Our JROTC Robotics team just completed our inaugural year. What a learning experience for team and coach/advisors. After competing in our newly established local league, it was an eye opening experience, when our team competed at the state championships. What products would you recommend the team invest in? We have VEX EDR with basic kit. Thanks.
If you guys are using V5 (the newest hardware), I would recommend getting the Inertial Sensor to help with turning during auton
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Aluminum, more motors (preferably 9) , basically some more of everything, although the vast majority of what you need varies from season to season, and based on your robot design
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Howdy @BlountHS! Welcome to the Vex Forum! VEX EDR includes two main types of hardware, the Vex V5 system (characterized by the black/red color scheme), and the Cortex system (green motors, white/silver brain). I am going to assume that you are using the Vex V5 hardware. The different products and their usefulness are really dependent on what your team is focusing on. If you have good coders and program a lot of stuff, you could want to invest in a Vision Sensor. If you aren’t coding that much, you don’t need it. Another helpful sensor (as @kevjar mentioned) is the Inertial Sensor. Because of VexCode’s drivetrain class, the inertial sensor is easily integrated into your robot for beginner coding, and the Inertial Sensor is handy for more advanced coding. If you have very limited structural parts, you may want to purchase more of those. Our robots each year tend to have at least one chain element to them. If you don’t have much of that, it could be useful. If your team focuses a lot on building and less on programming, buying some more structural elements to have extra of might be a good idea. Finally, never underestimate the power of small things. Having some extra tools or Magnetic Data Sync cables for program downloading (my team uses these) can help your team a lot. I hope this was helpful. If you have any other questions, you can post on this thread again.
Edit:
Also, these are some other threads about buying parts. The advice could be helpful
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I recommend getting some motor inserts for your V5 motors in order to make them stronger or faster depending on which one you purchase. I also recommend getting a lot of tools from either the Vex store or purchase some personal tools like for example hex keys, nut drivers, or metal hand saws and metal files or anything to cut and smooth aluminum if you don’t have it already. The final thing I recommend is a very large variety of aluminum and steel structure parts so you are well-equipped for what kind of bot you are trying to build
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More focus on Aluminum C-Channels. It would be more worthwhile to invest more in C-Channels than get aluminum kits that have unnecessary items (idk about the money formula but I just only order what I need, but order in bulk to save costs).
If you can, use robosource.net and get star screw drivers, and thin nylocks (avoid aluminum and nylon nuts/screws until you have more feel of understanding the structural integrity of robot parts and subsystems). I highly recommend investing in star screws on vexrobotics.com rather than hex, trust me.
Wait until the season starts before buying wheels. But regardless you should always aim for 3.25” omni-wheels or 4” wheels.
Start off with coding in VEXCode or VEXCode blocks, as it is easier to start off from. Also, be aware of some common issues with V5, such as port breaking, motor breaking, and brain screen crashing. Be aware of battery status lights and how to decode their meaning. In addition, and be aware of the battery utility.
Before buying items, it is really good practice to CAD your robot before you spend money. All items have .stl files you can download in the description on vexrobotics website, and you can use autodesk applications to CAD your robot first. If nobody has experience or wants to hook up something quick, go on robotmesh.com and create a V5 mimic, and use the mimic to quickly mock-up a robot.
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I would recommend the opposite. The inertial sensor has a lot of drift and a remarkably low refesh rate.
Use robosource as much as possible. I know that the spacers are many times cheaper than what vex sells
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@Railgunawesome +1
Completely forgot about white spacers, YES. Get white spacers from robosource, thick and thin. They are veryyyy useful and quantity count is large from robosource.
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I have to disagree with you there. I used it all season this year for a turning PID and it was almost perfect. I noticed almost no drift.
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C channel and electronics are going to be the huge things that you need
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Yeah your gonna need a ton of c channel
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