Getting started finding resources as a mentor

[PeacefulPaul]

This is my first

year at mentoring for the FRC and I am at a loss to preparing the members in the control, motor drivers, and sensors in regards to navigating and autonomous control.  Unfortunately the robot they made last year got picked over and many parts are missing.  I have looked through the LabVIEW Robotics Programming Guide for FIRST Robotics Competition and saw many tutorials and examples about LabVIEW code but little technical information of the actual gyroscope, motor drive, encoders, camera, etc.   To show these guys that a gyroscope is simply this icon on the screen is not teaching robotics.  Please direct me to on-line references to spec sheets, examples, alternatives for the hardware to be used on the FRC robot.

[nathand]

Here's a similar question posted last year: What are the LabVIEW Resources available to team members and mentors?

The official hardware for this year's competition hasn't yet been released, but you can find documentation for last year's hardware on the FIRST site at http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=14532.