Advice for Future Teams

 Plan out your circuit thoroughly, know how much wire you need and where it is gonna go. We spent at least five hours debugging and burned out six Teensies (of our own so we didn’t end up paying the lab fee) because there was a live wire touching a ground that we were not seeing.

Be very flexible to changes, especially if these changes make your life much easier. Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan and you have to make some really drastic changes but take them within your stride. This might include having to rewire your entire breadboard (which sucks, but is beneficial) or giving up the idea of using a stepper motor and replacing it with a servo because you just can’t get it to work.  

Start early because there will be several rounds of iterations, and always start with cheap and rapid prototypes where you can learn the most with the minimal amount of time, resources and effort. And then integrate various systems as often as possible, so that you can see how the various systems work together otherwise you might have various parts of the robot that work well independently but can’t function together.

Find the balance between doing another iteration vs knowing when the current design is enough. There will always be aspects of your robot that you aren’t pleased with and you could always recut the base (even though this would be the 5th base you’ve laser cut) or remake the ramp, but at some point these additional changes won’t make much of a difference. You are better off spending your time and brain power on other parts of the robot.

Mechanical fixes can be used to compensate for software fixes and vice versa.

Document often! This can be in the form of taking tons of pictures and videos, doing write ups, commenting on your code, making schematics, drawing out your schematics/circuitry.

Talk to your teaching staff! They are a great source of help and a fresh pair of eyes especially when you have been up for an entire night and cannot figure out why something is not working. They are also just nice people to talk to and get to know!