Team parts rules and home practice bots

VEX IQ General Discussion
1

Hello,

I am coaching my first year of Vex and I have a couple questions.

  • How do your team members practice driving if your teams robot requires more Vex IQ parts than each family has independently? Do you have your members make similar smaller robots, etc.

  • How do you handle parts purchased by the team?

    • Do they live at the team meeting location?
    • Are they allowed to be checked out to members or do they stay at the main team hub?
    • Do all parts rotate during off season?

  • How do you determine which tournaments have State/Regional qualification? I’ve checked the awards section of events posted on Vex Events but so far none of the tournaments have awards that show a qualification.

  • What are your requirements for participation on the team?

  • How do you find kids of equal ability when you are coaching young teams? (8-9y/o)

Thanks for any feedback!

2

Welcome to VEX!

  1. I would recommend having a rotating schedule of taking one robot used for competitions home because often the tuning can be different between robots and it’s hard to replicate an exact robot with all of its unique features.
  2. You should probably have a check-out system for parts purchased by the team, but that is just my opinion.
  3. I’m not sure.
  4. I would say having a role (or multiple) on the team and actively doing the role. There are usually multiple roles per person but it depends on how many people are on your team.

Good luck!

3

I’m not in vex iq, rather vex v5, but I still believe I can offer some insight.

I’m a commander for our jrotc robotics team, so I have some experience with this.

For the most part, parts live at the meeting location. If the location is in a public area (a park, etc), then find a responsible adult to take it to/from the location. However, if someone has an idea and they’d like to take parts home to work on it, I allow it, but they must explain their idea, and provide proof of concept (a cad model, etc). For younger kids this can be skipped, as long as they have parental consent.

For driving, if you can afford it then you can buy some cheap robots that the kids can take home and practice, as some practice with any robot is better than nothing. If you have a main driver, I’d let them take the main robot home and let them drive that to practice.

I require that all team members are actively participating. Last year we had an issue with kids who were just on their phones, and I fixed that this year. They must attend at least 75% of all practices if they don’t have an excuse. Excused absences don’t count, they’re a neutral number.

When trying to find equal ability, just have them be them and you’ll figure pretty quick what they like to do. If they go for the parts, they’re a builder. A controller, they’re a driver. A computer, they’re a coder, etc.

Hope this helped, and good luck this season!

4

Thanks so much really helpful!

5

welcome to vex iq!

it is illegal to have more than one robot, so i do not suggest each of them having a robot. i agree with @3383B , it’s a good idea to keep your one robot and work on it in shifts. my coach lets the team captains take home all of the field parts to use at home over winter break or other long breaks, so if you need to do that, that’s good.

we have shelves and racks of different parts. maybe put 1x_s in one box and 2x_s in another. keep your connector pins in walgreens pill bottles. it really helps, because ziploc bags will tear open and they will all leak out. this is coming from someone with experience! also, they should live at the team meeting place, and people can take home parts along with the robot. there are rolling thingys on amazon that can hold the robot and other parts.

(extra advice to save money: start by ordering the vex iq starter boxes, and if your team needs more parts, go order those extra parts.)

i think most tournaments qualify for state/regionals? if you are having trouble figuring out, contact the tournament’s curator.

kids should make it to at least half of the practices over a season. i do competitive soccer and varsity volleyball, yet i still find time to do robotics. if they don’t have any interest, they’ll quit. trust me.

most 8-9 year olds may not be interested. as someone with an eight year old sister, i know it’s hard to make them want to do something. it doesn’t matter how smart they are, there is many types of knowledge, many of which are good for vex robotics. if they keep showing no interest or not coming to practices, you may want to contact parents/guardians.

6

… at an event, or is there another rule ?

7

pretty sure only at tournaments…

actually, having more than one if you have the financial means is really useful for tuning, data

8

At a competition it’s illegal. At school, it’s legal.

We practice at meetings.

Ours do because we organized them at the start of each season. The organizing is usually done for nothing because the parts are already disorganized.

We keep ours just in the meeting room.

What do you mean by this?

Most tournaments qualify for state/regional. Qualifications won’t show up until the state competition is posted.

Our coach looks for determined students that will try even if times are hard. They also have to be well-behaved. Our coach hand picks them from her classes instead of applications.

Look for kids that are creative.

9

Hi Ashley,

Welcome to VEX IQ! I too am a first time elementary school coach and will try to share what I’m doing.

  1. There is a virtual driving simulator where you can connect a controller to a computer that runs Google Chrome for driving practice. 2026 VEX IQ Robotics Competition Level Up Virtual Driving Skills Practice
  2. Our parts were purchased by the school’s PTO and they live at school unless checked out by a parent. I have a simple check-out sheet that has columns for the date checked out, parent’s name (which they write in), the parts checked out (field, kit, etc. - you can even take a picture which is easier than listing out the parts), team, and the return date.
  3. Correct, all events will show none of the awards qualify for state/regionals at this time. I think they will decide later which awards will qualify. Typically, if you win the Excellence or Teamwork Champion Awards, you will get an invitation to state/regionals.
  4. I require parents of teams to volunteer in some capacity, whether it’s providing snacks, lunch at events, supervising/hosting practices, donating money, handling t-shirt orders, etc.
  5. Since most everyone was new to VEX IQ, we didn’t really have an issue with this.
10

Welcome to VEX IQ(and the Vex Forum)!:

You allow parents to check out the entire field? I can’t have the rest of my team bringing our robot home because of some certain people that will kick the robot against the wall just to test it(yes this happened).

There is also https://vr.vex.com/ to help with coding. To use this you will need a virtual skills key(after registering your team).

From what I remember from last year, you can also be invitation to state through Skills at a competition(Ex: Your team is second place for skills, and the first place team won Teamwork Champion and Excellence and yes this happens a lot. Since they already qualified once, the second spot will be given to the highest team for skills that hasn’t qualified for state.)

11

Wow! I can’t believe people would kick the robot! In prior years, parents who wanted to support their child as a driver/coder, could purchase their own VEX field and game elements. However, for this year that option is no longer available unless you register a team with VEX. As a result, we allow a responsible parent to sign the check-out list and it’s their responsibility to bring the field, bot, kits, etc. back for practice. Since we have a new VEX IQ team with brand new parts, I’ve already drilled it into everyone’s heads that if you break it, you buy it. They know it is a privilege for them to be the first to put their fingerprints on it and they are to treat all school property with respect so these parts can be reused in the future. All members can tell me exactly how much the more expensive parts/field cost and have a healthy understanding that the parts should be treated like “precious jewels” (in the words of one of my 4th graders).

Thanks for mentioning the vr.vex.com website for coding as well as pointing out the Skills Award will also help teams qualify for state/regionals.

  1. The most important requirement to join the team is that the member wants to do robotics. If they are internally motivated, they will ask questions to learn more, they will show up consistently, and they will work hard to get the job done. Simple ways to differentiate those who are simply curious vs. those that really have a passion for robotics is to have them answer why they want to do robotics or take a test after studying the game manual. We have a attendance policy in place which allows for no more than 3 unexcused absences or 5 total absences per semester.