My last straw for VEX

VEX V5 General Discussion
1

Okay,
I am making this post not because I want to, but because we, as a community, need to comprehend the difficulties that are faced which are outside of our will. Within a competition, random disconnects are considered common. So common, in fact, that it is considered a privledge to not disconnect at least once within a competition. The V5 system is unreliable, and it has been for over a year now. Motors are still burning, breaking, randomly disconnecting, and locking up. Ports are still being fried and ruined, and most importantly the VEX screens are still turning white to this day. Yes, I understand that you, VEX Robotics, are making anti-static foam field tiles to help reduce this issue, but many of us will be graduating, knowing that many of our failures are never our fault.

Within the game development realm, something bad happening “outside of the player’s control” is not considered a challenge, but what is called punishing. This new system has been punishing teams with great potential, and slamming them against the ground. Nobody has regrets when they are punished, only mere disappointment of “Only if our robot didn’t disconnect during our last eliminations match” or “Only if our motors didn’t break during Qualification x, y, and z.” At this very state of “competition,” the challenges many of us are given, once we go up the competition bracket to State, National, and World-Level, should be expected to be within our control. Our experiences and grinding of building masterpiece robots, where only one masterpiece wins, should be based upon our own faults and failures. We should never have to suffer because of the failure of a companie’s product.

I’m going to be upfront about this. The product is a failure. The product is a failure not because of the fact that their release was late or that the system had many faults, but because the product is continuing keep its faults even after a year and a half of it being released. At this very point and time, the product should’ve been expected to be improved, the kinks removed, and a well-polished and manufactured device should exist in this time of age after waiting such a time. And yet… The problems of this day still exist. and almost nothing has changed.

This season, we have broken 2 V5 Brains, both with broken motor ports and a micro-usb port and another that fails to notice any updates. We have broken a V5 battery, as well as 2-3 motors and an inertial sensor. What’s funny is that many of us are so used to saying “we have broken [said item]” that competitors even say it to something that isn’t our fault, the V5 system. VEX, you have created a product that was expected to be both advanced and robust, which does not go hand-in-hand, but instead was a fragile and unreliable system that does not stand up to the VEX Robotics brand.

I hate to send this message, I really really do. But for the betterment of VEX, please listen to this post and comprehend it to the best of your ability.

Thank you,

  • Connor
2

I heard send them back to vex and they give u one free

3

Sorry man, but just because I get a new brain for free won’t excuse the hundreds of dollars down the drain from a broken port, or motor, or disconnect, or whitescreen within a competition.

6

Agreed, VEX needs to do something about this, whether it be changing the rules to allow for replays or pushing out firmware updates that solves these problems

7

I think its time someone wrote a post like this. My friends and I have spent more time troubleshooting electronic issues with V5 than tuning mechanical issues on our actual robots. Its unbearably annoying. Its honestly insulting that while a majority of the world is attempting to compete with some of the faultiest electronics a robotics competition has ever seen, VEX is making videos on how to reduce friction, when there are already so many solutions from other teams.

My perspective: VEX should have kept V5 illegal for a couple more seasons until it could actually perform the way it was advertised. The amount of money that some teams blow on competing is worth nothing if all their hard work goes down the drain just because they had too many dead ports on their brain.

8

VEX needs to admit that there are serious flaws with the V5 system. I would be content would they just admit that their products are susceptible to ESD.

9

This isn’t exclusive to the v5 system… There are ways to mitigate this on your own end as well. The one thing I could see changed is the replay rules.

I wouldn’t go on to say that. The v5 system is a significant upgrade to the v4 system. No one can pay me any amount of money to go back to v4. Sure there are things that need to be fixed, but nothing that completely hinders the learning and competition experience.

Playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe some of these things could’ve been avoided with better maintenance and care. I’m saying this because I’ve been to over 7 competitions this season alone and have never experienced any of these issues. For me, the v5 system has been reliable. I have had only a handful of disconnect issues, mainly at really large events where people are constantly moving and static builds up more quickly.

None of this is to say that the v5 system is perfect, or that it lived up to it’s hype completely. The biggest failure of the v5 system was its lack of ports for all the 3 wire sensors. The refresh rate is laughable, and the amount of ports is also laughable. Everything else, however, has the capacity to be fixed. Sure they are late, but we also need to be grateful for even having a new system. Look at how big of an improvement v5 is compared to v4.

10

Today we lost a tournament when our teammates white screened still contacting their stacked 12 stack, and blocked us from depositing our 10 in the other part of the zone. This was the 5th white screen they faced today. Nothing excuses the fact that even though vex admits this is a problem, nothing is in place to save unlucky teams from getting bo1’d and losing everything they had worked hard to achieve. At the very least, a white screen should constitute a replay, no matter the time involved in setting up again. Simply ignoring the problem is not a proper solution,

11

This is true, but personally I think that’s less on V5 and more on people putting messed up cords on the field control. Every disconnect I’ve run into has been traced down to this.

Maybe I’m just lucky with this, but the number of issues I’ve had like white screens, burning motors, fried ports could probably fit on one hand. Maybe cause I’m careful.

It’s definitely not a failure, but it’s far from perfect. I had far more issues with disconnects with the cortex system. ITZ worlds our bot was basically dead after thirty seconds just from random disconnects. V5 isn’t perfect but its leaps and bounds ahead of V4.

Wow thats allot. I’ve worked with the same pieces for a year and a half and have only had one fried port, and two bad motors out of the box. I’m just careful with it, keeping metal shavings away from electronics, storing it in a safe place, just overall very careful. Now I’m not saying your not, just seems like my experience is way different.
I’ve also only ever white screened twice, both times when my battery was at one or two percent. Personal theory is that the white scree has something to do with the batteries and not the brains, I’m not sure, and it definitely is still an issue.
I’m not disagreeing with you by any means, but before we all get torches and pitchforks out we have to remember that this is still a massive improvement from what we had, we can’t forget all the crap we had to deal with from cortex, and we do need to remember that they are working on it, I am pretty sure the amount of issues that are happening now compared to twelve months ago is drastically lower. Maybe they’re not fixing the things that we want fixed first, but we, as robotics kids, should understand how complicated these things can be. Trying to fix one thing, but in order to do so you have to start with another and it dominoes from there.

12

I’ve been told that it has to do with whether or not your battery cable is fully plugged in. Either way, it has to do with the battery itself. This is why they say to use Vex chargers only. Proper maintainence of the v5 system will preserve it properly and allow it to operate the way it should for the most part, like you said.

Totally agree. I see no reason a white screen shouldn’t constitute a replay. They’re rare enough for this to be allowed.

13

That seems to make sense.

I will agree with this, if vex admits that it is a problem they could at least find an outside solution to help. Replays for white screens and such.

14

I quite agree. If they either started a year early or pushed this system back a year, then these problems would be likely resolved. But, because of community’s backlash of the V5 system being released late, they likely rushed the system which was not fully tested to extreme circumstances and usage.

I agree, this isn’t exclusive and for the time being I quite agree that replays should exist for this.

I quite disagree. Knowing Engineering, we will have to fail before we succeed. I believe VEX is taking two steps forward, but they seem to incoherently take one step back. But, because they barely improved the V5 product since release, I just have to say that at this very point and time it is a failure to the VEX Brand.

Considering that some don’t have as many problems with V5, and VEX is telling us at many times “Static,” could it be a region-based issue with different climates/environments?

Thats an excellent theory, and it definitely could be one of the problems. But we also tend to disconnect randomly even though we aren’t connected to the field, so I believe is is another problem, or multiple problems that include what you are saying.

The only difference I can noticably pinpoint or utilize from the difference is the touch screen, stronger motors, and internal motor encoders. The V4 system is extremely reliable, and the vast majority (probably 99%) of Cortex issues tend to be the fault of the competitor for plugging and unplugging the Cortex power port too much or not rubber banding the Vexnet key on. The Cortex that I used in competition continued to be used all the way back to 2017. I only disconnected three times, one of which was a Cortex power plug problem and the other two being a remote problem (because I had to re-solder the remote wires since I got it dipped and had a loose solder connection).

Definitely a possibility.

15

I do not agree with every statement you made, but this is one thing I totally agree with. In my opinion V5 is great when it works, but when it fails it upsets me so much. Last season’s states was so frustrating, my robot disconnected during important winnable quals, the only thing I can do is to watch our opponents score all the points while my robot simply sits there. Static also killed my sensor so auton didn’t work during my last few matches. I’ve tried so much harder and improved so much this season, I can’t even imagine how frustrating it would be if those things happen again this year. Yes, I know vex is trying to fix the problems (anti static foam tiles), but what would that change? I’m a senior, this is my last year in vex, I don’t get another chance or another year to wait for vex to fix all the problems.

16

Dry climates(Basically everywhere that has heating in the winter) without humidifiers will cause the humidity to drop well below 20%, and that would increase the chance of ESD by a lot.

17

We need rule changes for white screens and disconnects. And we need them NOW, if we disconnect or white screen during a match that means going to worlds or not and just have a brick sitting on the field, then shouldn’t it be fair to at least re run the match.

Even in the Ref training videos is says, “if your robot disconnects, your still responsible for its actions.” How should we be responsible for something thats nearly unpreventable.

I would personally be fine if fixing the issue meant getting “V5 V2” and sending our old kits back for a little bit of money off of it.

And with motors burning out, it’s almost impossible to have a taller lift, we have done everything with trying to fix the issues of having long wires yet one of my teams will almost burn a port out nearly daily at one point, and with bad motors, we have had motors that haven’t made a full rotation before they fail or lock up and have a 4 pound box full of bad V5 motors ready to be sent back in the hope that we may get new ones that actually work.

18

Maybe, that’d be interesting to look into.

I can see that. The three fail points I see are the cord, controller port and field control port, But I don’t think I’ve ever disconnected without being plugged into field control.

Haha!!! Yeah definitely not my experience what so ever. I had so many disconnects with v4 and did so many different things to try and prevent it. The wires used for v4 were awful as well, broke really easily, disconnected really easily, even with wire clips.

But Connor is in Houston and I’m in San Antonio. My climate is more dry, but he has had more issues.

19

I honestly wouldn’t go this far tbh. despite all it’s flaws and major shortcomings, which I do agree need to be addressed and remedied, it really is a huge upgrade from cortex.

the first thing that needs to happen to address these issues is to have disconnections be grounds for a replay. there is no reason at all you should lose a match ever because your robot whitescreened and is now a lump of metal on the field.

I haven’t had any issues with whitescreening or disconnects, but I have had major port blowing issues. I’ve gone through 2 brains in 2 months because I’m just running out of ports. the anti-static tiles are a step in the right direction, but honestly vex just needs to redesign the v5 brain to give it effective esd protection. give everyone with the current brains a full price trade in.

20

I honestly feel like the anti-static field tiles are a step in the wrong direction. These tiles may not be used everywhere at competitions, scrimmages, or they are plain too much for some teams to add to their budget. Vex should have fixed the brain where it could work for a long time and teams would not have to worry about the ports. The exchange program should also be changed so it is easier for a teams. Right now someone has to email vex, send their brain, and they will get a new one sent later. Vex should send the new brain immediately and then the team has a certain amount of time to ship their old brain back. If there is nothing wrong with that brain, they will be charged a small amount and if they decide not to send it at all, they get charged the amount of a full brain. On top of this, the motors have to be fixed with the way that they also break really easily, but the main problem is the brain. This is my first year in Vex and I already have gone through 9 points with 2 ports breaking in 5 minutes. I also have 5 dead motors that are out of warranty so it would cost me 60 dollars to exchange which is more than the price of a regular motor. But we have to give them some credit comparing this to cortex.

21

I feel your pain…

It totally sucks to be investing hundreds of hours, sleepless nights, and countless mental energy to perfect your robot just to whitescreen in BO1 eliminations of what may feel to you like the most important competition of your life…

I assume that most people playing in VRC are accepting RECF proposition that if you play by the rules of the game and do the right thing, then your hard work will be rewarded justly. Even the the fine print doesn’t say anywhere that rewards are subject to the chain of various random events, mostly outside of competitors control, and ruled by the cold equations of statistical probability.

I really don’t want to guess how and why it was decided to ship V5 without addressing various negative feedback items from the beta program, neither I want to guess how it makes sense to keep replacing dead V5 units and still not have another hardware revision with better ESD protection.

What I want to talk about is some silver lining and your future.

Many of you will be graduating, going to college, becoming engineers, and designing various consumer and non-consumer electronic and mechanical systems, or maybe some sort of biochemical or software products…

When the management of the mega corporation that you will be working for will ask you to release a product with known issues to meet their quarterly or yearly goals, please, remember how you felt now, put yourself in the shoes of someone who may depend on reliability of your product, and find a way to resist that management call.

The silver lining is that you may be unlucky to suffer a V5 failure and miss out on an award or important qualification, but you will learn an unforgettable lesson that may help you to become more empathetic person in the future.

I would like to ask you not to become bitter but to use the lessons learned from V5 to become better engineers.

There will be awfully many robots running around in the future and I would be scared to death knowing that a simple ESD could cause them to loose their minds. I would be feeling much better if I know that engineers who designed them are fully aware of negative consequences and dangers of releasing premature hardware or software.

22

I’m about to go to school, so I apologize for not having time to read the whole thread, just Connor’s original message. As far as the unreliability of the product, I don’t have that much experience with disconnects and the like. We have never dc’ed during a match, and never white screened at all. However, I recently have had literally 12 ports become unusable on our V5 brain within the span of two months. It takes about 20 mins to an hour to burn them out now. Also, states is in two weeks, so we don’t have time to get a replacement, nor do we have any spares. Our only option is to buy a new one and hope that we can still send in our current one for a refund once we get the new one. As far as matches go, I agree that it should be decided purely by build quality, code level, and driving skill. It sucks to have your season ended by a technical issue, but that happens, even in jobs and real-world challenges. I’m not making excuses, but you will never have perfect hardware in an engineering job. That’s where the engineering part comes in. However, I still think that we should expect a slightly higher standard than the status quo. My overall opinion on this is that no matter what VEX produces, some people will always complain. And on the flip side, no matter what VEX advertises in their product, it will never be the perfect hardware people want.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

P.S. I’m surprised no one has pinged @DRow yet.