ball counter

[savage]

can any guess any one other then a first scorer tell me how high a Conner goal ball counter will go to

this number was found out at the Israel regional

Ben

[CrazyCarl461]

127? 255? 32,767? 65,535? 2,147,483,647? 4,294,967,295?

Those seem like reasonable guesses.

[Clark Gilbert]

999 or higher? I remember seeing the counting software when we were calibrating/focusing while setting up @ BMR, but I don't quite remember how high the digits went.

[Ben Lauer]

The flaw with the auto corner goal counters is if a HP's hand crosses infront of the light bar it will add points to the board, and not just like 5-10, but 10's and 100's in a very short period of time.

[SamC]

1,000

i think i saw somthing like this at the Pheonix Regional! but it obviastly wasn't the correct score!

[Allison]

I'm going to guess 9999 because i know it is over 1,000 because we scored over that during a practice round when our back gate got pushed into the goal.

[Gabe]

When our team was at the PNW regional, the mesh cover for the lower corner goal fell, getting a couple of balls stuck too. I guess the computer keeps on counting any objects it sees, because our alliance score ended up being 3,000 something,which gave us the highest ever score in all of FIRST history.
(Yes, there was a rematch. Darn.)

[savage]

well those were some good guesses but none of you came any were close

this is were it finaly toped at 24,441 we were amazed at this even the guys from ifi and first couldn't beleive it.
this is for real

[Nuttyman54]

our alliance score ended up being 3,000 something,which gave us the highest ever score in all of FIRST history.

I think you've been beat. I wonder how long the new one will stand?

[Dan Petrovic]

When our team was at the PNW regional, the mesh cover for the lower corner goal fell, getting a couple of balls stuck too. I guess the computer keeps on counting any objects it sees, because our alliance score ended up being 3,000 something,which gave us the highest ever score in all of FIRST history.
(Yes, there was a rematch. Darn.)

Actually. There was a higher legit score, I think. From what I was told TJ Squared (88) back in 1997 took all 9 inner tubes and put them on top of the goal scoring nine points and doubling that 9 times. I think that comes out to 4608.

This may not be entirely true or true at all, someone please tell me wrong, unless I'm right.

[mtaman02]

Yeah that seems to be one of the biggest issues of the corner goals is that if an object gets caught within the lighted frame the computer just keeps counting, not to mention if a ball goes in but bounces back out, as accurate as it could be like the center goals it isn't. If the Cameras don't get calibrated the right way that would also leave a pretty big mess behind. These Cameras need to get Aimed and Focused for them to work properly. Unlike the Center Goals which use if I'm not mistaken Optical Sensors (3 I think one at the Ball Chute One at the Bottom of the ramp and one at the top of the ramp), And there probably is not a limit set to how high these cameras / sensors will count.

[Jherbie53]

The counters are nice for seeing real time scoring. At West Michigan they are using the counters, but are giving a final score from human counting. This is a really good idea and it works. There are not enough balls to confuse a person counting, Be it the 3pt or 1pt goals. I wish that they will come up with a better real time scoring in the future.

[mtaman02]

Trust me FIRST will - As we all know its hard to make something roboust from Human, Robot and Scoring Object Contact. By FIRST piloting this years real time scoring by utilizing Cameras and Optical Sensors they have taken once again another huge step in the right direction, Their Main goal is that everyone has fun and the only way to do that is to make us the voluneers jobs that much easier - Yeah we had human counters as well and their count supersceded the Real Time Count but think of it this way at least you know the score will be that much more truthful. Trust me I'm sure whatever FIRST has planned for next year they will most definitaley bring back the Real Time Scoring and it will either go through a few upgrades or maybe just a couple of updates. Who Knows. All I can say is that it worked fairly well this year and I do hope it returns next year.

[paulcd2000]

i gotta, say, being a scorer must be really hard. i mean, they often are wrong, sometimes even indicating that the wrong team is winning, but they have to look at 3 robots scoring pretty much constantly. as a scout, looking at 1 robot i often had to guess! also, during one of the matches (i think it was in the afternoon on Saturday) at phili, instead of adding 10 for autonomus, they added 110! woopsies!

[nobrakes8]

i gotta, say, being a scorer must be really hard. i mean, they often are wrong, sometimes even indicating that the wrong team is winning, but they have to look at 3 robots scoring pretty much constantly. as a scout, looking at 1 robot i often had to guess! also, during one of the matches (i think it was in the afternoon on Saturday) at phili, instead of adding 10 for autonomus, they added 110! woopsies!

Being a scorer isn't too hard. It's only when a robot is scoreing like 9 balls at the same time in a corner goal. Otherwise as far as scoreing goes, each goal has it's own scorer and if a ball rolls into the goal and the light is active the ball counts. We don't really pay attention to what any particular alliance or robot is doing out there..

Being a former scout in HS, I have to say that this game has to be really difficult to get accurate reports for the 5th best robot and lower.

[Sharkbyte]

at milwaukee, we were against Wildstang and another really good shooter. We had to restart after automous 3 times because of the scoring system. One time the other alliance got so many in the center goal durin autonomus that the can was full, and there were still balls jammed up the tube.

Needles to say we lost, even after we lost to wildstang in Chicago too :ahh:

EDIT: I now have nightmares about tie dye

[Master Dictator]

The counters are nice for seeing real time scoring. At West Michigan they are using the counters, but are giving a final score from human counting. This is a really good idea and it works. There are not enough balls to confuse a person counting, Be it the 3pt or 1pt goals. I wish that they will come up with a better real time scoring in the future.

I have to tell you this is a horrible way to go. I am not complaining but I feel that it is too hard for judges to count so fast. I am with team 528 and at the Philly Regional twice it happened once in finals that the judges were way off.

One match we played our allinace scored 93 points because we had 2 dumpers and 1 shooter. Us and another team, I think 303 were putting in 30 at a time. The counter say 94 and the judges amitted that the balls were coming in so fast they could not count so they made a number up.. happened to be 20 since the 2 corner bots were both empty. We lost by 10 then and since there are no replays they still watched the video and found out we really did score 93 but did not change anything. Oh well. History is history can't change it.

But on this note I feel it really is too hard for judges to count the balls comming in

[Ashley Christine]

I was a counter on a corner at GTR, it takes a lot of attention, and not just anyone can do it in my opinion, and yes, the hand counters go up to 9999.

[Jack Jones]

I have to tell you this is a horrible way to go. I am not complaining but I feel that it is too hard for judges to count so fast. I am with team 528 and at the Philly Regional twice it happened once in finals that the judges were way off.

One match we played our allinace scored 93 points because we had 2 dumpers and 1 shooter. Us and another team, I think 303 were putting in 30 at a time. The counter say 94 and the judges amitted that the balls were coming in so fast they could not count so they made a number up.. happened to be 20 since the 2 corner bots were both empty. We lost by 10 then and since there are no replays they still watched the video and found out we really did score 93 but did not change anything. Oh well. History is history can't change it.

But on this note I feel it really is too hard for judges to count the balls comming in

So, you watched a video and were able to count every ball that went in, but the six people who were a few feet away were not.

You think the other team was #303, but you know you were putting in 30 at a time.

The counter say -- Which counter? -- If you mean the RTS on the big screen, then I've seen it show impossible numbers!

What are we to believe? The RTS, the human counters, or innuendo and hearsay?

My son and I volunteered at GLR, MWR, Milwaukee, and LVR. He was scorekeeper and I was a referee. We agree that it was hard for the human counters to count every ball. We are pretty sure mistakes were made - people make mistakes. However, those mistakes were minor compared to the ones the RTS was making over and over again.

At MRW we had trainees and their instructors from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center counting balls. I will guarantee that they were 99.44 percent accurate - or better. I've been on many visual perception field tests where both GIs and civilians had to spot "items of interest." The GI's measured performance was astounding, but not surprising since they're trained to know that their buddies lives depend on them.

At the regionals we refs closely monitored the human counters. Every time there was a situation, such as a shot after the light went out, or while the light was out, or mass quantities went in, I went to them to see if they got it right. Only once was one of them mistaken; and that was on a bounce out from the center goal that got counted, which we corrected.

We took statistics at all four regionals, which showed that the RTS and human count disagreed as to both the autonomous and overall winner anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the time. At the same time we saw scores from the RTS in the hundreds and thousands (RED - 31,831 in Las Vegas). So, while we agree that it's hard for the humans to do an accurate count, it was impossible for the RTS as designed and implemented.

History is not necessarily "history." It depends on who's telling the story.

[The Lucas]

I have to tell you this is a horrible way to go. I am not complaining but I feel that it is too hard for judges to count so fast. I am with team 528 and at the Philly Regional twice it happened once in finals that the judges were way off.

One match we played our allinace scored 93 points because we had 2 dumpers and 1 shooter. Us and another team, I think 303 were putting in 30 at a time. The counter say 94 and the judges amitted that the balls were coming in so fast they could not count so they made a number up.. happened to be 20 since the 2 corner bots were both empty. We lost by 10 then and since there are no replays they still watched the video and found out we really did score 93 but did not change anything. Oh well. History is history can't change it.

But on this note I feel it really is too hard for judges to count the balls comming in

What match are you talking about? 303 was not at Philly. The only bot at Philly that dumped about 30 balls at once was Chuck (84) and you never played with him. Your high score was 57, which is not even close to 93. You never lost a match by exactly 10 pts.

It is difficult for the refs to do a hand count and they do make mistakes. However, these mistakes aren't as bad as you describe

[jerry w]

as a scorekeeper at the Orlando regional I observed the miscount in the lower goals.
90% of the time the errors were caused by a robot slamming into the wall. This causes the camera-counter to move. False counts are then generated. Thus your team should be willing to accept the human-generated counts if your robot causes the computer counts to fail.
We hand counted all the Orlando matches. Only one match outcome was different between the hand-count and computer-count. in that match, the head referee made the scoring decision.

My advice to the drivers, avoid hitting the wall when putting balls in the lower goal. I know that the goal is more than 52 feet from where you stand. but, your team has the ability to provide high power-levels to the wheels. They should also be good enough to put a range sensor on the robot, to tell you how close you are to the wall.


jerry w

[savage]

wow this thred got out of hand
good job to all team at there regionals

the score i was talking about was not an in game score it was during testing we found this out that the scoring system will go up to 24,441. this happend because of a missed placed light and that caused the camera on the counter to start counting off.


Ben white

[petek]

For the record, in Philadelphia it was pretty rare to have more than a one or two ball difference between the hand and auto counts for any goal throughout the competition. When there was a big difference, it was because of a one-time problem - such as a ball falling on top of the screen in the corner goal, or too many balls backed up in the corral.

We got good auto counts even for great corner goal dumpers like 84, 291, 486 and 716, which regularly deposited 10 to 15 balls at a time. Our secret was we spent a lot of time testing the goals, aligning the sensors and regularly cleaning the light panels. That, and having great scorekeepers (Eric & Mike), a superb field supervisor (JJ, assisted by Sarah) and Sunny's conciencious referees who stayed on top of the action and the goal counts all week long. They almost made it look easy!

[Master Dictator]

Ok so this kind of got out of hand so I went back and got the exact information.
Q45 3/31/2006 3:18:00 PM
528
423 47
379

563
1719 53
716

During this match is when there was an error. I and 379 did go back to the scoring judge and talk to him after the match. On the large board it said 94 to 37. We clearly thought we won so afterwards we sat down and talked to the judges and watched the videos over and over and counted to our best knowledge 93. The reason they gave was they only saw 20 go in but clearly watch the video anyone can see that just us and 379 but in over 20 each since we were both dumping almost full hoppers of balls. By the way I really dont care we lost that one match but I am saying that the judges cant always get the score right and its not very easy to count the balls.

[Jack Jones]

For the record, in Philadelphia it was pretty rare to have more than a one or two ball difference between the hand and auto counts for any goal throughout the competition. When there was a big difference, it was because of a one-time problem - such as a ball falling on top of the screen in the corner goal, or too many balls backed up in the corral.

We got good auto counts even for great corner goal dumpers like 84, 291, 486 and 716, which regularly deposited 10 to 15 balls at a time. Our secret was we spent a lot of time testing the goals, aligning the sensors and regularly cleaning the light panels. That, and having great scorekeepers (Eric & Mike), a superb field supervisor (JJ, assisted by Sarah) and Sunny's conciencious referees who stayed on top of the action and the goal counts all week long. They almost made it look easy!

Does anyone think that the same procedures were not followed at the other regionals as well? Or that the others didn't have great scorekeepers, a superb field supervisor, and conscientious referees? What makes Philly so special?

For the record, I don't take much stock in anecdotal evidence based on occasional observation; I'd like to see the data. That's because all the data from the four regionals we've witnessed clearly show that the RTS and human count agreed less than 1/3 of the time; and not only when there was a big difference, but any number imaginable. Those four regionals used three different fields, four different FTAs, and were located thousands of miles apart. They all had dumpers and shooters and wall bangers. So what, other than a lack of statistics, makes Philly and others so special?

[Charger_07]

at the lonestar regional the judges did a bad job as far as ramming, they didnt call a single team for it.....which ended up helping us when our autonomous mode went crazy and rammed our alliance member and then went like full speed and rammed an opposing robot into the wall. The scoring system really sucked at our regional they constantly had problems with the automated scoring being wrong. The worst was the screen said the red alliance scored like 3,200 points