2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Team list: https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index....014&event=inth

Who's excited about the event this year? From what I can tell, it promises to be one of the stronger and deepest early season competitions. I'm very much Looking Forward to competing there!

Crossroads is turning out to look like an amazing event this year. The team list is amazing. I can't wait to go watch!

My bold prediction: because of the depth of this regional, we'll see either a 7th or 8th seed win the whole thing. These 7 and 8 seed alliance, provided smart picks, will dominate eliminations with their strategic play, and complimentary bots.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

I'm really excited to get to watch this event this year. It has a ton of great teams and we've already seen quite a few great robots revealed. I hope some of the suggestions after last year's competition have been implemented. I know that Rose is super excited to host this event again so hopefully they listened.

It will be interesting to see how this comp will shake out. It seems like there is going to be quite a deep field here which will definitely reward excellent and dynamic team play over excellent robot play. I'm sure we will see some epic elimination play.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

I really can't wait!

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FRC-3959 (Alabama) Is looking forward to hanging out with you guys this weekend ...... should be a great regional. :D

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

5188 is definitely excited for their inaugural regional!

The 10 minute walk really cuts down on the travel costs though. :p

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Glad the webcast is working for practice matches. Will distract me from getting any work done today. :D

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Where did you find the webcast? I don't see it on the blue alliance or watchfirstnow.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

http://client.stretchinternet.com/cl...itadmin.portal

Webcast

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Thanks!

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Is the streaming site down for anyone else?

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Yeah it won't load for me either. It's just been loading for the past 20min.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Did anyone ever look into fixing the stream?

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It's been working for me all day, but I know other people haven't been able to access it. I've also been told that the 3D live feed is pretty good. ;)

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The page just loads into a black screen.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

hahaha, oh geez. So, in an attempt to figure out why it wasn't working for others, I closed the page and tried to open it again, and now it won't load at all. It was working beautifully before then. Now I feel your pain.::ouch::

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Currently, match 60 is playing. My teams robot was just playing, 2 robots (including my team's) died at the exact same time.

The referees are not calling out red team bots for slamming blue team bots. However, the referees call penalties on blue team bots for lightly pushing other bots.

This Crossroads seems unfair, and since when do FRC challenges allow battlebot type tactics?

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

We need to start tracking outbreaks of this on each thread like the CDC tracks epidemics. Ground zero for Crossroads is Q60. Will it turn into a full CIR pandemic?

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

After further diagnosis, one bot was disabled after the bumpers fell off, and ours tripped the breaker, which had not happened all day long.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

See? It's not all a conspiracy against your team. Also note that "slamming" another robot is not by itself illegal.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Crossroads match scores seem to be averaging 30 or 50 points above other regionals Lord of competition here

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It seems like there was little "ramp up" time today, unlike the Michigan districts that we scouted last week. Match scores got pretty high early on, and not just due to penalties.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

One thing I've noticed is there have been quite a few foul-heavy matches. However, from what I can remember (being on the field reset crew), the highest score (not counting penalties) was 245... there also was a 285 but IIRC there was 150 or so in penalties. I have noticed some-ramp up in the case of a few teams; however, it seemed that quite a few teams were already playing well by their first qual match. There have been lots of high scores and pretty intense gameplay (and it isn't even Saturday yet!). If this keeps up, it will be a very exiting Saturday afternoon.

One issue that at least one team brought to my attention today that I can comment on is tape durability. For some reason (looks to be lame adhesive) the gaff tape isn't sticking so well this year, at least on this field (which IIRC wasn't used in week 1). For quals, we've been somewhat conservative on tape repairs, mainly to keep the match to match times low and to save tape. Also, the only way the tape seems to be working is if it is applied in 3" strips.

This all being said, I'd imaging that during tomorrow's lunch break (and throughout elims) we will be more diligent on tape maintenance; However, I'm not the field supervisor so I can only guess from past experience.

On a lighter note, this whole tape issue kinda reminds me of the "pothole incident" that plagued the 2010 Daytona 500... but just like that race, patch the hole, keep on trucking on.

Good luck to everybody tomorrow, see y'all on the field.

Edit: this is my opinion, and my opinion alone. Nothing less, nothing more.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

There was a lot of good competition. A bit of a rough day for us, as we had to retread the wheels a few times, and have had a mystifying problem tweaking an autonomous mode that works on the practice field but does something completely different on the competition field. Still we have scored at least one ball every match the first day in teleop, so that's something. I am glad that this year our overriding design principle was robustness. Because there is just a lot of contact in this game. It reminds me of 2006, which was I believe the first year for bumpers as well.

The end of our day was hectic, as we were in Q60, then the last scheduled match at Q65 then a replay of Q32 immediately following. Q60 and Q32 were probably our best played matches all day. In Q60 we started off three successful three assist cycles and in Q32 we finished off three 40 point cycles. It vividly demonstrated how important all three robots being on the same page is.

The venue is great. I like the big, open pit area separated from the competition field (and its noise) by a wall rather than a curtain. You can carry on normal voiced conversations in the pit. (Which is really important when you spend all day swapping The seating in the competition area is a bit snug, but the small size makes that easily bearable. You are really right on top of the competition.

I noticed this at week 1 at CIR, as well. The field crew was diligently repairing the tape after nearly every single match... never seen it so in need, before.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Did I hear it correctly that Semi-Final 2-1 had a fight between 2 drive teams?

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

........You're kidding me, right?

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

I caught the back end of it but I heard the announcer saying stuff like, "We dont like nor condone those kinds of actions and the alliance was given a penalty for uncivil actions."

That to me sounds like 2 or more drive teams got into it with each other.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

The announcer said something about a fan coming down and physically accosting a ref. Unacceptable by any standards

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Oh ok, thanks for clearing that up.

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Congrats to Team 1108 on the regional win and Chairman's Award. You all rock! Thanks to all of those who made this regional such a wonderful example of the spirit of FIRST. Your RPC and volunteers are to be commended. Loved watching all of the teams in action. An amazing array of young people who "get it"!

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Wow. I hope the team responsible apologized to the refs, that's completely unacceptable. It's just a game guys, chill out.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

1024 is currently the best robot to not qualify for the Championship this year. Great elimination matches at Crossroads, regardless of all the problems that plagued teams. Real intense and fun to watch.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

+1
They had a great robot at palmetto and I really was hoping for their team to get the chance to move on. Their team was nice and their drive coach is great to work with. I hope they can get enough funds together to maybe go to a 3rd regional sometime later in the season to try and qualify.

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And, they are such a great example of living gracious professionalism. They don't just talk the talk. Excellent team.

Thank you everyone for a great regional! We had a great experience and loved working with all the teams. We are currently trying to get into a third regional. We are working on getting sponsorships in hopes to go. Thanks again

~1024

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

1024 needs to find their way to the big show. It would be a crime for them to not have a shot at doing the dance on the big stage.

-Nick

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

What's the wild card rules? There are two double qualifiers in this regional, even with the 4 teams winning that should leave one spot open. They should get that spot.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

If a team on the winning alliance has prequalified at a previous regional in 2014, it opens up a wildcard spot. Even though 5188 won rookie all-star here, it had to have been at a previous regional for a wildcard spot to open up. Same with 1108 winning Chairman's. They would have had to have win it at a week 1 regional for a wildcard spot to open.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

The wildcard spots only apply to Championship Qualification at a prior 2014 event. Because 1108 and 5188 double qualified but only at the Crossroads regional, 1024 is unfortunately not offered a wildcard spot.

-Nick

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Please let us know if you are going to do a 'Gofundme' or some other online fundraiser. We'd love to spread the word for you!

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Best of luck in your search for funding! I hope you guys can get another chance and end up qualifying for championships!

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Congratulations to 1108 for the regional win, the Chairman's win, the Woodie Flowers award and the Dean's List award. What a regional and what a great team.

Congratulations to our friends from 4269 for subbing in and playing really well to help your alliance to a regional win. We are looking forward to seeing you at the World Championships.

1024 had a great bot and even more importantly you are a great group of engineers, young and old. I am glad our alumnus Dan Phelps has landed there. I hope you are able to get to the Championships.

5188 congratulations for the regional win the Rookie All Star award.

Thank you to Rose-Hulman for putting on a great event. I think you may have hooked a couple of my students.

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Thanks to all the teams and volunteers! It was a great event and 537 sure had a blast!

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

The crossroads regional was a great time! The teams were awesome, and the venue was perfect.

Two things happened that I hadn't seen before:
-1024 and the #1 seed alliance called their timeout to let 1108 fix their robot before the second finals match (I was told that they had had PWM cables catch fire). One timeout might not be enough for this game.
-a team with a backup robot called in the quarterfinals won the event. 4269 filled in with aplomb.

RHIT put on a great event!

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

There is plenty of room at the Queen City event! We could look into home-stays with our team for you all here in Cincy to help defer costs....

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Thanks to our wonderful alliance partners, 4269, 1108, 5188 for their great work in securing the win. I would work with any of you again at any competition, if we do not see you at Boilermaker, we will see you at the International competition in St. Louis.
Arguably more thanks has to go to 1024, 3147, 234 for their huge display of gracious professionalism when they called for a time out when they had no problems of their own. Without them doing that, there is no way that we could have pulled off the win. I think they all 3 deserved the gracious professionalism award for that, and the many other times they showed up to lend their assistance during finals to our alliance.
1108 did have an electrical problem during the finals matches. None of us realized the extent of it until about 75 seconds left in the time out. It was originally thought to be some shorted wires, it was found out to be a non functioning digital sidecar as well. A new one was secured while 1108 sat dead on the field for the match. When the green lights came on the race was on. Lucky for all of us, they were able to swap it out lightning fast and got it to work for the last match.
I also have to thank the field staff. Not only did they keep everything working, they were laying on the floor with us with flashlights, spare batteries and anything that was needed to get everyone through finals.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

If I had a nickel for every time we had a digital sidecar go out...I'd have a crap-ton of nickels.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

We had one go out earlier in the day, ugg

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

On behalf of team 1108, Panther Robotics from Paola Kansas, I'd like to graciously thank the huge number of teams and people and judges that helped us to win four major awards at the Crossroads regional.

Our "Quadra-fecta" included a "Woodie Flowers" for our electrical mentor Gregg Rupp, then our alliance, with the exquisite help of three other teams, Team 135 the Black Knights, team 5188, "Area 5188" and team 4296, the Cardinalbots helped our underdog-alliance just squeak-by to beat a wonderful top-seed alliance of 1024, Kilobytes, 3147 and 234. Then our team leader Kate received the Dean's List award and to top all of that off, then we were awarded the regional Chairman's award. We're a team of 12 kids--we brought nine--from a small town in Kansas!

And I need to extend very special thanks to the Kilobytes in recognition of their very appreciated gracious professionalism, when after team 1108 had burned it's time-out and it's back-up robot card these gentlemen and ladies graciously used their own time-out to let us replace some burned PWM's and a digital side car and play the last match without a working catapult to win.

Because 1108 won both the competition and the Chairman's award, I'm pretty sure that the 'wildcard' rules will pass one of our eligibilities for Championships on to the Kilobytes. Also, our ally 5188 won both the competition and the rookie-all-star so I believe they created a wildcard to pass on to another team too.

I would also like to compliment 1024 on their incredibly simple-three-moving parts on the robot design. Both 1024 and 1108 were the only two robots at Crossroads to shoot fully pneumatically. No springs, no bungees, no ratchets. I wonder if there's been any other full-pneumatic robots that dominated so much. Please discuss.

Finally, we're so blessed and rewarded that we met so many new friends over the last three days and our 'underdog' status, with the 'home-team rookie (5188)" made the cheering for our alliance all the more enthusiastic! Over and again, the announcer made the point that the first seed was full of regional winners (eight in the last five years?) where the last one our squad had won was 1108 had won our rookie year, 2003.

I've put many pictures from this event on the team facebook site, including pictures of the Kilobytes receiving their awards, Galactech getting their rookie inspiration award, WD-40, my personal 'other' team aggressively playing a defense-only robot to 19th place. Sometimes when you're getting an award, there's no one to take your picture. Feel free to steal and use mine.

I'll be posting match videos on youtube account 'hrench' as soon as I can.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

I wish it did, but as the rule stands, it only applies to a team making champs at a previous regional, not the same regional. I personally don't like that aspect of the rule, but I didn't write it nor can I change it.

BTW, congrats on the "sweep". I don't think I've personally seen a team pull that off. Good Job.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Thanks, thanks, thanks.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

match 004 ended with a score of 317, but the 'natural' score at the end of the match was 267

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

As a driver for 1108 I would like to thank team 1024 for graciously using their one and only time out to allow us to switch out our digital sidecar and be able to compete in the last final match. It was a pleasure working with the drivers on their team and the rest of the crossroads regional competitors. As for team 1024 my best wishes go out for your team to make it to championships, I would love to see such a great competitor at St Louis.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

All I can say from this competition is WOW. Thank you to the Crossroads Regional Planning Committee and all of the great volunteers that helped make this a great event.

As Luke mentioned above, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, FRC Team 1024 for the timeout to allow us to determine how much was left of our robot wiring harness. The 18 gauge power line to the LED ring was pinched and shorted out. The effect of this was about 2 feet of 18 gauge wire that was on top of most of the control system wiring bundle melt into the the rest of the controls. It took most of the timeout time just to make sure that we did not have any other unapparent damage that might have additional shorts in the wiring that was remaining.

We were able to apply power as time expired and when the system was enabled, all of the relay lights for all 8 relays lit up. At that time, the drivers moved our robot to the goalie zone and I headed to the pits. I picked up a new sidecar, ribbon cable, 3 cRIO modules and a screwdriver. We replaced the sidecar during the cool down period, powered the robot and the signal light started to flash. The drive station was connected robot enabled and the compressor started to run. They are now counting down 30 seconds to the match. The drive team rolled the robot forward to the starting line and placed the ball in the robot. Auto started and the robot crashed into the wall due to the A-B wires on the encoder being backward. Our role in teleop was to play defense since we did not know the status of the rest of the systems.

I want to congratulate 1024, 324 and 3147 for fight and resolve to make this a memorable experience.

To our alliance partners, 135, 5188 and 4269, I look forward to seeing you in St. Louis. Thank You for a very humbling and memorable experience.

I also need to thank Jeff S. and Cameron L. (the Coach and Driver) from Team Titanium (1986) for the "sage" advice on what it takes to play and win Aerial Assist.

I want to thank all of Team 1108, the Members, Mentors, Helpers and Alumni for a very rewarding experience. Four members of the team did not get enough robot experience in Terre Haute and drove 50 miles to help FRC Rookie Team 5119 finalize their preparations for the Greater Kansas City Regional and then return to unload the trailer and prep the crate for shipment to Championships.

My final thanks goes to Kate S., our Team President for submitting me for the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. Kate, you are a very special team member. Keep doing what you are doing. You make the City of Paola and the entire Kansas City Region FIRST program proud to have you as a member.

Gregg Rupp
Mentor, Team 1108

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

I apologize if this has been posted elsewhere, but it seems relevant to the discussion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUaVdbd20GU

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Okay, that is a little funny.

And on the subject of videos, all of matches that 1108 was in are now posted on youtube, the account is 'hrench', same as here.

Enjoy. scout us.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

All matches from the regional are being posted on the mavericks youtube page (mavericks2252) slowly but they will all be uploaded

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

If a team who wins a Regional in 2014 – in other words, if a team who is a member of the Winning Alliance – has already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2014, a Wild Card slot is created at the Regional which they just won.
From the FIRST website -

Wild Card slots are filled in the order of:

1. Finalist Alliance Captain

2. Finalist First Pick

3. Finalist Second Pick

4. Finalist Backup Team

Wild Card slots are passed to the next team in the order specified above only if the team occupying that Wild Card slot has already qualified for Championship at an earlier 2014 Regional. The number of potential Wild Card slots created at each Regional is equal to the number of teams on the Winning Alliance who had already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2014.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

This was the Robo-lions, 2199 out of Maryland, our team spirit winner. We were trying to come up with something that they could do with us to get the crowd riled up before the elims. There were only 6 students there, so we thought, "How about a match?"

And they were perfect. So awesome.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

We are working on funding (over half way there with local donations already) and are scheduled to appear at Queen City.

We are excited to get another chance to move on. RHIT was an awesome tournament even if we didn't come out on top. It was great working with everyone there and at Palmetto the week before.

Now, on to Queen City!!

- 1024

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Since my own company, Cargotec/Kalmar Global partially sponsors my team 1108, Panther Robotics, I wrote a piece for the company newspaper/website about us winning at Crossroads.

Today I see that its been picked up by our World website.

I just gotta tell someone!

BTW, Cargotec is based in Finland. I don't even know if there are teams in Finland.

http://flow.cargotec.com/news/Lists/...default%2Easpx

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Your article requires a company login. Is there a way you could print to PDF and then link that instead?

Congrats again on the win.

Re: 2014 Crossroads Regional
 

Sorry about that password thing. I've taken screen shots and entered them as photos on our team FB site. Since I don't run the webpage, I couldn't think of a way to post a PDF that could be accessed.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...e=3&uploaded=3

Bob.