If anyone would like to help out my team cover costs for our robot (including the almost $800 v5 costs) please donate to our Gofundme! we are starting with nothing this year and need all the help we can get!
It’s pretty difficult to raise funds on this forum because most teams are limited financially as is. Maybe try going to local businesses or asking your school? If worst comes to worst you can go to each family and ask for a donation. Good luck!
yeah, we are doing that. I just want to get it out to as many places as possible. for maximum fundraising chance. but thanks for the advice anyway!
V5 is a not a MUST BUY this season, just use legacy and shave 800 off the budget.
true, and we would likely go with that, but now we are going to get the v4 trade-in deal. So now its a bit more feasible. Plus we have a great winning reputation here in Oklahoma, so we don’t want to be at any disadvantage. Especially since we are moving into the high school division this year.
The problem is that if you don’t upgrade this season, upgrading next season is going to be much much more expensive. You get about $400/team discount for the trade in, which ends in December
my exact thoughts.
Having bruised my hand when testing a V5 claw (don’t use go to position 0 as a blocking operation when something is in the way, especially body parts), 8 V5 motors is going to provide a lot more power than 12 393’s. The trick is going to be avoiding mechanical complexity to not blow the motor budget. At about 11W max per V5 motor and 3.93W max per 393, you’re looking at peak output of 88W vs. 48W. About 80% more power. The integrated telemetry is also very, very nice on the programming side of things.
You’re going to want V5 stuff just for the motors. Don’t rule out running a bake sale to drum up the last bit of cash. VEX also provides a HEXBUG Fundraiser Pack for teams if you want to sell robots instead of cookies for a fundraiser. A team in my area used to demo their robots at community events and hawk HEXBUGs to fund raise.
Well said, and for what it’s worth, v5s may be even more powerful than you’re describing. @M8R said on discord that in their testing, a 2 motor v5 base was able to push a 6 motor 393 base with similar speed. Of course there are trillion more factors that could have contributed to this, but it seems like v5 motors will be at least twice as powerful.
I’d be surprised if we see any round robin or even worlds elim teams with 393s. The v5 system seems to have a plethora of massive and obvious benefits with no clear drawbacks except limited legacy sensor ports. V5 isn’t technically required this year, but in order to be competitive, it basically is.
I think trying to raise funds for the v5 system is absolutely the right decision. Good luck!
We hosted a “Nerf Night” for our team fundrasier. You basically pool all the Nerf guns your club can scrounge up and buy Nerf darts on the cheap on amazon, and charge $25 a head to get in.
We went out and found as many card board boxes as we could in our town (how you do this is up to you) and set them up in the school gym so the kids could build their own forts and had some cover. It was a nice team bonding exercise and it brought in about $800.
+1. I haven’t been able to mess with our v5 beta kit much because our instructor insists on it staying as a 1000 rpm drivetrain, but I can attest that the motors are incredibly powerful. 393’s might be able to make it in skills where drive torque doesn’t matter, but out on the tournament field the extra pushing power for the center platform and just overall defensive play will make 393’s obsolete.
We tested a 2 motor V5 drive running at roughly the same speed as our drive from last year, and the 6 motor cortex drive won out by a decent bit. I’d probably recommend that any team using V5 go with a 4 motor drive if speed is a concern.