1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

jk, probably not.

Also, shout out to 1323, super disappointed about the mix up with the ref.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Any idea what caused the power loss in the second finals match? Congrats on making it to the finals, your alliance was pretty spectacular.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

1000 assist points is unbelievable! Might I ask what role and strategy was used?

Did you just insist on getting 3 assist cycles every match?

Even though we tried almost every match, seemed like something failed and the third assist was missed.

Trying to play this game the "right way" is just awkward for us.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Totally agree Adam. We found that two assist cycles flowed much better going down the field than threes. Two assist cycles also gave us a chance to get in more cycles each match.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Main breaker blew after an impact while in high gear.

Killer alliance partners and making sure to help as many teams as possible to improve. Your alliance is only as strong as your weakest link. We spent a good portion of our time sending mentors to help other teams. We actually had a couple mentors designated to specific rookie teams to help them throughout quals.

Increasing the overall competitiveness of the field helps you more than it hurts you, and of course for the sake of co-opertition.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

So what happened with the power loss was we forgot to properly bait the gremlin traps before the match. So when we collided with 1662 the evil little devils decided to strike our main breaker and trip it.

But all joking aside the current draw from the sudden high speed impact while the controls were at full throttle caused the main breaker to pop from the sudden surge in power draw. We have a few plans to deal with this issue before champs.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

While this may be the case, it won't get you three times as many cycles. Teams have to weigh these factors. For us, getting high assist points was a priority, and our gameplay reflected that. Feel free to watch all our matches on TBA.

Playing the middle man isn't always the coolest position on the field, but I'm incredibly proud of the way my kids played these last two days. We couldn't be more excited for Saint Louis.

Also, love my friends on 1323. You guys have so much to be proud of, we look up to you guys so much. Thanks for all of your help this year, 1678 wouldn't be where we are without all of your support, encouragement and advice this season. I hope FIRST reaches out to you soon to apologize, your kids deserved better.

-Mike

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Disclaimer: I am an outsider to CA FIRST.

To piggy back onto this point the quality of robots/play at Silicon Valley is higher than most regionals. I there appeared to be less "bricks on wheels" at this event which is certainly helped by coopertition and helping other teams improve.

Also skimming 1678's schedule they had 254, 971, 1323 and 2035 as partners.

On an unrelated note, why was there no webcast by 1678 at this event? I highly enjoy your high definition recordings as well as graphic overlays; I would prefer them over 240p ones all day. :)

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Are you talking about the main "on/off" breaker on the robot, or something on the power board?

If you are talking about the main "on/off", check that closely. Some of them are easy to trip from impact because they release, not because of overload.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I completly agree that the three assists come with high benefits and I apologize if my post did not come across like that. In my experiences this year, I have found that the high reward of three assists are also tough to come by in some qualification matches. It all comes down to what strategy works the best with the partners that you have.

I have been following your team this year and have learned a lot from your strategy and alliance selections. Good luck at Championship!

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

1678 has risen to be one of the biggest powerhouses in California, and even the world! I still remember when you guys took your first regional win against us in the Sac finals back in 2011, and you guys have risen so much since then. I can't wait to see you guys at Championships! Hoping you guys can bring home another banner for Sac! And, hopefully we'll see you at our event in September again!

P.S: Mike, take an "Einstein Selfie" when you guys make it back to that field, please!

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I wouldn't say that... There were a fair number of teams that just couldn't seem to get the ball out of their robot, or even drive particularly well.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

We have 2 suspicions as to what caused the main "on/off" switch failure. The first is that we drew enough current in the impact to trip the breaker; the second is that the impact bent our bumper plywood back far enough to touch the red "off" switch. Looking at how skewed our bumpers are, I'm inclined to go with the second hypothesis. We'll probably be moving the location of the switch soon.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

We didn't have a particularly difficult schedule; although, neither did any of the other top seeded teams. 368 and 254 played 971, 846, and 1323 in one match, but aside from that 368, 254, 971, and 1678 never played each other except for our(1678's) one match against 368.
Are there any remedies for physical disconnections? Taping the breaker closed is obviously a no no. Other than just limiting current draw is there anything else to do to protect it? We've had our main breaker go out on us 3 times in crucial matches this season.
Thank you! I'm sure Mike would be glad to provide more selfies for your viewing pleasure.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

There was this ingenious design on one of the rookie teams this past weekend at Troy. They had a lexan box surrounding their main breaker, with a hole on top the turn the breaker off, and a hole on the side to turn the breaker back on. The holes were plenty big enough for their functionality, but were small enough as to where the breaker couldn't be accidentally pressed.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I don't believe Chris is referring to the red button physically being pressed. The only protection from that is the location of the breaker.

Some breakers either have or develop a sensitivity to vibration/impacts. To identify if this is the case, turn on the robot and begin tapping on the breaker housing particularly around the actuation lever including gently tapping the red button. If you are able to cause the lights on the robot to flicker you may have a sensitive breaker. Everybody's definition of lightly is a little different, especially if you've never seen this problem before, so you may want to ask a team around you if you can try it on their 'bot as a reference.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

1. Bricks on wheels can make great 30 point cycle robots. It takes a lot of work before the match.

2. We did have fantastic alliance partners in many of our matches, we were excited to play with each one of them and put up some great scores with each one of them!

3. We brought a skeleton crew to SVR, and 604 already had the webcast covered, so we didn't broadcast at the event. Thank you for the kind words on our streaming system, the kids worked hard to put it all together! Glad you enjoyed it.

-Mike

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I really enjoy 1678's HD webcasts. Thanks for doing IE and SAC!

At SVR, we were testing out a proof-of-concept auto archiving system (the same one from CVR) which, unfortunately, uses the low quality feed from the A/V crew. Higher quality streaming and archiving is definitely at the top of our list.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I love the auto archiving you guys got going on! Let us know if we can help with setting up the HQ stream details, and then maybe you can help us with auto archiving? ;)

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

You could consider actively cooling drive motors. I know that it really helped us last year, in both practice and elimination scenarios.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

yeah three cycles are Deffinetly the way to go you just Gotta find the quickest way to do it

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Jake,

We had main breaker issues at Waterford due to overheating and high current on our machine. We died in the final match when our driver was playing defense in high gear.

At Lansing we implemented an autoshift function to downshift when the expected wheel speed does not match actual (simplified explanation ofcourse). We also added a small muffin fan under the breaker, blowing directly onto the bi-metal element.


When you guys were doing your pre-match work with your alliance partners, were you modifying their robot or just detailing exactly how you wanted to execute the assists? Sometimes I feel like I am speaking another language during strategy sessions, based on in-match results. Just trying to understand what else might work to ensure we can involve all alliance members and still succeed on the field.

Could just be that I am not patient enough during the match.

-Adam

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Adam,

Definitely both. Some machines come ready to create assists, some take slight tweaks to make their robot assist-ready, and others require a completely new mechanism to make assists happen. We spent many hours in our lab developing an effective assist-maker to implement on many different styles of robots. After installing the device, a completely passive system, we get our partner re-inspected before our match. We used this in one of our qualification matches at SVR to get 80 assist points in what would have been a 50-60 point assist match if we were rocking 10 assist points a cycle.

I find myself explaining the seeding system often, but it's definitely worth it. Teams get on board with making assists when you explain that is in their best interest to get assist points and rank high (many teams wants to rank high even if they won't be in the top 8).

Many assist-ready robots still need to be taught how exactly to make assists happen. My biggest pet peeve is when an inbounder passes to the second bot in the first zone, and the second robot trusses to the third robot before driving completely into the white zone.

Also, I hardly ever coach my own drive team in qualifications :p

-Mike

Edit: Also, it is worth noting that all of this is possible because the students on 1678 went through many iterations of our passive assist-maker before the event. Additionally, I never have to worry about our robot because the students in our pit diligently prepare/fix/systems check the robot between every match. To top it off, like Jake said, we have a team of mentors and students dedicated to robot modifications/alliance member support. Reaching 1000 assist points truly was a team effort, I couldn't be more proud.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Adam,

We added features to robots and helped modify/remove features and tweak them before our matches at Troy. Also, typically I would spend a lot of time coaching them from behind the glass. Telling them when to move when the assist was counted.

See the following matches and teams:

Match 31 - Team 1914: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdrkuiIwN08

Match 71 - Team 4815: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZmdndPGj20

Match 75 - Team 3398: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9X1DyO6kpY

We ended up with 870 assist points (had 920 before the match 62 replay), which was the only reason we ranked number 1. The next highest assist points was 3539 with 760.

Joe,

That was part of our addition for team 1941, in a previous match a ball hit their main breaker. See match 31 (above) where it was added.

-Clinton-

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Truly fantastic strategy work. I'm sure it will serve you well at champs and is exactly the kid of thing the GDC was hoping this game would inspire. Got any pics of this passive assist device? I'm pretty curious about it.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I know, I was asking about ways to prevent the breaker from disconnecting from being shaken/vibrated. Preventing the red off switch from being hit is a simple repositioning of the breaker.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

I've always wondered about the legality of some physical means of keeping the breaker closed or resetting it in case of a main breaker trip.

By the way, I'm beginning to think the main breaker should be bumped up in rating from 120 to 150 or 180 amps. While I'm not the electrical expert that some on this forum are, I have a hard time seeing what could get damaged (that's not already protected by a breaker on the PDB or somewhere else) at 180 amps but not at 120 amps. Especially if the era of 6 CIM drives is to continue, teams should be able to compete without the specter of a main breaker reset hanging over their heads.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

This is the same thought I had after watching the last finals match. At least two teams on the field were running 6 cim drivetrains because they've become the new high performance standard in FRC. I don't see how First can give us this many cims, and mini-cims, and banebots motors, and anymark motors, and then not expect us to start putting 6 cims on the drivetrain.

33 posted this thread http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=125187 a while back that talks about this with far more knowledge than I posses on the subject. But the bottom line is that all the current on an FRC robot goes through a 50 amp connector and a 120 amp main breaker. Either we need to have less amperage available to us, or upgrade to a higher amperage standard on both these components. As it is we're seeing far too many main breaker trips in situations where the cims and the wires attached to them are in no real danger.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Please tell us what you need to help make Powerhouse Pwnage a huge success! Thanks for putting it on.

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Does the breaker have sufficient air flow to cool off in that configuration?

Re: 1000 assist points and we could have done more
 

Ask, and ye shall receive.



Also, congrats on 469, 254, and 27 for joining the 1000+ Assist Club! I bet we all could have done more ;)

-Mike