Chief Delphi - Criteria for hosting an off-season event

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- - Criteria for hosting an off-season event (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130144)

Re: Criteria for hosting an off-season event

one of the points made in the document we made is to determine early on if you are doing this as a service to other teams, to break even, or to be a fundraiser. Then build a budget that supports that approach.

The document has a checklist of potential costs for you to consider. Most hosting teams need to at least break even on an event, so be sure the registration fees cover the costs of having the event.

Re: Criteria for hosting an off-season event

Quote:

Originally Posted by woudie (Post 1394293)

Okay thanks that was very informative. The money, I understand it varies but could you give me a rough estimate that most teams would have, in my case I was think about hosting it at wonderland since my school is way too small for an off-season event, and wonderland already has food concession stands. Would it be wise to use the money from the teams attending to pay for the event to cover cost of renting space at wonderland ? My team just barely covered our expense this year, so money is sort of unstable for thing for us. Also how would I be able to get a hold of a FTA, my team is a rookie team so we dont have much connections and don't know how to get hold of various people other than the director of FIRST canada.

Do get in touch with FIRST Robotics Canada, who organized previous competitions at Canada's Wonderlan in 2004 and 2005. Find out from them the costs of renting the venue and why the competition stopped after 2006.

Also note that there was another thread on off-seasons in Canada a couple months ago:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=128448

Re: Criteria for hosting an off-season event

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr V (Post 1394303)

I should have said a FIRST FMS since it is more than just the computer it is all the electronics, sensors ect. Having a FIRST FMS means that you have to have insurance to cover it from the time it leaves FIRST/AM control.

That I'd agree on. For a single event, it's quite possible to put together a system "on the cheap" for scoring, another for field part control (hot goals, etc), and utilize some form of other FMS for getting everybody enabled in the right mode at the right time. Back in the IFI system days, that could be 6 volunteers parked on the dongles... not as easy now, of course!

Re: Criteria for hosting an off-season event

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 1394377)

This is exactly what we did in Australia for our off-season, the Duel Down Under.

Our system comprised of four parts.

FMS Software. In our case we had an FTA who brought a copy of the full FMS minus all the PLC (scoring and lights). This also allowed us to handle all the match scheduling easily. In the past we have use the FMS light software without any major problems.
Catcher Code. This was a simple program that handled all the interfacing with the FMS. It would catch messages about field state (match time, all clear status, etc) and trigger the other components.
Hot goal system. A script written in Python that when it received a message from the catcher run the hot goal lights based around cheap and easily available DMX controlled LED bars.
Scoring/display system. This was a web-server that served pages to score-keepers with tablets. It would receive a start-of-match message from the FMS and then scorekeepers would enter in goals, assists, trusses etc as they happened.

The only cost associated with this was the LED lights, we bought these but they can be hired for next to nothing. But we were still able to have a mostly complete system.

The other thing to consider is the physical field. In for DDU we've been using the wooden field for the past three years quite successfully, and also building the equivalent game elements out of wood. This was mostly to keep costs down (shipping the field here would be expensive) but we've managed to hold a top quality event regardless.