult but not impossible. With good tuning and programming, a robot with an ejector can be just as fast. In the video I linked everything there is being done automatically, and the driver is only pressing one button
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