2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

116 is happy to be attending the NASA/VCU regional once again (sadly, we missed it last year :( , our first time missing it ever).
Not to mention, it's the biggest regional in America!! 64 teams already, and still 5 more spots :ahh:

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Lets hope the field doesn't break again causing 2 hour delays. j/k ;)

Anyway, I love this regional, no matter how big and hectic it is. This will be my first year missing this regional in all the year's I've been in FIRST, so when March comes around I'm going to be pretty sad. I hope you guys all have fun.

I <3 Jeff Seaton :p ;)

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

222 is filling up our bus to head down to VCU for the first time ever!. We can't wait:)!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Team 384, Sparky, is excited to be coming back to the VCU regional for our seventh time. We'll see you there.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

401 will also be there. I don't know about the orange Hokie hair though... it cursed us in Atlanta.

*Returns to working on the camera*

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Wow, how did the orange hair curse you all in Atlanta?! I LOVE THE ORANGE HAIR!

Anyway, team 616 would have been there if it wouldn't have been for our School Board screwing us over. This will be the first time 616 has missed the VCU regional in a couple of years. I'll miss being there with my team, even though I'll be there, it just won't be the same. :(

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Team 343 - Metal In Motion will be heading north again to gain valuable experience in the robot wars. We missed VCU last year, but look forward to coming back and seeing old friends and competing against world class teams. Good luck to everyone this year! :D

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Hey team 1829 is signed up I see. My son a former member of 343 is Coop'ing in VA and helping them out. I look forward to seeing them! Also our friends from R. D. Anderson, Team 1715 will be there. Sounds like it's going to be a great time. Hey if you're on one of these teams and need anything let us know!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

1033 is going. Cant wait!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Looks to be a good year at VCU again! I'll be back for my 7th VCU regional. :ahh:

Wetzel

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

1132 will be at VCU again this year....
I hope we progress a bit more than previous years...
We'll see....
See everyone there! Good luck!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

There will be 6 former team 616 members volunteering at VCU this year, 5 of which were on the team last year. We will be working Field Control, Scorekeeping, and Field Repair/Reset.

If you remember us, make sure to stop and say Hi when you see us and we'll be sure to do the same!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

I will be there for my 5th VCU Regional in a year, but this time I will be a Volunteer. Can't wait to see everyone there again, and hopefully to see my former team 1086 the Pirates go even further this year. Good luck to everyone, and see yall soon.

Mike

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

team 1002 will be there this year...we missed it last year, but it was the same week as peachtree...

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

1829 will b there!!!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Team 1598 is heading to VCU for our second year doing the compeititon. Its going to be great!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Team 435 is going to return for our 7th year at the NASA/VCU regional.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

I'm here at VCU and the field looks pretty! I'll be on all day sitting at the scorekeeping table.

Wetzel

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Very nice. Here's the webcast info.




Bit rates are as follows:

Windows Media (43kb, 148kb, 350kb)
----------------------------------
ARL: mms://a64.l1856648259.c18566.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/64/18566/v0001/reflector:48259
Link: http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/live/reflector:48259.asx

Real (KSC/AMES)(34kb, 225kb)
----------------------------
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin...oder/firstva.rm

Streams will be up and down here this morning as things get rung out from the production house feed.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

For all those at VCU, make sure to stop by the Inspectors table and look for Tim Matt and say hi. He's my dad. My mom should be working the real time scoring Wetzel, so look for her too.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

I like the new flip-up ramps that are on the entrances to the field.

One note...it seems like people are having problems distinguishing the periods...maybe just because it's practice day though.

Can I get a hoo-hah watching webcast and forgetting about class?!?!?!

/edit/

Anybody got insight on why they are running 60 second periods during the first practice round???

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

For practice rounds, we are running two matches per session. Each has a 10 second auto but the first time is 60 second periods for drive practice and then a 40 second period. It has to do with the way the scoring system behaves and giving the teams driving practice time.

Can you hear the whistle for the period change? WORST SOUND EVER. The sound guy had to edit the wav because it was 50% louder then the other files. Still finding a few bugs, but working them out.

Wetzel

VCU Real media is working
 

NASA Real Media of VCU

Note: this is not the NASA TV feed which is only on Saturday. This is direct from the Floor. Practice is under way.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

i get a cannot render file error, can anyone help?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Check firewall, reload realmedia player. Good luck.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yea, the web cast was working fine before, but now (in the last hour) the longest i have been able to watch without the connection eventually timing out it 1 min 45 seconds. Its not my Internet connection though.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

The feed works fine for me. Mine's been streaming for over an hour now.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Make sure you're getting the actual .ram and not just the .pl file. Firefox was downloading the .pl for me. I had to use IE to get the .ram.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yeah the webcast is working fine for me.. but I wish they'd change the camera position.. only shows 3/4's of the field.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I would like to record this - is there anyway to get it done -

Thanks
ken

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

it was better before lunch, wonder why they changed it :confused:

/edit see there? all you had to do was ask! :ahh:

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

ive got the second monitor RCA jack on my video card plugged into a VCR here and am recording it to VHS.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

they changed the view! woohoo!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

There!.. they changed it back to the overall field.. I hope they keep it there.. yeah a recording would be nice..

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Is there a higher resolution version?

I can't even see the atom-sized robots! ;)

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yea the overall filed is great - I would like to copy to the hard drive and the burn to a DVD -- I don't have a great video card.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

This program is free and claims it is able to record real media streams, but it sounds like you might need to pop open the .rm file and find the actual paths yourself. Worth a shot if you want a recording.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Greg - thanks I'll give it a shot
Ken

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

We had some issues getting all the counters working at the same time, but we have the system working fine now. Well, fine enough to run and score the event. A few bugs still tweaking out but it works.

:D

Wetzel

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Whoever increased the resolution, thanks! :)

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Any chance of a Windows Media feed? I know one was posted in another thread but it doesn't work.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Does anyone know the number of the "spaz" shooter? The one that like launches 10 balls in like a second (cool looking) but has had some trouble with them not going in.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Hey - I am watching the practice.

It seems Sparky was hitting ball after ball smack into the 3 point goal,
but they were bouncing out?

Ouch.

I hope there is some kind of adjustment made on the ball arresters.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Can anyone else hear them talking in the background.. kind of funny..

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

I think the problem is, they are putting a back spin on it and shooting it so hard that it is slamming into the back wall and coming right back out. I think that them coming out is part of the game challenge; you are getting two more points for each ball...

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yea, I can, I've heard some interesting conversations ha ha

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

........

(Condensed)

From what I see sparky is putting too much forward spin on the ball because the ball when it hits the ball arresters it spins up to the top of the goal and then because the goal is tilted forward, the ball falls out of the goal. The softer you hit those ball arrestors the better because the movement of the chains coming back to rest is enough to push those light poofs back out of the goal. It seems as though corner robots are ruling the field right now, but I still haven’t seen a whole lot of scoring... I hope it gets better tomorrow.

It certainly does look like there are allot of balls out on the field. I pretty sure the HPs are trying to score points by throwing the balls into the corner goals, with little success. But a few teams have gone back and forth to the drover station to reload their shooters. But one thing I did notice also is that allot of the shots that are being fired, they miss, often. Plus there’s the ever exciting auton with balls flying everywhere. But from what I have seen so far today, my view of the game completely changed and the strategies I have come up with are not as important as some of the ones that I thought would be useless.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

anyone else getting a big FIRST logo now? probably just temporary, but i wanna see if im the only one getting it

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yup, me too. :(

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

OMG FIRST LOGO! GO AWAY!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I guess someone messed up

Hopfully the feed will be back up pretty soon

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

i love the logo but please GO AWAY

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

okay i keep getting that the page can not be found. can someone send me the direct link that i can just put into the web bar on real player?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

All I am seeing is the FIRST Logo.
Any ideas why? :confused:

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Even worse

Im starring at the FIRST logo and being forced to listen to The Killers

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

OKay thanks to Alex i have video, but its the logo. can;t they fix it :(

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

they put the logo up when the camera video is not transmitting - if you see the logo you are getting what they are putting out.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

ITS FIXED! :D

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Its back

Knock on wood everyone....

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

HORRAY!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Logo is gone. :)

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

http://www.rit.edu/~us1stwww/chat.html - Tigerbolt Chat

if anyone is interested in chatting about the coverage, or just in general try the tigerbolt chatroom

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Has anyone else noticed that there is something wierd about the scoring?

As in when the Autonomous mode starts, and only one robot actually does anything, somehow one alliance suddenly has 15 points and the other 1 point at the end of autonomous??? :confused:

Seeing as that one robot that actually moved and scored could only have 10 balls per the rules, what's going on?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yeah, I've noticed that and the periods were 1 min long before but it looks like they fixed that now.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Each session the teams get two games. First one has 60 second periods, the second is 40 seconds.

Wetzel

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

OK I didn't realize that I guess whenever I looked at the time it was the 60 sec periods.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

what has been the highest scoring match today.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

where did they get the videos that they were showing on the WM feed I want a copy of those. and HORRAY! REAL TIME SCOREING IS UP!!!

Now if the new program could only show team #'s as well

Heres anouther idea, insted of puting the arrows up on the score program, they should put up the green lights, to tell us which side is on. bc the arrows don't help at all.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

HMM......

SHOOTING TOO HARD?

Isn't there a limit to how fast you can shoot? If Sparky is shooting at the speed limit, and all the balls are bouncing out, that would be a nice thing to know for some of the upcoming competitions. Maybe we need to turn down the muzzle velocity.

Looks like so far scoring is going to be a lot harder than I thought. What seems to me strange is how hard it is to score in the corner goals. I though robots going for the corners would be 75% or more effective, but it looks like they score less then one in four. Human players are scoring less than 1 in ten. High goal shooters are also about 1 in ten, with even the best high goal shooters getting no better than 1 in four. So it seems a good low goal scorer needs to be only about 60% efficient to beat a good high goal scorer.

Winning strategy might be to get at least 1 point in the corner goal in autonomous so you win the 10 point bonus, defend like hell, and then go for three robots on the ramp. 10+1+25 + 36 points.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

They're playing for practice, so the scores really don't reflect the game anyway. Check again tomorrow.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Whoa! The view changed!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Shocking.

Can someone who knows what's up explain those red or blue boxes?

<edit>And man, I had my hopes up for differently-colored crew shirts, what with the on-black logo this season. Ah well, I guess shirts are shirts. ;)</edit>

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

The bins on the side of the field near the start? Those they put 10 balls in for reset counting and robot loading.

Do I look pretty at the score table?

Wetzel

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

i noticed something else wrong (somewhere between matches 24-26) one of the alliance bots was the only one moving during autonomous, and scored 12 points in one of the corner goals. That would be impossible with then 10ball limit per bot correct?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

That was the same question I had earlier, except it was 15 balls in question. :)
Maybe they were having problems with the ball counters when balls were dumped into the corner goals?

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

This is how it usually starts out, in the first days of the first few regionals, scoring is usually really low, but by Saturday most teams have figured it out. and by the last regionals you will see some very high scores. I am actually fairly impressed by the amount of scoring I have seen so far, No need to panic now :) . Remember back to last year... there was a big difference between tetra capping on thursday (where very few actually did) and Saturday.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I haven't had a chance to watch any of the feed today. Anyone done anything cool with the camera?

-Kevin

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Some are at http://www.usfirst.org/4vol/resource...ips/index.html

Hard to see on the tiny web feed, but it looked to me like several robots launched in autonomous from a fair distance and scored. I assume their accuracy was due to excellent camera work.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I think they're just testing the scoring system. I remember practice day last year the scores weren't even close (153-1432 for one match) and they'd change by the second. I imagine it's a similar thing happening here.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

It's just Thursday guys. Some of the teams might not even have their entire team or actual drivers there yet. Wait till matches get rolling tomorrow before we make any judgements about the game :)

Though I will say, excellent webcast thus far. Keep it up guys, I need some entertainment tomorrow!

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

The Windows stream seems to be working well however the volume is really really low. Is there any way in windows media player to adjust it (that i dont know) or is it something with the broadcast?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

hey, is the current feed live or a repeat because the match number is in the teens is this a error? I was in classes for the past 3 hours!!!

tomorrow BAE here i come

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

The Windows Media is now working as well. But I wish they'd put the camera such that we could see the blue goal also.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Is it over (7:18) ? Both the WM and RP are timing out.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

Some teams waited until the last few practice rounds to actually show their robot because of their strategy. One team still hasn't practiced on the practice field.

Re: 2006 NASA/VCU Regional!
 

I'm at VCU as scoring personnel. I'm on the center goal.

I scribbled the numbers of teams on my hand that were good overall and left an impression. Nine Teams were impressively performing.

The autonomous theory (auton is KEY) has held up. Simple autons have done better.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

It ended at about 5:30ish

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Eh. I assumed so, but Sanddrag posted at almost 7:00, so I had high hopes. I'll just have to wait till tommorrow, unless it was recorded.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

From my front row view as a scorekeeper:

That was either 435 (Robo-Dogs) or 401 (Hokie Guard). Both have amazingly fast shooters, but have to line up first. 222 holds a good amount of balls and shoots from the top of the platform so that they can't be blocked.

Kevin - nothing cool with the camera although I have seen some teams using (or attempting to use) it.

The scoring problems:
The scoring system is fully automated with cameras but there are alse human counters as backups at each goal. Some balls were being double counted by the cameras but this has for the most part been fixed and should not cause a problem tomorrow.

Highest scoring match? We didn't officially keep track but I would have to say a match where red scored 16 balls through the center goal. I'd say 10 were from 222, but I don't remember who else was on their alliance.

I tried to answer most of the questions that went unanswered so far. Anything else?

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

For tomorrow: what is the link to the WM stream? thanks.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

My team(668) uses the camera to aim and shoot
during regular mode. We steer the robot to the goal (about 10 to fifteen feet out), and then press the "fire and forget" button. The robot is aligned to the camera, and then the balls are automatically fed into the shooter by a combination of conveyer belts and pistons. Oh, and by the way, we can pick up balls from the floor, and we have a quick dump mode to score into the low goal, but don't know if we'll use this. Depends on how efficient the high goal scoring is. We hit the circle 80% of the time in practice, but I'm scared to see so many balls bouncing straight back out of the goal. Also I don't think anyone is going to let us take free shots at the goal in competition.

Can you say "lock and load?" Can't wait to see this in action at SVR.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

The whistle sound between rounds is really annoying.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Yes its annoying, but it has to be loud enough for the drivers to hear. The Lexan for the driver's station blocks most of the sound.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I really agree.

I think it'd be cool if there was like a high-tech female voice saying something along the lines of "Red Alliance on Offense" like in the Unreal Tournament games.

I also would like to suggest that the arrows on the real-time scoring system be reversed so that instead of pointing to the teams alliance station, they point to their goals.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

LOL that would be awesome!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

I second that!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

This is Henry_222 on Brad's account which auto logged me in on his name, I have to soon so I will post with his name.

The score on the screen was 144 at the end of the match, that doesn't count the 10 or 15 (not sure) points for 2 robots on the ramp and the auto mode points. There were more than 16 balls scored in the center goal. We scored 16 by ourself according to the one volunteer clicking balls at the center goal. 122 scored a lot. I am sure it was close to what we scored, but a few of their shots were blocked by our flag :p . 510 scored 10 balls in the lower goal in auto and many in the lower goal throughout the match.

From what I can tell, the actual score wasn't 164. It was, however around 100.

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

Why stop there?
"RAMPAGE" for when the defense team is getting owned
"UNSTOPABLE" for a shooter who just keeps tossing balls in :D

Then you could even have the countdown done by the voice too!

This is a GREAT idea!

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

i suggest a strategy on blocking 222: Get on the ramp and push them around, make sure you don't do anything illegal :)

Re: VCU Real media is working
 

hmm...in theory that sounds like a good strategy but from what I hear about the robot design this year I don't think you'll have much luck pushing it around...you'd have better luck pushing around a grizzly bear...(Cliff would suffice) :D

- Charlie - Alumni Team #222