First let me say that my temper is high so forgive any frustrated rantings. Second, I’m a new coach (mom) with an almost brand-new middle school team (only one kid with experience who went to worlds last year so he’s no slouch) of homeschool boys. Third, I’m calling VEX tomorrow but have little confidence in them at the moment.
Our issue is with the ports on the “brain” and motors. The cords are so loose that we can’t keep them connected. While they are not actually falling out, they wiggle like a loose tooth. Some appear to not work at all but then will magically connect to a specific motor with a specific cord if you hold it just right. Talk about frustrating! My poor boys spent TWO HOURS trying to get their motors attached tonight and this is the SECOND time we’ve had to do this (a redesign of the bot meant we had to disconnect everything). There’s so much tape and rubber bands holding cords in specific positions that it looks like Frankenstein.
Tonight, we were literally holding cords in place with our fingers just to try and see if the motors would respond but they did not. I realize that could be a code issue so I’m not super concerned yet about it but at that point my kids were so upset that I just sent them home.
I’m so disappointed in the V5 product. It’s got so much potential and we were over the moon to have it our first year as a team. All of our competitors have the old systems and they are wiping the floor with us! Our league can’t even do a true autonomous with us because their system doesn’t work with the V5 for whatever reason.
The only other teams we know of who have V5 are having no issues with their cords or ports. We have tried every possible combination of cords (VEX original, team made, pushing hard, pulling, short wires, long wires) and nothing is working consistently.
Everything I see in the forums here is about blown ports. I don’t know if ours are truly blown (a few motors seem to be no longer connecting tonight but that’s a first) or if it’s just the shoddy connections. Am I really the only team experiencing this?
I have a video but it’s too big to upload here if that helps.