Team Connection

VEX V5 General Discussion
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Hi! My name is Dasha and the robotics team I’m currently on isn’t new but undergoing many changes as well losing the most knowledgeable team member in our class as of this year. However, there were select things as well that we weren’t knowledgeable about as a whole team such as how to write an engineering notebook or much about programming in RobotC and now in the Vex Coding Studio. Many of the first year students in the class including myself are hoping to learn more in the near future and prepare us for upcoming competitions. We’d love to keep in contact with other teams or you yourself reading this. I’m willing to uphold conversation through email, social media, or my number if anyone is willing to help or interested in talking a little bit about robotics and nearby tournaments (my team is based in California).

Here are a few questions I have:

  1. Should we keep record of our engineering notebook every time our class meets?

  2. Does anyone have any helpful slideshows or resources that may help navigating through coding, robotic terms, and forums easier?

  3. How should work be delegated among other members in your group? Programming, building, writing in the engineering notebook, etc.

  4. Is the engineering notebook Vex provides us the notebook we are required to use?

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  1. Yes, always keep an engineering notebook even if you aren’t going to enter it. The engineering notebook is a vital part of robotics competition and you can learn so much from it. I would also recommend that all members of your team fill it out at least sometimes.

  2. I don’t have any resources, but I just watched a lot of videos on vex. If I were you I’d watch videos about prior games (and especially videos about mechanisms). You can also learn about vex terms just by reading the forums, and from watching videos.

  3. Depending on how many members your group contains, you may want to have a “lead” builder and a “lead” programmer, and even multiple drivers. If you have only 3 members, split up the work, so 2 people build, 2 people program, and everyone works on the notebook.

  4. No, you can use any notebook. (It helps to have a bound notebook though.)

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  1. Yes, good engineering notebooks keep track of the engineering design process and are thorough ,
  2. The forum is navigable through the search bar, and certain topics can be disabled under settings.
    As far as coding goes, there are some references on the forum and online.
    Robotics terms can be learned about ok YouTube, as there are multiple educational vex videos on there, robot reveals are also a possible way to learn these terms as many teams say what they are using now in them.
  3. On my high school team, we had one person program and do notebook, and 3 build. However, it’s probably good to have a full time programmer and a full time notebook person to have good code and a good notebook. Good notebooks are helpful for judging.
  4. You don’t HAVE to use it. However, you are supposed to use a bound notebook and it is recommended to have it hand written. There is a rubric available online.

If you have any specific questions about anything, feel free to DM me

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The best piece of advice I can give you is to take your time with the design process. If you rush it, the final result usually doesn’t turn out quite right. It took my team 6 rebuilds to learn it. Also you probably won’t do as good as you’ll expect at your first comp or so, California is a really really tough region. Good luck!

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