2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

1 Australian team (listed twice?)
1 German team
4 Mexican teams
1 Dutch team
and teams from 9 US states!
This should be a real WORLD event.
Team 4276 is proud to attend.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It's two separate teams - one from the boy's high school, one from the girl's.

This is going to be a fantastic regional!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Team 341 is very excited to attend. The list of teams is diverse and impressive.
We are also excited to be traveling west with our good friends from Team 25.
Can't wait to take it all in and make some new friends.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Not gonna lie, I smiled when I saw you both on the list :)

Looking forward to it!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

So did I:D
As are we:)

By the way, I believe the two Australian Teams are not going to attend this year and will be doing smaller scale demo's and such this coming season back in Australia...

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

I was wondering about this. I've been communicating with a FIRSTer in Australia (we are looking to set up a team at our sister school, Servite College in Perth, for 2014) and they said that all but a few teams in Australia are just participating at the Duel Down Under in July. The few that are competing at a Regional are doing so in Hawaii. My assumption was that they registered for a regional so that they could receive their KOP, team number, and status as an FRC team.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

A correct assumption;)

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

This certainly seems to be a fun (tough!) regional, and 1165 is excited to go.
A bit sad to see that 842 is off the team list now, though.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

We love the LAS Reagional. The home teams do a great job of making us (and others I am sure) feel welcome. I am happy 341 changed their mind and came to LAS this year. Hey 987 take it easy on us when we get there we have a new driver.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

4183 plans to be there and is excited (and scared) to compete with teams like 341, 987, and 1717.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

and 25 and 60 and .........:ahh:

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Hey Shawn,
Half our drive team is new for this year but by the time our regional comes around none of the multiple regional attendees will be new, right? Lots of top notch teams and a solid second tier will make for a tough competition for sure!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

There is nothing better than playing with the best!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

330...the list goes on :)

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

We have just made the change to return to Las Vegas also this year, after a great time last year. A much bigger event this year than last.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Glad to have you guys back!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

What will the practice field setup be like at LV?

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Three quarter size field, extra regulation type pyramid exclusively for climbers...opposite from shooting section of field.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Sounds good...how many goals does the 3/4 field entail?

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

We will likely have 2 high goals a middle and low goal set up.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

That's good to hear. The LA practice field was a little underwhelming. 65 teams and one pyramid and a half-court shooter area. Looking at the map, we're right by the practice field too.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Great to hear...

LA is chronically lacking in the practice field department despite having plenty of space, will definitely suggest improvements in that area and offer to contribute field elements to make it better in the future.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Where is the pit map available?

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It was emailed to Main Contacts last week.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

One more thing to puzzle over for the next week:
With 50 teams in the line up will we get 9 qualification matches? 10 matches?

I'm thinking since LA had 65 teams x 8 matches = 520... divide by 50 teams and you get 10.4 matches. This assumes the same time allotment for matches that we saw at LA.
My first time ever going anywhere but LA, and not being familiar with other regional schedules I'm a bit clueless.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Phoenix had 50 teams and 10 qualification matches per team.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Per FIRST headquarter guidelines for our number of teams...11 matches are expected.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

We actually now have 48 teams attending so it would be possible to fit 11 matches using a total of 88 matches ( if the match generator was kind enough to get the distribution right).

That would be awesome

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Is anyone planning on livestreaming this event? Unfortunately I couldn't accompany my team this year but I'd really like to support them from afar!

987 is live streaming, link will be up at

http://www.team987.com/LVR/webcast.html

Based on past years, it looks to be one of the nicer webcasts

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It's Friday and it's still 404'ing! I really want to watch the most exciting regional of the weekend.

Looking through the match schedule, the quals that catch my eye are:

Q38 2:20 330 vs 341
Q44 3:15 330 vs 25
Q52 4:11 987+25 vs 1717
Q60 5:01 341 vs 987
Q67 9:35 AM 330 vs 987

Anyone see any other particularly interesting ones?

I've been trying to find out from 987 whats going on, will report back

We're working on it. Should be up soon. Problem with a video feed from the field.

http://www.team987.com/lvrwebcast/

Correct link

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

"Task queue failed at step 5: Play list could not be loaded due to cross domain policy restrictions."

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Working without sound...

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Been a lot of interesting matches. After day one, no undefeated teams! I expect to see a lot of strategy going into alliance selections, not just placings.
http://www2.usfirst.org/2013comp/Eve.../rankings.html

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Stream is offline again.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Working fine for me.

EDIT: And just as elims roll around, it's gone.

We're at lunch now. I'll check to make sure the stream is back up for elims.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Thanks!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Looks like we're going to miss these elims, any update on the webcast?

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

I'm being told by the people webcasting that it may take a minute or two to load. Also make sure that you are using www.team987.com/lvrwebcast. The link on several websites and posts is wrong.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Working, but choppy (for my family). Gameday isn't showing it at all for some reason, but the direct link works.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It's getting exciting here in Vegas!!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Congratulations to the number one alliance and to our friends on 3245, 1717 and 4276 for a well earned regional win! You killed us in auto for sure...We are especially proud of the growth we've seen this past year in 3245's program. In hindsight, maybe our mentorship shouldn't have been so thorough:D Looking forward to seeing all of you guys in St. Louis. On behalf of our team and our Regional Committee a big thanks to all of the great teams that participated these last few days. Hope to see you back for our 10 year anniversary next year!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Whew, what an exciting Regional that was!!

Thanks a ton to our alliance members 3245 and 1717 for putting up such epic shooting numbers and your awesome help on and off the field! Those last few rounds really banged our robot up good playing aggressive defense, and our alliance members really helped us bend things back into shape and tighten everything down!

Team 987 -- I was mesmerized by your robot's awesome performance and build quality this entire regional. You really put on a huge show and I was so impressed with the bot's precise mechanisms and disc handling. Also, props to your driver for some incredible moves out on the field.

One more shout out to the mentors of Team 330, who were a huge help resolving our bandwidth and CPU load issues earlier during Quals. I think I've had enough of that Classmate computer!

- Eric G
Team 4276 Engineering Mentor

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

+1

Congrats to the winning alliance. You guys definitely gave us a tough match, and we enjoyed working with and against you! It's really nice to see 3245 succeed and grow as much as they have since we last saw them!

As for the webcast issues, I'm not exactly sure why we were having so many problems. I think a portion of it had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue. I'm sure we'll get the videos archived somewhere (assuming we haven't already), and we'll try and get web casting set up a bit better next year so we don't have these issues.

Also, thank you to all of the volunteers, judges, refs, etc. Vegas is always my favorite regional (partially because i get to sleep in my own bed at night), and you are the people that allow this event to occur and run smoothly. We are extremely grateful for the time and effort all of you put into this event, and cannot thank you enough.

On a bit of a side note; next year will be the 10th anniversary of the Las Vegas regional! I know the Nevada FIRST board is planning for this event to be a huge blowout, and they're already getting a head start on it! We're hoping for next years Vegas regional to be the one to go to!

Now... lets get geared up for champs. :D

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

For those who missed the webcast, or had trouble with it, I recorded the finals with my little point and shoot camera. Enjoy! It was a very exciting regional, with lots of plot twists during the weekend. As always, it was a pleasure seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBoC6T7sS_0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g826eckLhLk

Big congrats to the winning alliance, and to Plasma, and especially to the High Rollers for winning Chairmans

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

what a wonderful regional. We had a blast. Having Ice cream, coffee and dipin-dots stands in the center was extremely awesome. Having that break area next to the pits was really nice. Of course Las Vegas would have the most hospital regional I ever been too.

A very special thanks to our alliance partners 341 and 3366. We knew we could build an awesome alliance. 341 you had an awesome bruiser of a robot and 3366 had the awesome autonomous and great defensive capabilities. This was the first time my team was an alliance captain, thank you for making it special. Also how awesome is it that our first pick ever was Miss Daisy?

In case to those who were wondering what happen to our robot. We damaged our robot in two matches. I won't explain what happen in our second match, but in a later match we tried to climb with our dump bucket in the way and fell on our back. We were able to quickly fix most things except our shooter never was the same. We tried to get it calibrated again on the practice field but we kept on shooting low. We still don't know what is wrong. The best guess we have is that the wheel is off axis so the compression varies depending how it rides on the wheel.

Later is semifinal 1, our low frame got caught up on some rolled up tape from the field (maybe 3.5" wheels are too small), broke our bucket and smashed in a limit switch, preventing the climber from moving down. In semifinal 2, we went all in and disabled our safety limits and risked destroying whats left of our climber to try to win. Hey we are in Vegas right?

Congratulations to 3245, 1717 and 4276 on winning. Congratulation to 987 for winning Chairman's.

Our team had a lot of fun. We will try to make it next year for the tenth anniversary of the Las Vegas Regional.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It seemed like the footage being shot was in HD, it sure looked fantastic on those big screens. If by chance the footage was archived in HD anywhere, there is some I'd definitely like to get my hands on :)

Thanks all for a great event, best ever for 3309 (everything that Mark said). 987 thanks for helping us out with that Teflon tape that kept our climber working. You're a fantastic group of people and congrats on another Chairman's win.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

You are most welcome, Dave. And thanks for the kudos. As far as the HD projector screens you are right, it was fantastic. Problem is the video feed that was relayed to our computer to webcast was sub par and definitely not HD quality:(

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

It DEFINITELY had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue...something which is out of our control. The webmaster tested the upload speed from his phone (with 4G) and it was faster than the LAN line.

As far as setting up the webcast up better for next year goes, we can't fix the upload speeds at the venue, which was the only issue we had...

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

I run a yearly space-themed conference in Los Angeles every year, and we webcast out our sessions and talks in high def via 4G LTE hotspots (via routers). Companies offer several-day packages for cheap (~$30-40) and the streaming quality through them can be more than sufficient for the purpose you describe. I'm sure North LV has similar hotspot coverage.

I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon/Sprint/AT&T would even be willing to sponsor the webcast bandwidth for us. It's all a matter of asking the right people.

Let me know if you'd like any assistance with this...

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

The Bit Buckets had an absolutely wonderful time! We'd especially like to thank team 341 for helping us out with a last-minute gearbox change. Every team there was friendly, helpful and great to talk with.

We were especially surprised to find ourselves playing competitively against 987 in the quarterfinals. I guess our robot works after all.

We're going to be putting on a local outreach event at Himmel Park in Tucson this Saturday, so in a way it's OK that we didn't have to bag our robot for St. Louis. We'll see if there are any dogs at the park who might want to chase Frisbees.

Also, thanks to the field folks for the Frisbees and carpet! We hope our help taking down the field was actually helpful.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Las Vegas Regional was great. Team 597 would like to thank all the volunteers, judges, referees and teams that were there you all made Las Vegas regional a great experience for our team.

Special thanks to Team 2403 and 987 thank you for picking us it was great being part of such a awesome alliance and congratulations to 2403 for winning EI and 987 for winning Chairman's your teams really deserved it.

Congratulations to 3245, 1717 and 4276 we had a great time playing against your alliance.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

The power of good scouting! You guys performed excellent in quals and had consistent shooting. By the way, how's your robot? Ours was quite mangled after playing such aggressive defense in the finals.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Our robot is great just a couple of scratches, our bumpers took most of the damage.

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

After 4 years of FRC a first post from Team 3245:

Thanks to all who worked to make the Las Vegas Regional a great event! I know that Team 987, and others, provided many volunteers who put in immense amount of work to organize, set-up, run and breakdown the event. Even the packaged hotel option worked out great for us...we really appreciate all the attention to detail from event organizers.

As a newer team we learned a lot but struggled in our first two seasons as we had ambitious goals but limited experience from which to draw. Last year we reached out to Team 1538 the Holy Cows and they helped us greatly in answering our technical and program development questions. This season we also sought the guidance of Team 987. They generously hosted us at their shop as we tackled pneumatics and a two-speed drivetrain for the first time. I highly recommend that younger teams identify veteran teams they respect and seek guidance. In our experience we have received energetic, friendly and invaluable support with the two veteran teams that have mentored us.

We were especially excited going into the Las Vegas event seeing many powerhouse programs signed up. We saw it as an opportunity to test ourselves and to learn from the best. And we hoped that the top teams would hammer on each other enough that somehow we would sneak up in the seedings with our modest, simple design. Just before qualifications we solved the sliding-frisbee-stack-jammed-shooter problem that plagued us at the Utah Regional. That allowed us to play steady enough over the weekend to take advantage of a favorable schedule of match-ups. When we had problems, others against us also had issues plus our partners saved us, when we had to be good our systems worked, and it helped that in the quals we never had to go up against 987 or 1717, yet we benefited from being allied with them for a couple of matches.

Why did we pick 1717 given that 987 had been so generous to us this season as a mentoring team, and they picked us last year in LV and carried us to the 2012 LV banner? We were in awe of the robots fielded by both 987 and 1717 and knew that our chances with either were great. It came down to wanting to learn from working with a superb program, 1717, that we have looked up to from a distance but not shared a regional with. Also there was a tiny sense of "little brother/big brother" opportunity - to test ourselves against 987, the awesome team we have learned so much from. In the end we were proud to play a role as 987 and 1717 put on an exhibition of incredible play against each other in the eliminations. 1717 were gracious partners as we worked together on pick-list and game strategy and we learned a lot in working with their seasoned crew. And we enjoyed winning with 4276 - a great group of students and mentors to work with. We also had great fun playing against our friends at Team Plasma (who were shooting well and hanging for 30) - the team that chose us last year at Utah. The match video of elims reveals the outstanding defense 597 played - including against us - they earned our respect, that's for sure.

All in all, great fun to play with and against, and learn from, top programs in a very well-run regional. Thanks to all who made it possible!

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Match video archived and available now...matches 62-Finals at this point. Just left click on the white boxes that have match number and team numbers posted.

http://team987.com/lvrwebcast/

Re: 2013 Las Vegas Regional
 

Alliance Photo