New team book recommendation

For years and years I’ve been recommending and using in our classes Yolanda Peterson’s
FTC for the Clueless Coach along with VEX for the Technically Challenged.

I’ve recently come across FTC Robotics: Tips, Tricks, Strategies and Secrets, the new 2011-2012 edition.

While specific for the FTC robots, there are still a ton of things that apply to the VEX competition around team management, strategy planning, general construction hints, etc. If you are a new team and are looking for ways to get started or a veteran team looking to add that little extra edge, I’d recommend this book.

When you go to favorite book place, there are two editions. The first comes only in hardback and costs $120. The second edition is paperback for under $20. The link above will take you to the paperback version. Get it, it’s the newest version.

Just a note, the examples are in RobotC, but there are differences between RobotC/VEX and RobotC/NXT. Concepts are good, examples may or may not work.

Thank You very much I mentor a few middle schools in the area and it is nice to give them some documentation to look at and get ideas from so they have an idea what the goal is when they first start.

Matt

I’ve also appreciated David Kelly’s (scidkelly) documents on drive trains and manipulators. And they’re free! His website (simplerobotics.org) has other stuff that looks good, but that I haven’t checked out.

The 2011 Clueless Coach’s Companion to VRC is also free, but is already dated.

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A lot of people overlook the big vex inventors guide or THE TEXTBOOK as my middle school team used to call it. It provides a brief explanation for everything and is a surprisingly good way to start off in vex.

thanks for the stuff, with the inventors guide we kinda transplanted all the stuff from it into a leaver arch folder, and we use the vex folder is used for important resources like CAD designs for old robots, we are planning on using the folder to put all the engineering notebook stuff in it.

Also check out http://curriculum.vexrobotics.com – a book’s worth of content, free on the web.

-John