Week 0 Discussion
 

Post any reactions to your week 0 events here. I'd love to see discussion about the game, how it's played, how your robot does, etc.

I'll be attending the Centurion-Krawler event on Saturday, and the Chanhassen week 0 event on Sunday. Couldn't have a better birthday present than to watch robots all day!

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

In Suffield, CT Aces High is hosting Suffield Shakedown today. To watch the webcast go to http://www.shsrobotics.org/ and click on the "Watch Now" link. Good luck to everyone hosting events today and teams that are attending the events.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Looks like it was lots of fun. Looks like destroying the defenses was literal, lots of wood chunks flying around.

Lots of interesting drive trains, it was nice to see the Falcons "10 wheel drive" in action.

Lots and lots of low bar robots today, only saw a few that had to go other directions.

Really liked how you let teams play for 5 minutes a time. It took drivers about that long to figure things out.

Good event, this looks like it will be a good game to watch from the stands.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Aiming is hard.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

We did that last year as well as this year at Suffield Shakedown. It allows drivers to figure things out and get more driving practice before their district or regional competitions. Teams have seemed to liked this format better than shorter 2 and a half minute matches.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

What I saw at the Arizona duel in the desert as well. It seems my assumption that any shooting when not on the batter will require a solid vision tracking system. The margin of error is just too low for a driver to consistently aim manually. Maybe I'll be wrong come championships but so far it seems to be the case.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

I was most surprised to see that not one team at the Merrimack event managed to damage a Category C defense on their own. They either needed 2 robots, or spent the whole match trying to get across once. Did anyone at the other week 0 events manage to solo a Category C defense?

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Was aiming hard due to just the inherent difficulty of shooting from farther away/lack of alignment or was it due to defensive driving?

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

We weren't personally practicing aiming but from what I saw of every other team, it was quite a challenge to line up accurately. For one it is really hard to see with the defenses in the way and the margin of error is just very small. Even from the archived webcasts I'm watching from the other week 0 events, aiming is a challenge. This difficulty will be magnified when robots start playing defense.

It's also hard for a lot of teams to turn because of their drive train. Making a high traction drive train to get over defenses is nice, but it also makes it harder to turn efficiently making it harder to aim.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

We made a minor modification to our robot which helped shooting accuracy. Our spotlight for aiming seems to work OK.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Over here at team 3102's Week Zero the competition itself was exceptional, and we got the process going smoothely to make it great for everyone.

The Problems:

We were using FMS Offseason

Only about half of the OM5P routers there would configure properly, even with firmware flashes. We could take one router, configure it fine, take another, wouldn't work. Even three computers wouldn't do it when it did others fine, then randomly after trying all day it would work. Unreliable at best. We had to borrow out a few older D-links B's to teams, and those configured perfectly every time.

Teams CAN NOT connect to a central router to practice with their robots. Teams were controlling other teams and seeing other cameras, and we made sure to re-configure their routers to their proper team numbers. I was told that the DNS method implimented in FRC's software does that natively. With FMS software enabled we could get two robots working correctly but didn't have time to do more testing. This ruined our entire FMS setup because there was no time to take everyones radio's and re-configure them, especially not with the configuration problems.

The solutions:

Teams were told to reconfigure their own routers with the config software, so we had about 11 seperate AP's going. Much interference with our stream was had, however teams could operate properly.


We simply had teams use the 'practice' method and set their timing to:
0
15
0
115
20

I had to do a good 30 laps around the field overall, showing teams before every round the timing and to press enable practice when we do a ready check and count down.

Next Year:

Next year if the same issues persist we will simply inform teams to configure their own radios, then right before lunch we'l gather them up and configure them while lunch goes on. Then we should be able to control them via FMS for official rounds.

We will also be running a dedicated line to have a consistent live stream, another camera may be added.

Thank you to those that came

We greatly appreciated the crowd we drew. Solving problems and getting everyone operational was a tedious, but very rewarding task. Its really great seeing all of you compete on the field and testing out your equipment. Sorry about the music, nobody thought to hire a DJ ;) This is our first year with our official Andymark field, next year we'l try to make it all just right.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Oh god, under defense, high goal from the middle of the field will be a nightmare. Even if I write vision code, by the time we're aligned, a defender will have pushed us half way across the field.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

I have to ask, how did you guys come up with such a complicated shooter?

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Good question, I'm not entirely sure. Though I do know a few factors that led up to the design. For example, the linear shooter (one cim, two sets of wheels on one side to get some ball spin) seemed the most promising design during prototyping, we wanted the harvester and shooter to be separate mechanisms and face opposite sides, and we wanted the release point of the ball not to be too low. So from there we came up with a linear shooter assembly on an arm.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Absolutely this.