Re: Disappointment (long)
 

For those who have complaints about either this year's rules or head refs who are reluctant to make robot-robot contact calls, I refer you to this post. Refs should be very hesitant to call penalties in robot contact situations unless they are almost completely certain the contact is intentional and only then when it falls under the guidelines listed in G22.

Re: Disappointment (long)
 

I just finished my first FIRST event as an engineering mentor. We ( 1311 ) just lost to you guys ( 1683 ), but we had a blast, it was great fun. You guys have a lot to be proud of. Our machine was not fast, nor nimble, nor really designed for combat, but we had absolutely no complaints from anyone on my team about the contact. We designed for stable long distance autonomous shooting. We had a software problem and blew our first three matchs. At lunch we were last in standings. At the end it we were halfway up the chart. If it hadn't been for the bug, it would have been 8-2-0 or 9-1-0 but we did 5-5-0 and thats okay. The only hardware failure was 3 loosened set screws. Keep your machine together, scuttlebut is we are going to do a scrimmage in the near future in this area, and we will do it again. We will be in Atl as observers in a few weeks.

Ed

Re: Don't be dissapointed...that's not the point.
 

This was my first year as a mentor/parent, so from the perspective of a newbie:

When we got the 'game plan' in Jan, we had to figure out what our small team could/couldn't do - we knew we couldn't get the camera and a shooting device working in 6 weeks, but we could figure out a way to pick up balls..we decided to make ours short so we wouldn't be tipped over.

I thought all the teams built something that they should be proud of - some teams had to build a defensive robot as that's the skill set they have.

I walked out of the Family Arena every day just pumped with energy - how could you not with teams like the Kinigits? (for those who weren't there, think Monty Python's Holy Grail, complete with fuzzy bunny strapped to the top of the robot, and the cast from the movie, complete with a dedicated coconut clapper) Or the rookie team next to us - 1776, wearing the George Washington wigs (don't those itch?) Anyway, we had an awesome time, our kids stuck to the game plan, the robot worked exactly as planned.

Can't wait for next year. I see how you can get addicted to FIRST. :)

DeAnnaC

Re: Some Disapointments at St. Louis (long)
 

Hang in there! Things can be tough but thats what being in FIRST is all about! We (team 135) were undefeated until the last few final rounds which landed us at 3rd place at Purdue. But I am so happy that our team did so well and I havenever been happier with our outcome. WInning awards is cool and we were unhappy to leave two events with no awards at all, but earning the respect of other teams and working together to achieve a greater goal is so much better!

Re: Disappointment (long)
 

While I dislike targetting FIRST programmers, who in the world put a "third option" in the FIRST field programming? When the computer uses a random process with two options (red or blue) for determining which side goes on offense or defense first, there should not be a third option (no lights). I am going to guess that there is a >= or <= somewhere in that random string. I was seeing that occur many times at SVR and truthfully, as a viewer, it was kind of annoying, especially if one of those occurred in the final matches. What is probably occurring is that the field lights when it hits that "=" rather than a simple "<" or ">", it tries to activate both lights but runs into an error and activates none.