We need help (NEWBIES)

Hey everyone! I am creating this thread because my team, Syntech Error, needs some guidance as we are almost complete newbies. We’ve been given some assitance as to what to do and such, but we don’t have a robot idea down for this years tower takeover competition, and we are still trying to set up vexcode.

Our robotics team is from a highschool with 6 other robotics teams in it and with 5-6 people per team. Every year for as long as I know, the freshmen team, which we are now, continues to fail each year. I believe this is due to lack of experience or lack of guidence which I completely understand. I want to change this odd pattern for this year. Our current robot design will be using an H-drive with a mix of traditional and omni wheels (or as we currently have planned due to lack of resources). This might change in the future since we will be recieving a brand new V5 kit. For our robot, we are going for the extending reverse stacker design. I want to know if this design is good or bad and what great tips we should use for building, designing, or programming. I hope that with the information that i’ve provided to you all, I am able to get some assistance for my team. Any sort of help is appreciated! Thank you.

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First, I recommend using an all omni-wheel H-drive design because it’s easier to move efficiently with. Second, does anyone on your team have experience and if so, in what? Third, what kind of reverse stacker do you mean?

@AD1481, I think by extending reverse stacker, they are referring to this video released early in the season: https://youtu.be/rhCppJ-nLH4 Also, I think the idea by 448x in their ri3d is a great one(https://youtu.be/QJI29QI5COM and https://youtu.be/BC4ZlIcBB7I)

Yes I would definitely recommend that design if you know how to build it which goes back to my question if anyone on your team has prior experience.

You can go on to YouTube and watch and see what the robot were from the finals in China. That is where my team got our idea for what we wanted to build for our robot.

If you cant find a perfect idea, again 448x has a more in detail design they’re using.

If you are running an H drive, do not use any wheel other than omni (except for mechanums but dont use them as newbies).

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@Railgunawesome I’m a 2nd gear middle school student, and I’m using mecanums. There is a good thread about the code for it: https://www.robotmesh.com/studio/5be40c90c8f17a1f5796fd35

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If you can use them, they’re a good option this year for traybots

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I think I might disagree that mecanums will be good this year for tray bots as they don’t really need to strafe, they don’t stack on existing stacks or need to line up to towers as much and you can line up fine for the score zone without them. I know strafing looks awesome for a begining team but personally I don’t think the trade offs in torque (for defense) and motors are worth it, that being said if you have an extra motor and don’t know where to put it I think an H drive is fine, just be careful with defense.

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@James6555 mecanums are good to align with cubes to intake them if needed

I myself do not have any prior experience, but a few of my teammates do which is really helpful. None of us are proefficient or good in any way.

If you are doing H-drive. just watch out for bumps or extra things in the field when practicing. It could mess up your program. Good luck on this year though. You will do great!

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Yes they are good to align with cubes but it is better to design an intake that can be more imprecise when grabbing cubes because you don’t need to spend time lining up, this is especially important with traybots.

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How would this be accomplished for less precision?

For example you can design the intake to be like a V, channeling the cubes to the center. You can also tune the intake to pick up cubes from any angle.

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Yeah I’ll talk to my team about this since we are getting new parts soon. We know it is not a good idea to use wheels other than omni-wheels.

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How so would it mess up the program?

I would say take risks this year and learn from your mistakes and strive to do better next year. also you could watch the veteran teams and see what they r doing and try to match that

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Yeah we are going all in or nothing this year so we can learn from our mistakes, while not being too risky or dumb haha.

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