At a competition this weekend I saw an open flywheel. The team was dropping them on the flywheel. I loved the design but I am concerned that this will not be allowed as they are not placing onto the robot. Has anybody else saw this and how has it been addressed in your area?
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Yes, it is not allowed but on Saturday I saw a team have a zip tie above their flywheel that they dropped triballs on to. Similarly, a team had some tensioned standoff mechanism that was a similar system.
https://www.robotevents.com/VRC/2023-2024/QA/1529
This q and a states that placing triballs onto a moving flywheel is legal.
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Head Referee at event where a robot had “open fly wheel” - all the criteria for match loading onto robot were met. Opposing Alliance questioned legality at the time, I told them it was legal and they played on.
Yes mechanism was different, novel, and effective. Had it been judged event, I would consider that to be a candidate for Innovate Award for that event.
As @6Star points out, there’s a Q&A for this 
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Some teams place a zip tie above the flywheel so you are technically placing the tribal onto a stationary zip tie then it falls onto the flywheel.
I don’t know the legality of this but it’s better than having nothing at all and might reduce the chance of a warning or worse from the ref.
just bring a copy of the referenced QA to event. Legality is not in question, and if referee is confused, just show Q&A as definitive response from GDC.
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Since they didnt place it gently, its not legal, but you can still do a similar design. My team has a flywheel and we have a c-channel that we put right behind it at an angle. The triballs fall in pretty easily and it’s a very simple solution…
Was the team dropping them on the flywheel or gently placing them on the flywheel? The QA has made it clear that gently placing them on a moving flywheel of a robot is allowed. The distance that defines the difference between drop and gently place is going to be up to the discretion of the ref.
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