FRC Pit size 2015
 

What is the Average pit size of a pit in competition? I'm working on a pit design and I searched for the size already and there are mixed dimensions: 8x8, 9x9 , 10x10. Which size should I model the Pit?

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Most events will have 10x10 pits. If you're in a district event or a regional with a smaller venue, the pit size may be reduced. Email the event corrdinator if you want to know for sure.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Yes. :)

The goal is a 10x10 pit. That's not always possible at some venues because there's just not enough space. You should try to make your pit assembly so it can be varied based on what you find when you get there.

Some veterans might be able to tell you what to expect at specific venues.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

I know for the Hatboro-Horsham district competition, we had a team come with a 10x10x10 pit. They did not fit in the assigned spot because of a light fixture that blocked their 10 foot tall display. Luckily, we had space elsewhere and they were moved to a place with a higher ceiling. Lesson of the story is that 10x10 may be the floor space of the pit, but you should also check ceiling height.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

It looks like you're signed up for Central Valley Regional and Silicon Valley Regional, perhaps someone with more knowledge of those regionals could give you an idea of what to expect?

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Plan ahead and make your pit adaptable to anything from 8x8 to 10x10. You never know what an event may give you.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Most events are 10X10 but last year at OKC they gave us 15X10 (IT WAS SUPER NICE!)

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Been to both. I would expect 10x10 at Central Valley if they set everything up the same way as last year. I don't remember exactly what the pit size was at Silicon Valley but I know the floor space isn't too big and they have a lot of teams competing there. I would say expect 9x9 for both and see if we get surprised by 10x10. I know it hasn't been less than 9x9 at either event, at least not recently.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Is there a list anywhere of which events are what size? I always hear people warn about sub 10x10 pits, but I've never been to an event where that was the case.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

As an FYI. If you have an empty spot next to your pit, DO NOT expand your pit into it. They will burn you for some awards.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Also sometimes at events they have rules about how you set up the pits. At FLR one year they would not allow teams to have tents over their pits. I have never seen that occur at other events. I think it was the safety adviser's call.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

[citation needed]

I've never heard of this happening. Nor is it in the criteria for any judged awards. Safety Award MAYBE but that's the only one I don't know well enough to argue about.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

At this point, it's more the case at district events, or regionals with small venues. If you only go to regionals in big arenas or convention centers, you won't run into this problem. Once events start scaling down to college or high school gyms, there usually isn't enough room for teams while keeping the pit at the traditional size. 9x9 is what we've found at most of our events. We had an 8x9 once, but that wasn't what was taped out on the floor for us - our neighbors had set up their 10x10 pit walls already and had encroached into our space. (Not cool!)

I'm a definite fan of adjustable pit sizes - or even better, don't build some crazy big structure. 1923 has one (gifted from another team that was folding), and it's definitely been too big & clunky for some of our district events. We are looking at redesigning for this year, keeping the idea of a back-wall to hang banners, but we're trashing the 10x10x8 cube we've had - it just doesn't make sense for us anymore with smaller events & venues.

Nobody likes it when a team pushes the edges of their pit into yours. Not only is it unsafe, but it's just not fair. It's the FRC-pit equivalent of the people on the subway who put their bags on the seat next to them when someone else clearly wants to sit down. Whatever you plan out for your pit, don't be that team.

Edit::
Safety, for sure. I know at one of our events we had a 'take a pin!'/brochure stand outside of our pit by about 3 inches, and the Safety Advisors wouldn't leave our space until we scooted it inside of the taped line. (Not sure how 3 extra people refusing to leave our pit made it any safer, but...)

We got a frowny face on the next morning's form for it. :(

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

That happened at Greater KC as well, where my team was told they could not set up the tent the school uses when they're at events. I believe reason was that "it blocks the fire sprinklers in the event that there is a fire in our pit." I guess I can believe that reasoning, though I imagine the 2 fire extinguishers we had should have sufficed.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Here's Logic...

And WAY the heck over here ---------------------------------> What Venue is Liable For


See all that space in between? We can't be in that space because the Venue could get its butt sued. Once I started thinking about it from the perspective of "what would a lawyer do"* I stopped getting annoyed by things that seemingly make no sense.



* No offense meant to lawyers, what I really mean is "what would an ambulance chasing good for nothing leech do" but that doesn't flow as nicely. Not all lawyers are that, most are good folks.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Pretty sure getting a frowny face from a safety advisor means you're doing it right.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Libby got the name right. You should too. They're Safety Advisors, not inspectors. They don't exactly have the authority some of them seem to claim.

If one of the green-shirted folk tells you to do something that doesn't make sense, try to comply without compromising real safety, and then ask him or her to join you in a conversation about it with the Lead Safety Advisor. (The alternative is to laugh and say "You have no power here. Begone before someone drops a robot on you!" And then suggest the conference.)

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

What happens when the person telling ordering you to do something that doesn't make sense is the Lead Safety Advisor?

That's happened to us, too.

Off-the-thread-topic, but: I'm looking at this from two hats - a mentor, and a Volunteer Coordinator.

No matter how much I try on the VC end, I still see a few SA's being way out of control and ridiculous. I've seen a Safety Advisor yell at kids at the event I was working. Yell. I told him to calm down or I'd ask him to go home. There is no reason for any volunteer to yell at kids. Your job is to be there and make the event experience the best possible for the students...it's not about you. That's always my reminder to volunteers, every morning. And yet, it still happens. I'm not even sure how to fix it anymore.

As a mentor? Hey, maybe stop yelling at my kids. What you're asking doesn't make any sense. Let's talk about this calmly instead of you standing in our pit in 'protest' until we fix your issue.

Back-On-Topic-Point being - keep everything inside of your 8x8 (or 9x9 or 10x10 if you're lucky) box, and hopefully you won't have to deal with that.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

I've been told that judges will often confer with other volunteers at the event to ensure that judged awards will go to teams who are deserving in all aspects of the competition. Teams need to listen to the green shirted volunteers, be gracious, professional and graciously professional about it.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

This happens to us at least once a year and it is absolutely infuriating. I guess we just didn't have enough baking soda for our non-spillable batteries or something.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Last year we were told by the Safety Advisors that we would no longer be allowed to work in our pit unless we cleaned/tidied our pit up to their standards. They seemed certain that they had the authority to do this. Then again, we were once told by a Lead Inspector that we wouldn't be able to win the Chairman's Award at an event because one of our students was seen running nearby the playing the field. So I'm certain that the standards on the power of individual event volunteers varies greatly by event.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

As long as we are on the topic of safety and such (sorry this got off topic OP) what is the idea behind having to wear clear safety glasses? I have a personal pair of slightly tinted safety glasses that I use at work/home that I mainly wear because they are comfortable (some say I have a weird shaped head). At a few events I have been asked to put on a different pair of glasses or leave the event claiming that they needed to be able to "see my eyes" but could not give a better reason.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

The FIRST Safety Manual specifies certain tints as being allowed, with all others being disallowed. If your tinted glasses are one of the allowed tints, and someone tells you to change, I suggest asking them to reference the FIRST Safety Manual before asking you to change glasses. If they won't, pull out your electronic copy and show them. If they still refuse, I suggest having a chat with the Lead Safety Advisor or VC about someone going beyond the requirements in an unproductive manner, or some such topic.

Now, as far as "seeing the eyes", that is a reasonable request. The tints are allowed to help deal with the brightness in some areas. But once eyes are harder to see, then there is actually a real risk that you can't see something as well as you need to.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

There seem to be a bunch of new regionals and districts this year, and (at least in our area) not as many new teams as in recent years. My advice is to look up the regional in your area, and find some teams who were there the last year or two. Then, compare the number of teams at the venue this year compared to last year. If the number of teams is level or decreased, expect at least as large a pit as was available last year. If it has gone up, be prepared for it to decrease. At Bayou, we've had 10x10x10 pits the last three years, and we've dropped from 57 teams last year to 48 this year. Most of the reduction seems to be in teams that traveled more than six hours to Bayou.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

For what it's worth I just had confirmation that Palmetto will have 10 X 10 spaces for teams, and North Carolina will have 9 X 10 (9 being width).

"Carolinas" Teams Plan Accordingly

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

You could make a pit that is 8x8 and is able to scale to be 10x10. Even if the competition you are going to is only 10x10 or 8x8, you could have both in case you decide to do other competitions.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

For some reason the safety advisors only tend to come by when we're doing something not exactly safe...like standing on a toolbox to hang a banner. I think we've only got one smiley face in the morning.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

We're doing something like this...our pit has a pipe frame...we'll cut the pipe to the smallest size we need to accommodate - and use couplers to adapt it to the bigger sizes.

This is a bit off topic - but I really wish FIRST would give teams an hour on Wednesday night to set up their pit - then Thursday morning would start off with immediate attention to the bot.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

While that would be very nice, I can see their reasoning for not wanting to do so. (They wan't everyone out on time, so the volunteers can get a good sleep!)

The strategic thing to do, is when the 5 team reps load in on that night: Carry everything in, in a certain order...

Person 1 carries this box, which just so happens to go in the farthest corner, followed by person 2, which puts their box next to person 1, etc...

You can drop everything off and have your boxes/toolchest/carts already arranged, within 5 minutes.

Of course, if you have big pit displays/tents, etc, that doesn't really work. But for the basics, it will.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

You know good and well that there are teams who will take the opportunity to work on the robot when no one is looking.

My big pet peeve is when team put together their elaborate pits in the middle of the aisle. I even had a team assembling their pit in the que line at Midwest one year.

Re: FRC Pit size 2015
 

Definitely do adaptable. Never count on an event giving you the full 10x10, even if it is in a huge event center. There's nothing more annoying than a team that encroaches into your pit because they couldn't adapt to 8x8, thus making your put 7x7 or less.

Ours is pretty easy to set up, just four independent towers that stand up on their own. If we are less than 10ft, we don't put the bars connecting the towers. At first we were going to have the bars modifiable but that didn't happen. If you want technical details, I'd be happy to share.

Attached is a picture of the back our pit set up at our state FLL tournament. the front actually has a monitor built in and some open shelves for displaying items.