For V5: motor caps and motors that are designed to “click” in and out securely. Then teams don’t have to use hacks like rubber bands and zip ties to enjoy the benefits of “hot-swappable” motors.
For IQ: Air pressure sensor in pneumatic pump so you can getPressure() and regulate the pump - could lead to interesting experiments (maybe trying to optimize battery life, and not running pump all the time?).
For IQ: Next gen LED sensors where the whole square top of it is a programmable RGB LED matrix display. You can set the colors for that, but also program a lot of other stuff like a symbol or letter to show. This would be great to have for V5 too.
Speaking of colorful lights: a light strip “sensor” that can support those LED light strips. I know there’s some hacks involving the IQ pneumatic solenoid that make this possible today - but I’m talking about VEX official light strip (custom lengths trimmable)
I also like the color strip idea. A 20 pitch strip with a 6" pigtail. But, remember it’s IQ, so can’t cut it. That would set the IQ world spinning, why can I cut that but not these??
I don’t do IQ but am a robotics mentor to the teams and do V5 personally I get so triggered by the robots just sagging, for example the most developed 180 flip mech bots at my school are so heaving with double pnuematics tubes and etc etc that they just sag in terms of drive, some teams manage to minimise it but some form of (Metal maybe?) one size fits all support beam to lock drives would aesthetically make the robots not look overweight, just a pet peave of mine tbf tho
For VEX IQ, another thing is how awkward it can be to bridge a gap that is an odd hole number in length. I’m aware that there already are some pieces which have holes with half the spacing in the middle (@Foster’s beloved 1 hole-wide pieces), but it can still be difficult to bridge odd hole-width gaps with them.
My proposal is a piece which can extend to some degree and be locked to certain lengths. This would require a thicker piece, but it would still ultimately be a room-saver. Additionally, depending on how the locking mechanism is built, it could also allow easy bridging of gaps which don’t align with the hole-shavings at all (Side note - my current go-to for this are the angle beams). A simple locking mechanism, such as a slot for a pin through the side, might not allow for this additional functionality, but something resembling two rack gears facing each-other and can be clamped together would allow more flexibility.
Yes-this later locking option can be built with existing VEX IQ pieces, but a dedicated piece would allow a lot more compact of a system.
I’d like to see longer version of the Motor Shaft add on. Presently they are all pretty short up to 4 pitch / 2". I’d like to see much longer ones like into the 10/12 pitch range 5"-6" We still build a lot of lifting things / 4 bar linkages that these would be great for.
The current selection shortness and the lack of shaft extenders would make these a big hit.
