- For a beginner, very nice drivetrain. Do you have 3.25’’ wheels? But please use 6 motors:
- Scrap the side rollers, top roller intakes are much easier to chain with the rest of your intake/outtake system. If you do want to use side rollers, try using only one motor for them and somehow chaining both side rollers together.
- Take out all those plates between your drivetrain. Plates have a very bad strength:weight ratio. Try using 2 1x2x1 c-channels instead - much stronger, much lighter, much easier to mount things on. If you need a base for blocks to rest on, use anti-slip mats.
- Three main intake styles right now: Ruigan (simple ramp), S-bot/Snacky cakes, and maybe a couple lever bots. Look them up and take inspiration from their designs. Since you’re a beginner, I would recommend building a Ruigan style intake, since it’s very easy to build, very simple, and does extremely well. It’s just a ramp with chains/rollers. When making your intake, first build where you’ll intake from (like your side rollers), then where you’ll score from, and finally all the stuff in between.
- Try not to put chains and rubber bands on the same sprockets. You have the right idea by using rubber-banded sprockets, but putting chains on them will only cause some motion problems and wear out your bands extremely quickly.
Overall, for a beginner, you have most of the good techniques down (two c-channels per drivetrain side, bearing flats, screwjoints, rubber band rollers, etc). Just do more research to see how other top teams build their designs, and take inspiration from them. Fun Robotics Network has plenty of interviews of good teams, and Luke does Robotics has a few good robot rating vids. But when researching, remember to try and take only the simplest designs, cause by now you probably won’t have enough time to make anything complicated.
You can’t really ask other people what you should work on. Do research on different mechanisms through Forum, YouTube, etc. Compare designs, figure out what you can implement in come way or take inspiration from someone’s system. It looks like you can only score low goals so I would say try to get a system to score either high or middle goals, but thay entirely depends on your team. If you and your team don’t think the intake is good enough, then you might want to change that before making more.
My team and I actually saw you at Palace on the Hill today, but I don’t really remember your robot’s performance. My suggestion is for you and your team to make a list of what worked well, what didn’t work, and what your next steps will be. Does the drivetrain work well? Does your intske work well? Should you rebuild/rework something or are you ready to start making more?
I’m going to say a similar thing to what the other two people said, you already have a great start here!
Now, its the time to do research on potential designs that you want. Think back towards competitions you competed in. What advantages do you want, what disadvantages are you okay dealing with? Consider these while researching. As Gigahertz said, you probably should go with a Ruigan at this point of the season, and luckily, there are many different designs of it you can look at.
One thing to also say, all of this research and potential building oppurtunities would make amazing notebook entries for your engineering notebook. Please let your notebooker (or yourself if you are the notebooker) know about that. I wish you the best off luck out there!
tysm and im not sure the size of the wheel all i know is that they’re the big. Also our school isnt the riches so im not sure what all i can do but i will do what i can. I appritiate the help. I have my next tournament in 2 weeks anything i can do before then that wont leave my robot in pieces
yea ill make a list. I think that we were paired with you huys one time. At the elimination rounds i talked to your teamate that was up there about the reason for our team name lol
thank you a lot man. im glad i hopped on forum to get great advice from people like yall
i have a question to ask you. Is it worth learning c++ for the Ruigan?
You have the current biggest size vex omni wheels - 4’‘. The 3.25’’ wheels I ask about are the size below those.
If you have a tournament in two weeks… I think you have a lot more to worry about than learning C++.
While learning C++ is helpful later on in life, it won’t do much good to you now. Stick with your block code, and over summer break you can learn C++ for next year.
Ruigan style robots are supposed to be simple by nature. The beginner VEX teams in my organization that aren’t building hero bots are building Ruigan style bots - having them up and running within a month or two (since we have only a few hours per week). You could probably build one in less time.
You can see from the video it’s really just a simple ramp with some chains and sprockets.
It may be worth your time if you are a coder, and not just for the Ruigian. C++ or even python is worth it for any robot design you may use. It has the potential to be a lot more powerful than block coding.
However, I would not stress over it too much just yet. Learn it when and if you can, and it will be worth while. Take recomendations from other people as well though, and see what other people think. Follow what your brain (or heart) tells you to do, and go from there.