2012 Einstein Incident Finale 12/12 8:30PM EST on Candidly Speaking

[Tyler Olds]

A HUGE thanks to everyone who tuned into the show last night. We had an amazing turn out and some awesome discussions. If you missed the passionate story of the 2012 Einstein Incident as told by Karthik and Libby check it out on youtube below. I totally forgot about the drunks who bum-rushed Einstein and the Pits in 2012 too!

Please let us know what you thought of the show. We are always striving to make our content better and more engaging.

Entire Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlL_PXUMxw0
Just 2012 Einstein: https://youtu.be/rlL_PXUMxw0?t=1480

Get ready! FUN Candidly Speaking is back with Karthik and Tyler on Monday 12/12 at 8:30PM EST. Our main discussion will dive straight into the 2012 Hacking Incident on Einstein that shook the FRC community and helped shape the future years to come.

If you didn't catch the first half of the most incredible matches in FIRST history on Archimedes and what lead up to this episode: Check it out Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fexWUTgkyyE) and find our main discussion

What about the 2012 Einstein Incident would you like to get the inside info on? Post below and we will work it into the show!

Watch Live: twitch.tv/firstupdatesnow (www.twitch.tv/firstupdatesnow)
Archived: youtube.com/firstupdatesnow (www.youtube.com/firstupdatesnow)

[apache8080]

Before you go in to the Einstein Incident, I was wondering if you guys could talk about what happened to 1717 at Championship. For such a great robot during the regular season, I still don't get how they got knocked out in the semi-finals on Newton.

Thanks for the great content.

[Bkeeneykid]

For those not briefed on the subject, you can find the official document from FIRST here: http://archive.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2012_Assets/Einstein%20Investigation%20Report.pdf

[Peyton Yeung]

Before you go in to the Einstein Incident, I was wondering if you guys could talk about what happened to 1717 at Championship. For such a great robot during the regular season, I still don't get how they got knocked out in the semi-finals on Newton.

Thanks for the great content.

Comm issues caused them to sit out many of their elim matches.

[Tyler Olds]

Comm issues caused them to sit out many of their elim matches.

Spoilers!!! :p

[araniaraniratul]

Spoilers!!! :p

Lol. Spoiling history from 4.5 years ago is a little bit tough, no?

[Steven Carmain]

Maybe you could provide a quick guide to how to troubleshoot some of the issues, and what support you can get?

I know we had an issue at 1 match at a district, I'm 98% sure the robot lost communication from the field and just full speed backwards into a wall for the rest of the match (the only time it happened that year, and the code was a simple get joystick, call WpiLib Arcade drive). Knowing I can ask for the FMS logs would be helpful.

[Tyler Olds]

Before you go in to the Einstein Incident, I was wondering if you guys could talk about what happened to 1717 at Championship. For such a great robot during the regular season, I still don't get how they got knocked out in the semi-finals on Newton.

Thanks for the great content.

Rishi we will try to get to this in the end of the show or in post show depending on time. If you are live remind me if you can.

[bdaroz]

Ugh... couldn't make it to see the show live... Any idea when the archive will be up?

Thanks!

[JosephC]

Before you go in to the Einstein Incident, I was wondering if you guys could talk about what happened to 1717 at Championship. For such a great robot during the regular season, I still don't get how they got knocked out in the semi-finals on Newton.

Thanks for the great content.

tl;dr Their strategy that did not involve triple balancing was beat out by the opposing alliance's 5-10s triple, that plus them not knowing how to deal with two defensive robots, and a comms issue the first match.

[tjf]

tl;dr Their strategy that did not involve triple balancing was beat out by the opposing alliance's 5-10s triple, that plus them not knowing how to deal with two defensive robots, and a comms issue the first match.

The people on camera during Candidly Speaking did briefly go over 1717. Apparently they believed that they were subject to the same issues that the Einstein teams were having, but had less conclusive evidence and FIRST chose to not extend the investigation back to divisions.

One way or another, FIRST didn't investigate it as much as 1717 wanted them to.

[Chris is me]

tl;dr Their strategy that did not involve triple balancing was beat out by the opposing alliance's 5-10s triple, that plus them not knowing how to deal with two defensive robots, and a comms issue the first match.

I think this post seriously downplays the comms issue, which occurred in several matches, and the momentum such issues kills for an alliance. They had no real chance to get into a rhythm as three fully working robots on an alliance. This was certainly not 1717's first series dealing with multiple defenders.

[JosephC]

I think this post seriously downplays the comms issue, which occurred in several matches, and the momentum such issues kills for an alliance. They had no real chance to get into a rhythm as three fully working robots on an alliance. This was certainly not 1717's first series dealing with multiple defenders.

I'm speaking specifically on the Semifinals as I do not know what happened previously in their quarter finals matches.

Trust me, I'm not trying to downplay 2012's connection issues, as the same thing happened to us in F1-1, just trying to answer what happened in SF2

To go more in the depth...

SF1-2, Blue - 330 lost comms twice, resulting in a poor blue performance and no triple.
SF1-2, Red - 1717 missed all but 1 auton shot, and disconnected for a part of the match, this was followed by a failed triple, and then 1717 disconnecting again for a failed double.

Overall - issues on both sides resulting in a poor matchup SF1-2

SF2-2, Blue - 330 shooter jams in auton, forces them to play defense, gets the triple off.
SF2-2, Red - 1717 appears to have shooter issues, misses multiple uncharacteristic shots, imploys their double balance strategy.

Overall - 1717 was unable to shoot enough goals to counteract the extra points from the fast triple balance, which resulted in a blue victory.

At the end of the day, both sides were plagued by issues during the semifinals. Its possible the red alliance could have performed better if not plagued by 1717 connection and performance issues, but the same could be said about the blue side and 330 connection and performance issues, so just take it as it is, 1717 performing uncharacteristically bad during auton and the triple balance beating out the double.

[Tyler Olds]

A HUGE thanks to everyone who tuned into the show last night. We had an amazing turn out and some awesome discussions. If you missed the passionate story of the 2012 Einstein Incident as told by Karthik and Libby check it out on youtube below. I totally forgot about the drunks who bum-rushed Einstein and the Pits in 2012 too!

Please let us know what you thought of the show. We are always striving to make our content better and more engaging.


Entire Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlL_PXUMxw0
Just 2012 Einstein: https://youtu.be/rlL_PXUMxw0?t=1480

[Andrew Duerner]

Great show Tyler, I really look forward to your videos. Thank you Libby for the fun stories. Also I am very grateful to Karthik for making it clear how devastating this event was to affected students.



At the end of the day, both sides were plagued by issues during the semifinals. Its possible the red alliance could have performed better if not plagued by 1717 connection and performance issues, but the same could be said about the blue side and 330 connection and performance issues, so just take it as it is, 1717 performing uncharacteristically bad during auton and the triple balance beating out the double.

I don't want this to sound confrontational but, you could say the same thing about all the robots on Einstein. It is fairly obvious that 1717 was hacked. This was my first year at FIRST and I predicted that this was a hacking incident on our plane ride back from St. Louis. I predicted this because the improbability of mostly elite teams dying on the field and more importantly of how I saw teams playing this game at worlds, especially regarding the bridge balancing. We had arranged to balance with a team in the qualifications, and it was so sad to see the expression on the other teams drivers faces when it was clear that another team had convinced them to break their word. Sure FIRST is at fault for putting this temptation in the bridge coop aspect of the game, but does FIRST really need to put in the rule book that you have play with honor and integrity?

As for the performance issues while not dead, after getting the robot back, we found that the turret drive belt was off by a cog, caused from an FTA over torquing the turret trying to figure out why our robot was dying. I don't fault them for trying to help, accidents happen, and the results wouldn't have been any different. We would have been hacked the very next match. There was 0% chance of 1717 (and probably 330) getting on Einstein in 2012.

[Munchskull]

Thank you for doing a show on this tough topic. I feel like it is nice to know more about this infamous incident and how it has helped shape FRC for the future.

[Jessica Boucher]

I totally forgot about the drunks who bum-rushed Einstein and the Pits in 2012 too!

I still haven't. Ugh.

[Bennett548]

Tyler, Karthik and Libby: Thanks for doing this.

It is a hard subject to discuss with new members of our team, and this video presents it in a concise way that will really help start that discussion.

Big respect to Karthik for being so fair and graciously professional when it obviously still hurts. I probably couldn't have kept it together like that.

The only correction I would give is that 548 voluntarily declined the invitation to the World Championship in 2013. Even if we had felt like we should have gone (we didn't), it would have been hard to pay the travel costs after losing some sponsors going from the 2012 to 2013 season. I don't want people thinking there were persons within the FIRST organization that rescinded the offer. From everything I saw, FIRST and FiM were and are totally supportive of our team and never treated us with any stigma, officially or otherwise.

[Tom Line]

This show was poignant to me, but I suspect it lost much of its impact if you didn't live through the event.

Karthik's comments about Chief Delphi resonated with me. I don't know how you improve the level of discourse on the site. For instance, how do you teach people not to claim that "XX happened because I know it did" with out verifiable data? Did you have the router in your hand? Do you have network traffic logs of the event? If not, all you are doing is throwing fuel on a fire that doesn't need any help. It increases the noise to signal ratio - and that's never a good thing.

I guess you have to look on the bright side - as a community website, the community needs to try and correct errors like that when we see them and hope that folks learn in the process. It can be incredibly frustrating when you get a new batch of folks making the same mistakes every year, but that's why we make the big bucks :D

[Mastonevich]

Random thoughts that come to mind for me after the discussion and reading the report.

1. There are so many details in that report. Looking at all of the possible causes of communication issues, it is no wonder there are communications issues every year for many teams. The learning opportunities are many.

2. WIFI security and hacking concerns need better solutions still to this day. Maybe a FIRST alum is working that very issue.

3. The maturity and respect of all people involved in this situation is outstanding.

[tjf]

Random thoughts that come to mind for me after the discussion and reading the report.

1. There are so many details in that report. Looking at all of the possible causes of communication issues, it is no wonder there are communications issues every year for many teams. The learning opportunities are many.

2. WIFI security and hacking concerns need better solutions still to this day. Maybe a FIRST alum is working that very issue.

3. The maturity and respect of all people involved in this situation is outstanding.

In response to item #2, I'm decently sure that they stepped up the security severely. Based on what I know about cheesy-arena, a nearly-protocol identical FMS, each match 6 unique keys are generated for each robot on the field and sent to the access points, as well as all communications between DS and FMS VLANned so that each team can't observe or interfere with other team's traffic. (For this reason, inter-alliance data sharing isn't possible at the DS-level)

I also know for a matter of fact that several alum and volunteers do test the firmware and try to break in intentionally. I'm sure I wouldn't want a job of defending something like this, so kudos to them.