FRC active teams
 

Hey guys!

I wanted to know an approximation of the current FRC active teams... (By that I mean those still competing.)

Thank you!

Re: FRC active teams
 

2892 teams competed last season.
https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso

Re: FRC active teams
 

That's low :( I thought it was around 5000...

Re: FRC active teams
 

There have been well over 5000 teams created. Some of those teams have a long history, but became defunct. Other teams were created and have never actually competed.

Re: FRC active teams
 

Rookies are being given numbers in the 5000, 6000 range. But the number of active teams is around 3000. Teams end up going under and the numbers aren't recycled. Some teams take a year or two off then come back. There are also a lot of numbers that weren't given out.

Re: FRC active teams
 

Since 1998 all team numbers were assigned once only, meaning that any number whose team retired was never reassigned. For example, legendary Team 47 dropped out of competition in 2009 after their school closed. Even though they reincarnated by joining with Team 65, the new team got a new number (51), since 47 and 65 technically belonged to different teams.

The reason only app. 3000 teams competed last year out of 5000 numbers is because those teams that dropped out since have kept their number frozen.

Re: FRC active teams
 

A lot weren't given out? Can you explain?

Re: FRC active teams
 

For example teams 5352-5399 were never numbers given out for whatever reason.

There are also teams who merge together(Chief Delphi for example) and one of the teams numbers can just get retired. Now retired numbers can be brought back if the school starts a new team they can pick up the old number.

Re: FRC active teams
 

Oh! That's all logic... Anyone knows why some numbers are not given out?

Re: FRC active teams
 

Those numbers are essentially held as "reserve" for future use, such as teams merging together (like the team 47/65 case). More information on when these numbers are issued can be found here. This document does a good job of explaining the different scenarios which could result in one of these reserved numbers being issued

Re: FRC active teams
 

That explains pretty much all of it! Thank you!

Re: FRC active teams
 

Another reason that numbers aren't given out is because it is easier to remember for example that 4450 was the lowest team number for the 2013 season than to remember that it was for example 4407. So the each year numbers start at xx00 or xx50. Not really important to individual teams but easier at the administration level. The reserved numbers are also used for those split or combine cases because FIRST wants to be able to easily tell the relative team age using that 00/50 system noted above.

Re: FRC active teams
 

Another thing to note is that if you go to usfirst and search for teams that existed for a certain year/game, you will get a few teams that enrolled as teams that year, but never competed. If you want to know when a given team actually competed, www.theblualliance.com is usually the easiest (but not the official) place to find out.

In addition to the cases cited above for vacant team numbers, sometimes a given school/group may have multiple numbers at different times, provided that they were inactive for enough years. For example, Slidell High School fielded team 2182 Tyborgs in 2007 and 2008. The team competed very well, but died for lack of sponsorship. When we started a new team to compete in 2012 (3946 Tiger Robotics), we opted to get a new number and compete as rookies. For the record, the new team has no coaches, mentors, or students overlapping with 2182, so we felt perfectly justified in being considered rookies; only our head coach and one student had any experience with FIRST (on 1912, Team Combustion). We have managed to get a few of the old motors and other material items from 2182 from the Tyborg's head coach, who still teaches at the school. We even have an empty cell from 2009 (Lunacy) sitting on top of a storage cabinet in Jesse's classroom, even though 2182 did not compete that year.

Whenever people and personalities are involved, things can either make sense at the time, or in the long view, but never both. (Neither is also an option.) On the team numbering issue, FRC has opted to have things make sense at the time over having them make sense in the future, though they valiantly try to do both as much as they can.

Edit - and OBTW, if you don't know what team was #47, look at the icons on your browser tabs.
Second Edit:
While it's been a few months since I've used Chrome, last I checked they supported the favicon.ico convention for browser tab icons, meaning you'd see orange bars above and below a black bar with a white 47. Is that no longer the case?

Re: FRC active teams
 

That's pretty interesting! Thank you!

Oh, and for team 47, you mean they are team Chrome?

Just kidding :)

Re: FRC active teams
 

Using that site for data, it looks like the number of teams in FRC has grown pretty linearly over the past decade. If the pace doesn't change, we should hit 3000 teams in 2016.

I'm interested in comparing the growth rate to FTC and FLL, but I'm going to bed :)

Re: FRC active teams
 

Sounds about right. According to the "FIRST At a Glance" page, they are projecting 3,100+ FRC teams to compete in the 2016 season. As well as 5,150+ FTC teams and 29,000+ FLL teams projected for 2015/2016.

Re: FRC active teams
 

This is something I've looked into. Here's the data I could find (based on FIRST's numbers used for marketing materials) if you're interested: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Re: FRC active teams
 

Wow! Impressive data! So much people!

Re: FRC active teams
 

Mark (et. al.)

Is there a programmetric way of gathering the team list? Is there a REST interface into this data?

Thanks

I'd suggest looking into BlueAlliance code. It's on github and I can link you if you need it.

Re: FRC active teams
 

The Blue Alliance API is good if you have some programming knowledge.

Re: FRC active teams
 

I was surprised to notice New York is nearing 200 teams, and it only has 4 regionals.

NYC had 66 teams compete.
Tech Valley had 38.
SBPLI had 51.
FLR had 45.

That's a total of only 200 spots, including repeats and district teams going to a regional.
I feel teams are gonna have trouble this year with getting two events.

We had trouble getting a second regional since two nearby events were both week 2 and locked out.

Re: FRC active teams
 

FIRST also has an API, if you want the data straight from the source.

https://usfirst.collab.net/sf/projec...ity_developers

Re: FRC active teams
 

This is the API providing access to the original-source FIRST database.

Yea, it gets tougher in NY every year.
The East coast has open 2016 events only in NY, SC and Florida.
I hope it's a tiny bit better in NY than last year, mostly since all four NY events are at least on different weekends this time. Back-to-back events still cause problems for lost school time though.
NY had 147 teams last year, and I wouldn't guess this year's increase would be more than 10 additional teams.
International teams are getting squeezed out of the region, too.

Re: FRC active teams
 

Palmetto Regional?

Re: FRC active teams
 

Oops, fixed.
It's funny how the Regional areas along the coast are walled off from each other by Districts .