Is it legal for brain to be on to actuate piston during inspection

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC
1

Is it legal for brain be on during inspection to keep a cylinder piston activated to fit in the build limit using the analog manual control? Is pressurizing the resivoir even legal?

2

Yes

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3

I’m not sure entirely on how it’s gonna play out because a lot of teams will have pneumatics at worlds. But worse-case, you can just not fill up the reservoir during inspection. And second worse-case is flipping the polarity of pistons, as in switch the tubes so it forces the claw to close or mechanically activate the claw to close by pressing down onto the blue button on the solenoid before going to inspection.

4

Your question has two parts:

Is it legal? Did you read the game manual and find a rule that says your brain must be on or off and you’re pneumatics charged or discharged during inspection?

More important, per rule G4, at the start of a match your robot must be within starting size and able to maintain starting size while the brain is disabled. If you cannot do this, your robot will be removed from the field. If your robot is able to maintain starting size at the beginning of a match while disabled, it should be fine during inspection as well. If your pneumatic cylinders need to be charged to maintain size, then you better charge them for inspection. But the default position of your solenoids need to retract or extend your air cylinders as appropriate when your brain is off or disabled.

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5

When it is ‘disabled’ by a field controller, pneumatics retain their previous state. So, if you start the program (which sets the pneumatic cylinders), and then plug it into field control, it’ll retain its state. This is what our team does.

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6

This is a good explanation! Teams need to come to inspection the same way that they come to the field to meet the size requirements. This is the whole point of the inspection measuring. Doing things like pressing the solenoid valve buttons or switching hoses on the air cylinders to get through inspection just mean that there will be problems when the competition starts on the field.

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