Re: First Choice 2013
 

So...... Who wants to take odds on FIRST calling a mulligan on FIRST Choice, cancelling everyone's orders, and trying again next week?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

~26.5 Talons were sold per minute.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

got ours in and ordered in under one minute. 12:01 exactly. :eek:

Re: First Choice 2013
 

This was almost as intense as buying an HP Touchpad during the firesale.

Had 10 Talons and a Classmate in the cart, went to check out, only offered me one Talon, and no Classmate. Went back to add more Talons, it let me, went to check out, zero.

Looks like 20 video cards for me. :D

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Perhaps thats what the RickRoll hint meant..... ;)

Unbelievable prices - the cRio and Right Angle Drill were simply ridiculous. As much as I wanted to I couldn't justify the right angle drill - we already have one and I bet other teams need them more.

I restrained myself and only grabbed one cRIO too. 69 points left just in case game pieces pop up at a reasonable price.

Edit: Are they restocking? I just logged in and refreshed and 410 talons are showing as back in stock...I was able to add 10 to my cart without a problem.

Edit2: There's the FIRST choice I know and love - not getting any response now from the web page... perhaps everyone waited till 12:30 to log in.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Wasn't there a max of one cRIO?
Certainly a great deal - too bad the modules are ridiculously expensive from NI, and I can't find them elsewhere.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Hmmmmm...... mine worked fine. Did you copy from TIMS and paste it into FIRST Choice?

We got a cRIO, Classmate, Camera, 2 snow blower motors, 2 of each of the gearmotors, and a window lift assembly set. Looks like over $1000 worth of stuff.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

It looks like they just restocked Talons if my display is correct. Qty 420 as of writing this.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I would be very surprised if they did this; Andymark would have to refund hundreds of credit card orders.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Do my eyes deceive me, or have they added more talons?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Limit 1 cRIO per team and don't forget you will get an additional 100 points at kickoff. We grabbed some of the sensors with lower quantities. You never know when having a pair of photo-switches will come in handy.


Wetzel

Re: First Choice 2013
 

We appreciate the restraint, but you were allowed only 1 ;)

Re: First Choice 2013
 

There were 480 Talons at the start

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Talons back in stock....

classmates back in stock as well! go get em everyone!

And AndyMark has shipped out 1716's order already! Great turnaround over there!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Classmates are back in stock too.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Classmate netbooks are back 54 more right now

Re: First Choice 2013
 

There goes "will not restock". I wonder why? I feel bad for anyone who ordered during the temporary shortage.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Classmate netbooks are back 54 more right now

Dang it Ryan....

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I noticed that as I was browsing more slowly now. I was in a bit of a hurry the first time through :D

Re: First Choice 2013
 

When I placed our initial order, the Talons were sold out before I could checkout.

I just placed a second order: for 4 Talons. It was accepted!

BTW, I couldn't log-in until ~9:20a PT, just kept trying and trying...

Re: First Choice 2013
 

That was disappointing at best.

• Password did not work
• Got booted off - lost cart

Smile, Smile, Smile

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Wetzel, where did you read that we get another 100 points? I read through the info on Andy Mark's page here:

http://www.andymark.com/FIRST-Choice-Public-s/245.htm

I didn't see it there.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Just got a notice my team's order shipped. AndyMark is efficient on the hardware end!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

A spare cRio, another netbook, 3 Talons, the Window motor lift assembly set, 2 batteries, and a couple sensors. Did pretty good this year I think :D

Do we really get an additional 100 credits in kickoff day? Can someone confirm this?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Re: First Choice 2013
 

We got one on a second round of ordering too!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Batteries just came back in stock.

Someone's being sneaky over at AndyMark and metering things out =).

Re: First Choice 2013
 

It looked like everything restocked batteries, classmates, talons, sidecars, etc. This could be very bad if that wasn't supposed to happen.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Also here, in addition to David's link on the FIRST page (third bullet in blue)

http://www.andymark.com/FIRST-Choice-s/273.htm

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Thanks for the link.

Wow, registration is very valuable this year it appears! I guess there will be more items added that are game-specific.

Looking forward to "FIRST Choice Ordering Party: Round 2" at kickoff.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

So now I'm sitting here with 20 video cards and no more credits, and if I waited I could have a Classmate and some Talons? Oh well. I'm fine with it.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

It seems people were have a problem with logging in, but did anyone have an issue with a very high shipping fee? The system tried to charge me $2,968.93 US for shipping to Duluth, MN.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Regardless of this minor snafu, FIRST Choice is still a really good thing. It's definitely something that can be refined as time goes. Probably next year they should give us the log on info a couple of weeks early and then change everybody's credits from 0 to 100 when they want to go live.

At least TIMS didn't explode. That's what I figured would happen at 12:00 EST.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Too bad, our team payment is not complete (waiting for grant?) so we are not eligible for ordering today.

Happy shopping and good luck to you guys!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I finally got granted access at 12:25

Had to place two separate orders, because the Classmate stock went away then returned.

No real trouble, though the database did have an inorecct zip code for me and rejected my credit card. Took me a frantic moment or two to figure out what was wrong.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Either a lot of orders were somehow cancelled or otherwise got a little screwy, and previously ordered items got put back into stock or AM was sneaky and metered stuff out for whatever reason (help out teams that couldn't log in right away?).

Given the technical issues that habitually hound these sort of FIRST 'free for all' web events, I would assume that it was just another one of those hiccups.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

My guess is that the amazing people at AM realized that many teams were unable to get logged in and they restocked some of the items that had been sold out.

We got in late (9:30, and most of what we were looking for was gone, but upon a second attempt, the batteries, digital sidecar and some other stuff were restocked... Both orders seem to have gone through OK.

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Mine hung up trying to calculate shipping, and since it showed zero dollars it didn't ask for payment info. I ended up submitting it and emailing them to use my credit card on file.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I finally was able to log in after 15 minutes. Loaded my cart, but lost time logging in (oops), and the batteries and Talons I had went away. Got some other great stuff, but was a little disappointed to hear they were back in stock after placing my order. Maybe there will be some hanging around soon after Kickoff!

-Tom

Re: First Choice 2013
 

lol..... Can I have one?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Does anyone know how the extra $450 in credit will work if you chose to not take the kitbot?
It may be there somewhere but I missed it..

It wasn't included in the 100 points was it?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

With that many CUDA cores, you can probably crack the manual PDF before kickoff! :P

Disclaimer: that would be highly unethical. Just putting this here so people know I'm not crazy.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

There is a PDV voucher number in TIMS, same area that you got your FIRST Choice Password. You have to click a link at the bottom of the checkout page to show the field to enter your "Gift Certificate"

Re: First Choice 2013
 

You should get another voucher code on TIMS according to the KOP website:
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...3-kit-of-parts

Eric

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Well drat. Put our order in and I skipped the Talons and classmate because of the reports on here that they weren't in stock. I'd rather have had a spare classmate than another battery, or a couple of Talons, but oh well. For the record, 57 couldn't log in until 12:30 EST.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Thank you CD community!!

I was coming on here to go off on the whole system of having things ripped out my cart multiple times during checkout, and I read your posts that they were re-stocking! I got back in and got a Sidecar, right-angle drill, and 3 Talons!

Love this site even more than before! :D

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Yup. Banebots, AndyMark, IFI, and Inventables PDV codes are in the same right side bar just below the FIRST Choice password.

FIRST Choice, PDVs, VEXpro launch... all I need for the holidays now is a game hint or two!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I was once told that Duluth only has departing flights this time of year.;)

I hope this got resolved!!

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Managed to get 11 Talons.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

All done.
8 Talons
2 Pneumatic valves
Video Card
and some pneumatic fittings.

Overall very happy boy here at The Digital Goats.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Well, 3476 was able to get on at 12:02 after I realized that you have to manually type in the password. We scored: 1 cRIO, 2 GTX 560s, 2 Classmates (to drive robots at our demos), 2 Axis Cameras, 2 Talons, multimeter, 2 solenoid valves, and a broken ribbon cable. A pretty good haul! Worth about $1,750, and we used up all of our credits. I kinda wish I got the angle drill though.

I think it's great that AndyMark does this year after year! Thank you! :D

Sorry to all the teams that couldn't get in. :(

Re: First Choice 2013
 

My credits aren't adding up right.
Anyone else notice a discrepancy?

We show more credits than we're entitled to.
It seems to be due to the two orders I placed. The second order isn't being debited from the credits used, while the third order is credited properly.

Be careful with your subsequent orders, the credits may be invalid.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

AndyMark was very helpful and everything is fine now.

On the other note, if this city gets anything less than 20 inches of snow in a day we still have school... ;) We got 8 inches yesterday, my street is not plowed, and the kids (and myself) are in school. <sarcasm> In Cali, however, I have heard if the sky even drops a trace of snow the world stops... ;) </sarcasm>

Re: First Choice 2013
 

We might be having a similar issue. But in our case it looks like credits were charged but items (Talons) were not successfully ordered.

I'm sure the folks at AndyMark will get it straightened out, and hopefully we will be able to get the items we would like.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Are we locked out right now? The page says they are having problems and there's no box for the password.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I see the same thing. I'm guessing it has something to do with the restocking since they explicitly said before that items wouldn't reappear once they were out of stock.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

First bullet on login page: http://www.andymark.com/FIRST-Choice-s/273.htm

"We are currently having issues, please email firstchoice@andymark.com, all orders are suspended for the time being."

Re: First Choice 2013
 

We were one of the 3-digit teams that couldn't login right away. I finally got in about 12:10, and placed two orders. The changing stock numbers prevented me from getting Talons (they appeared to be back in stock after my orders were done).

I'm also having an issue with credit counting. I ordered 84 credits worth, and the system shows I have 2 credits left. I sent an email, and Jerry Budd is already looking into it. They must be crazy busy, so I'm grateful for any attention we get.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I have a bad feeling about this. It took what seemed like forever to get the password to work. Then I filled up my cart, got most of what I wanted, when to checkout and it booted me out. Restart chrome, bring up last session, 3 min's later, nothing. Start again, get the stuff I want (mostly) go to cart and now everything is doubled. Fix it, and the batteries disappear, out of stock, but the Talons showed back up? Took what I could get and didn't use all my credits. Figure a few extra for after kickoff couldn't hurt. I feel like we may be doing this all over again in a week.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

We've been told that all of the items that appeared to be re-stocked weren't actually re-stocked. It seems their system began doing things that were not intended. If you placed an order for these 're-stocked' items, I would expect it to be null.

-Parker

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Were they having a leading zero issue? Only 3 digit teams affected?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Are we to assume that orders placed before the "re-stocks" started to happen are going to be okay? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Regarding the shipping costs unable to calculate:

I called AndyMark, and was told that the "Window motor lift assembly set" was set as 999 lbs in their database. As a result, shipping costs couldn't be calculated (since my order was >1000 lbs).

After speaking to their friendly shipping department, my order was fixed with correct shipping costs (came out to ~$65 with the 2 batteries I ordered, and all the other things).

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Maybe they come still attached to the car

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Interesting, something was making my CHROME browser crash this morning as well.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Wow, I was experiencing major Chrome crashing as well and switched to Firefox. Never would have guessed that their site was doing it. Apparently Chrome's sandbox isn't perfect...

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Gmail was down for a time this morning and many Chrome users reported repeated crashing.

People win lots of money for breaking Chrome's sandbox :) http://arstechnica.com/business/2012...ser-on-friday/

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Guess they're not at fault. Shucks. I was going to blame AndyMark for the fiscal cliff and the broken cord on my headphones too :P

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Any word on when FIRST Choice will re-open and if there will be any re-stocking of items whether now or at kickoff? Our team experienced a lot of trouble as well. Also, is there any official confirmation that the password trouble was confined to <4 digit teams?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I haven't received any email blasts. FRC Blog has a short blurb saying that it will be down until they fix the problems. The AndyMark website has the same message as before.

They are probably figuring out how to deal with the orders in excess of the actual physical inventory for the parts that got magically restocked. They won't be able to come up with any tidy solutions to go back and fix that, unfortunately.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I had no issues with Chrome, but I was also done at 12:06, so maybe there were things later causing issues.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Not so ........ I couldn't get in for what seemed like an eternity (FRC-34). My order crashed twice at checkout, wound up missing what I really needed ...... a classmate(we're still using the origional issue classmate). Dang .......

Still love AndyMark ........ even though this kind of thing makes my hair turn gray.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I had no issues with chrome, however a period from 11:45-11:59 EST I had no connection with gmail, and it appeared their servers where down. I was relying on it to get the password from our teams TIMS contact to order the parts. Thankfully it reloaded at 12:00 right on cue! (Only to be followed by magical disappearance of cart items and changing of information with the AndyMark cart)

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Hmmmm ....... Inventables seems to be confused about me using a PDV this year.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Tried to go back into FIRST Choice and noticed that the Log-in part of the main page is missing...seems AndyMark shut things down to de-bugg?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Yes indeed

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...T-Choice-Issue

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...-Issue-Part-II

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I think FIRST and AM are going about this the right way. It is a tough call to make.

Thank You!

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

Can anyone give me an idea of how many points items cost (eg. cRIO, Classmate, Talon, other "good" stuff) on the FIRST Choice?

I've tried both Chrome and IE and can see the items in FIRST Choice, but not their "costs." I was unable to log in today and would like to have a shopping list based upon the "cost" of the items.

Thanks.

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

These are the items I know for sure:

• Batteries - 10
• Air tank - 6
• cRIO - 9
• Battery charger - 10
• Compressor - 8
• Sidecar - 10
• Gyro - 7
• Air pressure switch - 6
• Air Regulator - 6
• CIM - 8
• Pressure gauge - 6
• Lithin grease - 7
• All graphics cards - 5
• Classmate - 10

Did anyone save a copy of the page? I didn't think to do that.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

It's a little more complicated than just telling the more senior teams who were locked-out for the first 20 minutes "too bad."

The items that went out-of-stock quickly (but magically appeared to be restocked), were high-value items targeted by teams who planned for what they would need. The log-in issue was not the fault of those with team number <1000.

Wiping the slate clean and starting over is probably not practical. But how else will all of the teams get equal opportunity to these items?

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Thanks.

When I sort FIRST Choice "Price: High to Low" is shows big ticket items like "assorted terminal bag" (FC13-139) and "ethernet cross over cable" (FC13-126) in the top 10 items displayed!

Still no points displayed. Can anyone see FIRST Choice points now (6 pm CST)? I will download Firefox if that is the solution.

I hope they have it fixed (and some remaining stock) tomorrow.

Thanks.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I don't think it sorts very well because the items don't technically have a numerical value. They, for purposes of FIRST Choice, have their prices set to $0.00.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I don't believe points will be visible until the login system is re-enabled tomorrow.

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

Here's a captured list from before FIRST Choice opened and another list from Tuesday afternoon, after 2nd opening day.

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

Mark, I have no idea how you manage to have all the information all the time. Sometimes I think it's magic, Thank You.

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

My wife simply claims I spend too much time on the computer.

Re: First Choice 2013 - points cost not showing
 

This is beyond magic. I don't even know how to describe everything that he seems to know or find out about. I don't think we thank him enough for his vast encyclopedia of knowledge.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

What strategy would work best assuming some items are out of stock and others may run out of stock shortly after AndyMark comes back on line?

For example, it you want a high demand item (eg. cRio, Talon, etc.) would it make sense to pick a few items and check out (eg. before using all your credits) to insure that you get the items before they are out of stock?

It doesn't sound like gracious professionalism, but we came late to the party last year and didn't get any of the items we had wanted (eg. used up credits on items left over from initial rush). Tried to avoid that this year, but couldn't get logged in.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I personally think that the whole FIRST Choice thing should be done differently. It does not seem very gracious and professional like to have all the teams fighting against each other to grab the best deal and leave the others teams who were to slow with nothing. There are many teams this year struggling to find the funds for their team that really could use these items more than the more veteran and well off teams. I feel like somehow FIRST should have requested that teams who feel like they are better off to wait a day before ordering to allow for teams that really need the items have the first go. The proposed idea may not work as well as I would like to think, but I feel like the FIRST community is better than this. At minimum, there should have been more quantity limits on items so the "better items" would have been spread out among the teams better.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

I think that a possible way to improve this process would be to split the stock of FIRST choice products into thirds or even more. Have the first third of teams be allowed into first choice at 10-am and then close at 11:50-am, the second set of items for the second third of teams would be open 12-1:50 and so on. After all the divisions of teams had received their allowed time, the store could open back up and everyone could pick over the left over items.
All the teams would initially have access to the same number of parts, and after the whole process you would still be allowed to chose an item that all of the teams from a different ordering block didn't want.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

100 points are supposed to be awarded Dec. 10 with another 100 after Kick Off.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

A better solution would be to adjust all of the point values to more accurately reflect the relative value of each item. A lot of the more prosaic items would become attractive at 1-3 points. Make Talons (a $60 item that is guaranteed to be useful for absolutely any robot) cost more FIRST points until it's no longer an obvious choice. Then each team can decide if they want to pay a premium for parts that are guaranteed to be useful (notice that CIMs and batteries actually were priced in this way), or if they want to go after a higher potential value.

FIRST and AndyMark could collect some survey data in advance of next year's FIRST Choice to help them figure out what parts the teams are mostly likely to go after and how much they're worth to everybody.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Perhaps everyone places a proposed order over a few days' time, and then the orders get filled at random, so it becomes more the luck of the draw for the high-demand items rather than who has the skill to log in and place an order fastest.

Anything high-demand might work this way, along with Nemo's idea to use price to help moderate demand. Low-demand/high-inventory stuff could be handled separately if necessary.

Dunno, there's just got to me a better way. I wonder if there's a community of thinkers smart enough to come up with one?? :rolleyes:

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Has anyone else noticed that you can login now? I logged in to FIRST Choice, checked our remaining points balance, checked the orders status and *then* read the FRC Blog post about it opening up tomorrow.

Our points balance hasn't been corrected but I think I could still place an order tonight.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

That is exactly what we did. We're one of those teams that struggled this fall with funding and we had specifically picked high value to us but lightweight parts for our initial order.

And I agree with everyone, there's got to be a better way of organizing this. At least rent some Rackspace or Amazon cloud time on both the usfirst.org and andymark.com sites for a couple hours! And surely there's some FIRST mentor somewhere that would be able to give some database design help.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Also, add a link to andymark from inside TIMES that automatically logs you in so we don't have to worry about the password, which I had to try several times until it would work.

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Is the site still down. I see the team number/login but I am only able to select teams 4998 and 4999. I just wanted to know if this is an issue for me or are others seeing the same thing? time right now is Tuesday 7:41 am EST

Re: First Choice 2013
 

From the FRC Blog:
Wetzel

Re: First Choice 2013
 

Done (the second time).