Granite State District event
 

Hi all,

5 days until the very first New England District event ever and I find no thread about it. I can't wait. 1922 OzRam will be there with Tin Man IX.

Is anyone planning a webcast?

Re: Granite State District event
 

On the blue alliance it looks like there is a webcast set up. Can't tell for sure though.

Re: Granite State District event
 

I'll be there as a spectator, can't wait to watch!

Re: Granite State District event
 

I'm also extremely excited for the first-ever New England District event! Should be a great event... and the beginning of a new era of FIRST in New England!

Hopefully this is a good indicator! Does anyone know for sure if there will be one? If so does anyone know if match videos will be going up live (like 2337's "GoPro on a Stick" setup)?

Re: Granite State District event
 

I asked one of the coordinators, he said that NEFIRST is providing it to all districts and that the hired A/V company will run the stream. The simple answer is: Yes.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Awesome! This is excellent news!

In my mind, reliable webcasts and promptly uploaded match videos are definitely a key part in making FRC more and more of a spectator sport!

Re: Granite State District event
 

For now, there's a live broadcast at ustre.am/Pt7N.

Re: Granite State District event
 

And the champions are.......
Team 138 Entropy, Team 177 Bobcat Robotics, and Team 3323 Potential Energy. They beat out a tough opponent in the alliance of Team 131 Chaos, Team 1519 Mechanical Mayhem, and Team 1786.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Does anyone know what happened with the webcast? I was really looking forward to watching this event...

Re: Granite State District event
 

So Deans homework from GSDE: make FIRST louder by tweeting to will.i.am about his new song based off of Hall of Fame but changed to fit FIRST and tweeting about FIRST more. Yes I'm being serious.

Re: Granite State District event
 

I had to leave before the final match! Who won?!?!

Re: Granite State District event
 

All of the FIRST ustreams seemed to be having problems all at the same implying that there was a wide spread issue from ustream and not the individual events.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Does anyone know if the video that would have been webcast is saved anywhere?

Re: Granite State District event
 

This event was having problems with the webcast well before Ustream apparently crashed, starting yesterday. I'm just wondering if anyone has any other information.

Re: Granite State District event
 

I'm uploading my raw footage from some of the late matches and early QFs now. They will be live as soon as youtube processes them. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...qtkZMtFruoBV9Q

My battery was running low, so I had to stop in the QFs. I was mostly playing around, so the quality isn't great.

I noticed a few robots failing to get assists because they only possessed the ball while straddling the white line to make the truss shot. That was my biggest takeaway from the event.

In the Finals, the Blue alliance lost both matches where the two-ball auto failed, and won the match where it worked. Making the auto shots is critical.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Between the failed webcast and the lack of any real-time score updates from FIRST or Twitter, this event was probably the worst in recent memory for folks trying to follow it remotely. I certainly hope future NE FIRST events can do a much better job of this.

So now that it looks like the FIRST Match Result page has been filled in (did someone end up doing it by hand?), FRC Spyder and FRC Tracker are finally happy, but we still don't have the per-match data on Autonomous, Teleop, and most importantly - Foul Points - that would have been provided by a properly working Twitter feed.

Because it would be very useful for scouting purposes, does anyone know where or how this data can be obtained now that the event is over?

<tinfoilhat> Or is someone trying to hide the ridiculous amount of match result-changing G40s that were handed out at this event? </tinfoilhat>

Re: Granite State District event
 

Huge congratulations to 811 on Chairmans', 2648 on Engineering Inspiration, and 4909 on Rookie All-Star! 811 and 2648 have been doing wonderful things for FIRST for years... very deserving wins! One didn't need to look long at 4909 to see they have some great things going on - particularly for a rookie! Again, very well-deserved.

A big congratulations to the winning alliance of 138, 177, and 3323! You guys beat us fair and square - as a FIRSTer, it was a thing of beauty watching your speedy inbound, truss, catch, high goal cycles!

A huge thanks to our partners 131 and 1786... you guys were a tremendous pleasure to work with... it really felt like we were all just one big team in our strategy meetings! We're really disappointed about our team's inconsistencies with autonomous in the finals... we'll be working hard on those and other issues.

I'd like to know this too... My concern is that "it's just gone," but I'm hopeful there's some way to pull the fouls out of the scores for statistical reasons.

The OPR data looks like junk. I have three guesses as to why it's bad... first, there's the overwhelming number of large fouls... second, there's the fact that OPR treats a team's contribution as a constant, and week 1 performances are usually anything but constant... third, this game may be as bad for OPR as people have been predicting (although I'd like to see at least the first issue removed before coming to this conclusion). Personally, I'm not yet sold on "OPR's horrible for Aerial Assist" if the fouls can be factored out.

Does anyone know if any of the OPR calculators still use the Twitter feed? I know it's had well-documented issues...

Re: Granite State District event
 

Just out of curiosity is there a reason that they are not going to the Blue Alliance also? Is it a difficult process? I have never done it so I do not know. I do wish there was one place I could go and find all the available videos.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Thank you for the kind words; we were equally surprised by our play. Your team and machine are very inspiring and we hope to get to your level one day. We also need to give a HUGE thanks to 3467 for all the time they've put in to helping us get to where we are.

We're going to look at finding a way to load the ball faster so we can help with faster cycles. Hopefully we can keep it going at WPI.

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I've got a python script that can split up YouTube playlists and output something you can put into the Blue Alliance spreadsheet. I ran it, so those videos will be on the TBA pages as soon as they import the next batch of YouTube videos

Re: Granite State District event
 

A Team 177 alum recorded some of our matches and posted on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...iVWwqiGET7qxXD

Re: Granite State District event
 

As a queuer for this event, I'd like to thank and congratulate all the teams for their hard work both on their robots, the matches, time in the pits and your communities. It was a pleasure to work with all of you, although you may have not have been happy to see us every time (:p) and I look forward to seeing some of you at upcoming events and District Championships.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the event planning committee, volunteers and sponsors for this event. You all did one heck of job, and we got it done without too many hitches.

See (some of) you at WPI!

Re: Granite State District event
 

NE FIRST just addressed this on their blog

Re: Granite State District event
 

What a great event. Hats off to all!

As to the match data, I attach a spreadsheet with total and penalty scores in 73 of the 78 matches.

I missed the true score in Match 62, and then had to miss the last few to go work with scouts on drafting order (wishful thinking, but also going through the drill) for the drive team at the end.

So I was able to get back to true points scored and allowed by red/blue in each match. On the summary tab, I then calculated averages by team: offense points, defense points, and differential. Note that rookie team 4909 was at the top if O and D rankings were simply given equal weighting!

It is my hope that others will post similar data for other NE events!

Team 885 also has a lot of video, but I have not yet checked the quality... We'll see if any is worth posting. It looks like the Blue Alliance site is welcoming uploads.

Already looking forward to WPI!


Dan H.

Re: Granite State District event
 

I'll answer this one directly as I have been a major proponent of a solid "outside view" for the NE events. A solid webcast is hugely important for us - and I know it is for you too! We had 1600 page views and 150 active viewers on LiveStream in Practice Match FOUR. Let that sink in - we know it's a big deal and now we have the numbers to prove it. This is why we spent the money to give a great visual experience.

I won't get into the details as to what happened, but I will say that there are a few event committees where I know they can handle everything just short of nuclear fallout - and probably that too. The GSD crew is one of them. They handled this with grace and did the very best to get it back up and running. Even with the best laid plans, things happen. The FMS, even without internet, records scores and are exported before the field is packed up. NE FIRST has a copy and sent a copy to HQ to fill out the event pages. Rankings should be going up on schedule.

I will say that I had a dual experience with this event: Day 1 at home, I thought, "everything is awful!", because from the outside, it looked that way. Day 2, when I arrived on site, I thought, "everything is awesome!" because truly, the teams were having a great experience...and in the end that's what matters most.

We will get this right. Thanks for your patience and we hope to be able to wow you in the future.

Re: Granite State District event
 

Jess -
Thank you very much for the insider view. I know that you and the entire NE FIRST team work very hard to provide the best experience possible, and despite all the moaning we all do, I hope that you understand that we really do appreciate it.

Your impressions of the two days are interesting - I was a "live" attendee on both days, and I had pretty much the same feelings as you. On Friday, it was obvious that many teams had not yet read or did not understand the game rules, so that, combined with the zealous enforcement of the controversial G40 and other penalties, made for some very frustrating matches. In a way, I'm kind of glad that the webcast was down and that the "outside public" did not have those matches serve as their first exposure to Aerial Assault!

On Saturday, however, it appeared that the knowledgable teams were doing a good job of educating their less-informed alliance partners, and the true "Assisting" began. While penalties still weighed a little too heavy (IMHO), the result-changing ones were not as frequent as the day before, and by Elims, we were seeing what the game is really supposed to be.

We're excited to see what Week 2 brings - with new Rules clarifications from HQ, a few sheets of polycarb, and the experiences of Week 1 as a guide, things are really looking up!

Re: Granite State District event
 

Dan - Thanks for the data!

In case anyone is wondering, penalties affected the match outcome in 22.97% of the cases. Just sayin'...

Re: Granite State District event
 

Thanks Dan!

Almost all of those cases at GSD were Day 1 where ~30% of matches swung on penalties whereas Day 2 had just 1 case out of 19 matches based on Dan's spreadsheet. As expected, Day 2 also saw higher average scores and lower average penalties as teams got better at playing the game.

I checked last year's full season data with the expectation that around 10% of qualification matches would have had different winners without penalties. It was actually just 3.5% over the season and basically the same at 3.2% during 2013 week 1.

The impact of penalties during Day 2 quals at GSD appears to be comparable to last season.

Re: Granite State District event
 

The staff for this event really went above and beyond. Sure there were all the week 1 issues, and the webcast was down, but I honestly didn't expect a district event in a high school gym to be so high quality.

On another note, does anybody have a recording of Dean Kamen's speech at the award ceremony? I particularly liked it, and I want to have it on record. I know this might sound insane, but I actually want to listen to a Dean Kamen speech twice.

Re: Granite State District event
 

I was running Camera 1 at the event (the camera right by the field), and the video production people said that they were saving the entire thing, even though the Internet for the school district stopped working. So, all of the matches, plus things like Dean's speech, should in theory be on a hard drive somewhere, and I expect they'll manage to get them all up on the Internet eventually.