Hey guys! This is Grant Staten. If you competed at all in VRC in New Mexico from Tower Takeover through Spin Up then you probably already at least know of me. But in case you don't, I'm graduated from La Cueva High School in 2023 after becoming heavily involved in La Cueva's robotics team in my freshman year and running the team for my sophomore through senior years. In VEX robotics there is a huge issue for new teams of just not having available information. I see a lot of teams in New Mexico that have dedicated members and the necessary resources to compete, but are unable to compete at their highest potential level because they don't have information, and these videos aim to help solve that and give never teams resources to help get them started.
Also I know a quite a bit about VEX robotics, but not much about making good videos, they aren't going to be nicely edited or anything, may be slow or fast, the videos are just not well made (although video 8 turned out solid), honestly a lot of them ended up just being me rambling about the video's topic by the end. So feel free to put me on 1.5x speed or pause and play or whatever you want as you go through these.
Basic overview of VEX, what you'll be doing, and things to keep in mind as you design your robot!
Overview of the parts you will use to construct your robot!
Part 1 - Electronics:
Part 2 - Mechanics:
Overview of some basic physics concepts to keep in mind while building and troubleshooting your robot!
Overview of the common mechnisms used in VEX robotics!
Things to keep in mind to build a high quality robot!
An overview of the programs you can use to program your robot and how to get started with a simple driver control!
Links I discuss in the video to follow along:
vexcode v5 and vexcode pro v5 downloads
vexcode firmware utility page
Pros download, tutorials, and documentation
Note I will not be giving any code during the videos in this series about programming, I will simply be giving pointers, ideas, and tips on what to try and where to look for help.
Autonomous programming can be super overwhelming (also sorry in terms of the videos being me rambling this one is pretty bad) but this video will hopefully give you some good pointers to start programming your autonomous and routes you can use to improve your accuracy.
An explanation of simple PID control loops!
PID demo video I mention at the end can be found here
If you want to go to even more complicated programming than these control loops, I'm not going to give you all the answers, but I'll give a few recommendations. First, this will only begin to hurt you unless you A put in loads of time getting it to work well and more importantly, B you need to have a very high quality precise build. The second recommendataion is more of guideance, do your research, but look for the keywords "Odometry" and "Pure Pursuit" (which is a form of pathfinding).
What to expect at your first competition and tips to have a good time and do your best!