Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Don't forget that registration opens today at 5:00 PM!

At the New England Championship, we had several people express interest in volunteering for Mayhem in Merrimack this year. If you, too, are interested in volunteering, please send a message to 166.first@gmail.com with your name, e-mail address, and desired roles. We'll get back to you with more information.

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Ack! "Access Denied"! I want to register! Please???

Brighid

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Getting the same - Access Denied!

We're in!

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Happiness! We're going to Mayhem in Merrimack!

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Sorry for the hiccup. Registration should be open now.

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In just over 3 hours, Mayhem in Merrimack 2016 has already filled 16 of its 24 openings. Don't hesitate to register quickly!

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This is the list of registered teams as of right now:

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Great team-list already!

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Team List as of 5/1/2016:

Only two spots remain!

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Everyone, Mayhem in Merrimack 2016 is at capacity and we are currently taking registrations for our waitlist.

Here is the list of registered teams:

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If you would like I could make a match schedule for you guys for the event and send the match schedule to you so that's one less thing you would have to worry about the reason I offered was because I have the off season cms that first gave to the scorekeepers

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Hey everyone,

We've had a few teams drop out and we have exhausted our wait list, so we now have an open space for Mayhem in Merrimack 2016.

Here is the list of registered teams:

Thank you for the offer. I'll mention it to the rest of the committee to see if that's something we'll need.

Also, Francis from GameSense has graciously offered to broadcast a live stream of this event. We have a pretty formidable team list this year, so it could be a lot of fun to watch!

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Francis, how easy will it be to have the match videos saved from the broadcast? Sounds like it'll be a good time, can't wait to MC Mayhem again this year!

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Hey everyone,

If you can't make it to Mayhem in Merrimack tomorrow, then feel free to check out the live stream that is graciously being hosted by Francis O'Rourke of GameSense!

You can see it here: https://www.twitch.tv/frcgamesense

Results and videos will also be on The Blue Alliance and Youtube some time after the event.

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Thanks to everyone for making Mayhem in Merrimack 2016 an awesome event! Chop Shop did a great job as always running the event, and I had a blast MCing and Game Announcing with Brandon and Adam. It was also fun to watch so many good teams duke it out late in the day, it seemed like the top 4 alliances all had a good chance. Congrats to 133, 1519 and 4906 on the win!

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Thanks to 166 Chop Shop for a great event. Jay, Brandon and Adam did a fine job as MC/Announcers. I figure that to be one of the harder jobs in FIRST and you guys nailed it.

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Would it be possible to post what the awards were and what they were for?

Re: Mayhem in Merrimack 2016
 

Thank you, all, for attending Mayhem in Merrimack in our twelfth year!

I was one of the judges this year (the goofy one, if you don't recognize the face), and expecting that question I made sure to get a copy of our poems.

Herbie Award
The Herbie Award is for the robot that the judges consider to be the "cutest".
It's tough to figure out what makes a robot "cute". Sometimes it's googly eyes, sometimes it's something that we think just looks nice. The arches, as well as the lights, made this robot stand out in our eyes.

Gracious Professionalism
Voted on by other teams for the team that best embodies Gracious Professionalism.
This one was the first poem finished. By sheer coincidence, we didn't realize until afterward that nearly all of the poems used the -all rhymes... I only realized it as I was typing them up.
The nominations for this team mentioned people going around giving out free hugs, as well as sharing many parts (hex shafts were specifically mentioned) and bread (not sure I want to know the story about this).

All That and a Bag of Chips
This award is for the robot we consider to be the "best feat of engineering"
If you're unaware, we DO normally give a bag of chips with this award. The judges were impressed with the extremely efficient use of space on the robot, as well as the stylish two-stage elevator system. The robot was sleek, and the students showed pride in their work.

Cotton-Eyed Joe
This award is for the team that we felt showed the most spirit.
The judges loved the spirit that this team showed during the competition. Unfortunately, it appeared that they had headed out before getting to receive their award, but their representative had enough spirit to make up for it.

Judges' Award
The Judges' Award is tough to describe. It's up the judges' discretion, and can be awarded for anything from "creative design" to "entrepreneurship" to "innovation in control" - sort of acting like any of the awards given out during official events.
The judges were all impressed with all aspects of this team. At the end of their fourth year, they've prepared for next year when there are no more founding members remaining as students. They've implemented fantastic training, and by the time we had talked to them every one of their underclassmen had driven in a match. On top of that, their team had inspired a large number of women to join the team - they estimated 50%.
Their robot was well-organized and had an innovative turret design with clever counterweight usage. Not only did it look like a puppy (at the right angle), but it was well-positioned and brilliantly wired with an organized centralized box that both protected the control system and made it easy to swap out parts if needed.



If you have any feedback for the judges (even if it involves telling us that you hate our attempts at poetry), feel free to let me know!

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Great explanations. Thanks.

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Is this for team 1768 last year? :P

Elevator really was the best way to describe it... an interesting retracting arm.

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Elevators all day, every day.

~DK

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Ahhhhh, that. Pardon my ignorance, now I really look dumb.

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I will happily share the story with you! This goes way back to week zero, when our team had to dropout early due to us bending a huge part of our side plate while crossing the rock wall. We were all kinda moping around in the cafeteria, and someone was talking about how good the bread he had bought was. So some of us bought some bread, and then the team bought almost ALL the bread you were selling. It made a frustrating day better. At Mayhem in Merrimack, a bunch of us were all talking and I decided I was hungry, so I bought two loaves of bread for like $2.50, sat with my team, and they all remembered Week 0, so they all got up and bought bread. And that's the story of how we ate all of your bread :D

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They were some good chips too...

I had loads of fun driving at this event for a second time, the double bracket elims meant a lot of pressure fighting through the losers bracket. It was also fun to play with 9319, that alone brought plenty of laughs.

Any idea when match videos will be up? TBA has no records of the matches either. I was told there was a qual where we scored 9 high goals, thats definitely something Id like to watch again.

The food was awesome, too!

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https://www.twitch.tv/nefirst_red/v/70464806

If memory serves me right, 2:55:00 should be about where you want to start watching for that match.

~DK

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Huge thanks to team 166 and to all of the volunteers, I had a blast! Will the match data be making its way onto TBA?

It was a risky strategy for FIRST Stronghold, but the judges really appreciated that.

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Thank you all for the kind words and thank you to the teams coming out to join us last weekend! We're happy to hear that teams had such a good time.

Yes, Jay O'Donnell, Brandon, and Adam were excellent this weekend. I look forward to seeing them volunteer at official events in the future!

And yes, it is definitely a difficult job, but the person with the most challenging job this weekend that we cannot thank enough was our FTA, Matt McQuaid. He had a rather stressful weekend (including set-up) with some FMS faults. He was also very flexible when working with us to implement our rule changes.

1768 may have found itself at the top of my "Favorite Teams" list after that selection. For those that don't know the whole story, 9319 was assigned to a potential practice robot brought by 319 (we also had 9519 and 9467 ready). However, none of these practice robots were available so we had to turn to the robot our team members had been preparing for the last few weeks in order to fill up the 24th spot on the team list.

This robot was made from the chassis of our 2015 machine and a pneumatic catapult that wound up not being nearly strong enough to score. This robot could only cross the low bar and couldn't carry a ball under the low bar, much less pick one up off the floor. Its bumpers were made from old t-shirts Saturday morning (2015 was bumper-less, remember?).

Despite all of this, 1768 selected this robot as their second pick for fun. 1768, 811, and 9319 (aka Teh Simbots, High Rollers, and other teams that Adam decided to mention) actually wound up eliminating our own Stronghold robot later in the tournament. 9319 couldn't score, but they could play some punishing defense. ;)

Francis told me that we can expect videos to be uploaded to our Youtube channel tonight, but I can't make any guarantees on his behalf. I'm not sure how the match data will get added to TBA since we used an irregular playoff structure. Francis might have a better answer.

Again, thank you for the kind words. We have many dedicated parents that run the concessions and they have been doing a great job at various events throughout the year for a very long time!

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We're trying to support more nonstandard playoff types on TBA - if someone (Francis?) has the data, I'd be happy to help work with them to get everything represented accurately on TBA. We can tweak how we display some events, as well (it's a benefit of being open source :) ) Match data for all!

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I will have some data real soon I promise! I'm in the middle of getting ready for the NASA Sample Return Robot Challenge here at WPI, but in my downtime, I'll get the videos split and up on the YouTube.

EDIT: Good news! I got the quals matches on YouTube. Check out the playlist here.

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Now that I've got my voice back and made it safely back to PA after a lovely 6 hour drive, I'll chime in with my thoughts & thanks from my first Mayhem.

Thank you for such kind words! It's been a wild season Game Announcing 3 districts, BattleCry, and now playing double duty GA/MC @ MiM. I think I might be done for a while, but that's what I said all the way back during week 4 at Rhode Island

Couldn't agree more! Matt had a lot to stay on top of and it definitely didn't help with all of the field faults that occurred. My hat goes off to him for keeping things running all of Saturday!

I can't take the credit for those little plugs. The drive team was hysterical and provided all of the inspiration. They changed it every single match. Like I said, seeing that robot run around the field was one of the most entertaining things I had seen all season!

It was great to work with both you & Brandon, Jay. I'm definitely looking forward to announcing with y'all again soon!

I had a great time at Mayhem and hope to be back again for the next one! Thanks again to 166/9319 and congrats to 133,1519, & 4906 for the win!

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Hey everyone,

I've put together a very quick survey to collect feedback on Mayhem in Merrimack 2016. You can find it right here.

We've already gotten a few great responses (one was exceptionally sweet and I wish I knew wrote it :) ) and we'd love to have more responses from those who attended. The more feedback we receive, the better we can make future competitions!

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Dan, I can't fill out the survey as I was there solely as a spectator BUT I'm going to share some bits of feedback.

Merrimack - always a solid venue for an off season, my only real complaint is that it's inconvenient to get to from my house... but I am going to blame the state of New Hampshire for that so I won't hold it against you :P

Visibility from the stands was pretty solid. But, the score display was very washed out and hard to read but that's mostly a minor irritation. The part I was happy with was that the sound seemed appropriate for the venue. Too often I see events with the sound turned either too high or too low. So, kudos on that.

Actually, I'll shorten this up, really my only problems with Mayhem this year were:

1) I had no idea what the playoff structure was - could have been my fault for showing up late. Probably was, wouldn't worry about this.

2) Unbearably hot - I actually had to leave the event because I was overheating in the stands. I get that it was a really warm outside but some moving air would have gone a long way to making it feel bearable in there.

But seriously, if the air circulation is the only thing I can complain about at an event it was pretty awesome. Can't wait to watch robots there next year.

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Andrew,

Thanks for the honest response.

As a matter of fact, others have shared the same concerns as you. We are discussing acquiring a new projector screen and possibly a new projector for next year.

I admit that the playoff structure was poorly communicated and it doesn't help that it was difficult to read our Excel bracket off of our projector. We haven't yet discussed better ways to communicate the playoff structure and how it all works, but that will certainly a point of emphasis when we start planning for next year.

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We really enjoyed Mayhem, and wouldn't change the structure. I was among those confused by the playoffs--but luckily I had a student who got it and explained it to me. We're looking forward to Week 0 next winter (sincerely hoping you host again!) and Mayhem next spring! Thanks for all you do in NE!