Electric Vehicle C

[andrewwski]

If you don't mind my asking, what was your score?

[seth959ci]

honestly, i didn't even think of finding out my score at the time....wish i had now. My partner and i were just amazed how fast,accurate, and redneck (warped plywood chassis held together by sheet metal screws and tape) it was that we forgot.The team that beat us comes from a rich school that i think actually has class time to work on it.

i can tell u that the car went perfectly straight and stopped within 2cm of the finish line. it did turn out though that the team after us measured the track and found it to be a little less than the said 5.5m. it does not matter even if we win because we probably wont go to state even if we are invited( hopefully this year is different ).

this year im definitely getting my score! i have also posted 2 pics in the image gallery of the new car for those interested. sorry for the massive 1st picture(forgot to resize)

[captbilly]

Speaking of getting your score, do your event coordinators actually give out the scores? In many regions, states and even at Nationals, most event coordinators will not give out the scores for building events. In some cases they won't even give you the raw score (distance error, time, etc.). A few years ago the guys who ran scrambler at Nationals actually posted the scores (raw total and place) in real time on a video screen. I thought it was a great idea because it virtually eliminated any possibility of a scoring error going unnoticed, but many teams complained so last year there were no scores posted, or told to the competitors in scambler.

I have seen a couple of times (at regional and state) where a team got a much higher place than their actual performance should have gotten them. I can only assume that the error was accidental, but there was no real way for a team to know if there was an error, other than watching the entire event and taking your own data. A few years ago I was watching Storm the Castle at a State competition. I watched for about 45 minutes and I saw at least 3 teams that did better than the team that came in 2nd. In fact the 2nd place trebuchet had such a large target error that their score was just about zero. But it was funny when the 2nd place was anounced, the guys who did STC were so surprised they almost fainted. I think they knew they shouldn't have gotten 2nd (probably more like last) but they didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so they said nothing. Point is that there was no way that anyone could contest the results because nobody had access to the scores, or could compare what the event coordinator wrote down vs. what actually happened.

[seth959ci]

Hmmm...i might have to take my own data...

[Dark Sabre]

Haha, I remember this conversation, captbilly:
Excerpts taken from http://scioly.org/obbarchive/read.php?TID=13541:

At our regional and State competitions no one is allowed to see the raw scores of any of the events. The rationale seems to be that by not publishing the scores it is less likely that there will be an appeal. I suppose that may be true but how can a team be sure if the scores were properly determined or recorded if they can't see them. Last year I was watching Storm the Castle for about an hour. I am familiar with how the event is scored becuase I have coached the event. I saw the winning team and several other teams compete and roughly calculated the scores. The winning team did indeed get the best score that I calculated but the second place team scored much worse (almost looked like they should have recieved no points since there error was huge) than two other teams that I saw. I didn't personally care about the mix up but because I wasn't involved but how could a team even challenge such a screw up without knowing what score they and the other teams got?

At Nationals the scores for every event except Scrambler, are also kept secret. Team Scrambler runs the event at Nationals and they actually pomenently display the raw scores and place in real time on a video projector. I could be wrong but I have never heard that they are having more appeals than any other event.

We (TeamScrambler) actually had only 2 appeals that I can remember last year at Nationals. One was because a team that did well received a penalty due to their backstop being too small and they thought that was unfair and the other was because the students were in such a hurry that they sat on their egg before their run. In both cases our ruling was upheld.

We have been projecting a leaderboard with raw scores at the regional, state and national levels since 1996 and we rarely get any appeals. Usually we get large crowds and tons of compliments and excited students since they like to see how they and their competitors fare throughout the day.

I know one state director complained to the higher ups at NSO about us showcasing scores at nationals but in the end NSO backed us up and thought we did a good job. I think more building/tech events should do this. I think it adds a bit of excitement to the day and keeps the teams shooting for gold.

National event supervisor's have never been allowed to post scores. Last year caused some hard feelings when scrambler posted the scores and nobody was allowed to do so. We'll have to wait and see what the future policy might be.

From our end we saw one complaint and too many compliments to count on our setup including the display of scores. Many of the compliments came directly from the higher-ups as well. It fits with our presentation and is a hit with 99.9% of the students, coaches and crowd. We have used it since 1996 and keep using it all levels with great success and support.

I have mixed feelings.
At regional competitions, at least in Kentucky, staffing is usually pretty sparse. I run whatever my two building events are alone (well, I've got another timer/scale/sand/track volunteer, but they've never seen the rules before), so I'm not going to stop sending people down the track so I can calculate scores. States are a little better.
I'm quite willing to tell the teams what penalties I have them down for and whatever the event requires for the next run/launch's calibration per the rules, but I don't volunteer much else.


[Obligatory plug for people to upload scrambler and electric vehicle pictures to the Image Gallery]

[seth959ci]

so, adding pictures is good?

[Dark Sabre]

Haha, very much so.
Won't be any use if people don't. I only get to take pictures a few times a year.

I saw the two you uploaded
Is that your current vehicle?

[seth959ci]

yes it is, it just needs to be reconfigured a little bit so that it runs reliably. might be hard to get it going straight with dual motors

[timmytanks]

I'm doing electrical vehicle and I thought it would be a good learning experience to make one with a microprocessor. I have never worked with one before so i have a couple of questions.
So basically you hook the engine(s) up to the microprocessor and it control the engine(s), right?
But I have to hook the microprocessor into a computer to adjust the settings for how i want to control the engine?
How do you set up the microprocessor, do i just hook it up the my computer and change the settings or is it much more complex?
Also, If anyone know of any guides online i would appreciate it

[Dark Sabre]

yes it is, it just needs to be reconfigured a little bit so that it runs reliably. might be hard to get it going straight with dual motors

Heh.
Have you considered using a switch like this instead of the wires?