Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There was a lot of discussion about the problems that FIRST had with the Field/Real Time Scoring/Team Ranking System last week. See this thread for what problems folks had and what FIRST (or at least Dave Lavery & Jason Morrella*) has said about it.

I don't want this thread to get into a re-hash of last week. I really would like it to be an opportunity for us to discuss what is working and (if we have to and can do it respectfully) what is not working.

So... ...share with us what you know.

Personally, I would really like to hear from folks who worked behind the scenes last week and are doing it again this week. Tell us the straight scoop.

Also, (again for me personally) I am interested in the view of participants and especially the view from the stands by those who are non-FIRST fanatics but just folks who are coming to see the show (and perhaps support their kids).

If we can all play nice, we can keep this thread out of the Moderated Forum.

Let's hear what you've got to say.

Joe J.


*Jason Morrella <- notice 2 R's & 2 L's Jason is too nice of guy to say anything, but we ought to TRY to spell his name right shouldn't we?

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Because it was only practice day I just found the scores of 500-600 hilarious. The balls would get backed up in the corral and then they would continuously score for the alliance. Other than this there weren’t any major problems from what I saw at GLR. Plus there is quite a complex filed setup so I can see it taking a while to get all of the bugs worked out. And yes I agree with Joe lets please not let this thread become moderated.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Let's face it. We're experiencing the effects of First's success. More regionals, a very lush KOP, lots of new teams and more complex playing field. Everyone involved in the administration is probably feeling the effects of time compression. Going into the future with this kind of growth is going to require more long range planning. This means that even though the 2006 completion is just starting the 2007 initial planning should be about wrapped up. To get ahead and more in control is going to be painful. The price of success.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was involved at UTC with the field setup and testing yesterday, and I was hovering around the scoring table all day today. The counting system seems to be working much better than at BAE last week (considering we have the same field), and we've only had one miscalibration problem with a corner goal (it was continuously counting upwards). The real-time score display was up and running the whole time.

There were some matches where the green lights were randomly on or off when they weren't supposed to be (e.g. both lights it during the 2nd period) but the problem disappeared with the next match. We'll just have to keep an eye out for that and sound the foghorn if it happens in competition.

As for the rankings, I have no clue how well they work, since we haven't been processing the data from the practice matches.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The bad thing about having the next season wrapped up by the end of this season is they have to come up with the game, define the rules, and then design the field and what not. Plus there is a greater chance of info leaking about the game. It’s not the complexity of the game, its the complexity of the scoring system. That’s the only detail that needed to be worked out better. I personally think they are doing a great job by stepping into the realm of an automated game. It can make scoring discrepancies obsolete and provide for more complex games in the future. But these are just all my thoughts. Good luck at regionals this weekend everyone.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yep, I definitely saw scores of 520 during one practice match. The scoring system appears to be working pretty flawlessly. The field in general is pretty nice. Some robots really killed the balls, and others didnt even leave a mark on them. As for the upper goals, we didnt have a problem with them falling out, but they would get jammed and then not go down at all...until someone reached up and banged on it some. I dunno how thats gonna work out tomorrow, but i'm sure its something that will be addressed at the drivers meeting. If not, I intend on bringing that question up.

EDIT: There were also other scoring errors. In one match, only one team dumped balls, but the end of autonmous score was 21 and they only dumped 10....the system counted an extra ball through the corner goal.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

One team at the UTC regional scored over 2100 points in autonomous alone. I was highly impressed.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Is that with 10 point bonus for auto mode win? :D

At buckeye, there dident seem to be too many issues field wise, but i didnet get alot of time to watch many pratice matches. Tommrow will be the true show if fields are better.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Not many problems at Arizona; a few matches with some miscounts, but the only real problem came when the entire blue alliance during our practice match didn't initialize, so we got to sit there for 3 minutes. We got an extra match at the end to make up for it though.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

If balls get jammed in the goal, there is supposed to be a field reset/ scorekeeper behind the goal with a PVC "prod" to unwedge the balls so they will fall down the chute.

As long as that one extra ball in autonomous is not enough to decide why wins autonomous, the score is changed at the end of the match.

Also: A problem we found at VCU: If there are a lot of balls in the corral and a robot dumps more balls in, there was a possibility that new balls would bouce off of the original balls and back up onto the light causing them to be scored twice. Our solution for this was to put another plastic bin beside each corral and have someone there to pull balls out of the corral and into that bin. The human players could still pull from that bin, but it kept so many balls from being in the corral.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Word from Kevin K. at Buckeye is that they are on a 30 minute delay so far on Qualifying Match 4. Blue side of the field is being completely switched out with equipment.

Doesn't sound fun.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There seems to be a lot of variability among fields. The one used at PNW wasn't that bad (except for one match of ours -- want to see video?) Last year at Portland there was a L-O-O-O-N-G delay one day (something like an hour or two), but this year they moved right along. I don't think they were more than a half-hour late finishing, most of which probably came from the time spent cleaning up Poof balls from the floor.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

UTC had some problems to today that need up with 1 rematch and a restart. from what i hear the computer that was running the blue alliance keep crashing and locking up.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yes, we had a few random technical problems at UTC today.

At one point the blue side of the field lost power when someone tripped over a cable at the scoring table, so there was a slight delay while the counting computer was rebooted. When it was ready once again, the match was started but the blue IFI equipment hadn't synced up and the blue robots didn't go into autonomous mode properly. We quickly caught on to that and restarted the match.

The problems with the team rankings display in the pits were because of a damaged cable; once fixed, they were correct. Discrepancies between the displayed number of QPs for certain teams and how many QPs they themselves thought they had were not because of faulty software; the data was incorrectly entered into the system and has since been fixed.

Also, the right-side blue corner goal started counting up randomly a few times, either because of debris on the illuminated sheet or because the screen was bent out of shape. Note, however, that all the official end-of-match goal counts are coming from people at each goal with clickers. The automatic system has been used for displaying the real-time scores only.

Since the same problems weren't happening more than once or twice each, and since most of them dealt with the synchronization of the software and hardware of three different companies (National Instruments, IFI and Hatch), I'm willing at this point to chalk the field problems up to circumstance and congratulate those three companies on a job well done.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Tell me, if I hadn't noticed that we were still disabled during auto mode, would that match have went on, or was there some display showing we weren't enabled?

I know of at least one match we were in that was screwed up. When the scores first appeared, and were announced.. I think they were 30-11. About a second before they disappeared from the screen, they were 30-17. Seeing as how a number of different people from our team saw us score 4 balls in the middle goal, I'm hoping the second one was the actual score. There was also a DQ that match that wasn't announced
*JUst checked the match results, it went in as 30-17, which is fine by me.


Only one other problem.. we had the metal cover from the alliance lights fall onto our controls when a robot hit the wall. That was a bit shocking.