I now know exactly when a battery is running dead.
Every time your robot breaks, it is like a bone, it gets stronger every time. (or at least my robot keeps doing that).
Everything that can go wrong SHOULD go wrong before a tournament.
Never accept status quo.
Lessons during a competition:
Keep batteries on chargers after you are done with it.
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS tighten up screws between matches.
Make sure you have YOUR remote. Different remotes are set with different settings.
When you have the frequency 81 and your partner has the frequency 81, something is wrong.
During a match:
ALWAYS top the other teams cube.
Always go for the three.
Always wear GOGGLES!!! Anyone gone through grief for not having your goggles on? Your team instantly loses the match, or our referee was just strict with policy. Cause you know, the occasional screw, nut or cube is going to fly straight into you eye. (I know goggles are smart, cuase just think of it, what if you fall down on a claw robot pointing straight up at your face?)
Just a question regarding how you know a battery is dead. Our team has been bringing a multimeter to competitions to test the batteries. What’s your method?
Also
“Everything that can go wrong SHOULD go wrong before a tournament.”
Murphy hasn’t been quite as generous with us =/
Also, a slightly new category
Before a Match
Ensure that you see a light. Just because you think you flipped the switch doesn’t mean your microcontroller is getting power
During a competition if you have control problems switch out everything. Switch out the receivers, the MicroController, and the remote. You will most likely not have time to figure out specifically which is the problem. Also most of the time you would need to be able to be hooked up to the field to see the problem.
Also always talk to your partner before the match starts. It’s bad if you get to the field and don’t have a game plan.
Always be courteous to every volunteer. You never know when you might have to ask a favor of them. A simple hello and thank you whenever you see them goes a long way. For them it’s nice to know that they are appreciated.
Check all your connections (battery, PWM, Rx), or better yet, create a checklist. This season, we lost Bellarmine final match 4 (1 was a 33-33 tie) because Rx2 wasn’t plugged in, and nearly lost a qual because of a loose battery at Pan-Pacific. I can’t even begin to count the times some of our motors weren’t working because the PWMs came out of their sockets.
Having a starting checklist is good:
[LIST=1]
*]New battery
*]Battery mounted firmly (a team lost theirs last week)
*]Battery firmly plugged in
*]All Motor and sensor wires plugged in
*]All jumpers out (one team left their 1 min auto jumper in place so their robot sat for part of the driver time)
*]Yellow receiver wires connected firmly at both ends (one team had a loose cable from when they tethered, robot did not run)
*]Antenna wires out, not all rolled up in a ball
*]Wires tucked up so they can’t snag (one team’s robot dropped a cable into their gear train, stopping all motion)
*]Remember to turn on the robot and LOOK at the lights to make sure it’s on
*]Push the connectors into both the tower and the back of the transmitter to make sure the are in.
*]Right crystals in the right place. We saw a mixup between two teams where they crossed the crystals. They got it sorted out, but it took 30 seconds to get the transmitters swapped to the other team.
*]Drill into the team – if you think it’s a field issue, unplug. That way the field has nothing to do with your robot. Stop when the ref says stop. In 100% of the cases last week where the roboteers yelled field issues and then unplugged, the robot was still dead (see the above reasons).
[/LIST]
Having a checklist that the coach reads and the drivers check (and I mean check, not go “ummm yeah”) will solve a lot of problems.
we had one time when me and my partner swapped crystals by mistake. We sat there for 20 seconds wondering what was going on, and then we figured it out. Then we swapped controllers. In retrospect, we should have swapped crystals because our controller’s channel reverse functions are different. Aside from that, only a few more horrible accidents happened.
The number one thing I’ve learned in competitions is to check your controller, whether it’s a new battery that’s needed or some other issue. I now make sure I check everything before a competition starts.