Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I get to the webcast without any problems with that link. Though it's only the FIRST logo right now since it's the lunch break.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

i get the error message too :-/

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Gah! Now it shows the video for 2-3 seconds and goes to "Waiting..."

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Doesn't even start the video for me in IE or Firefox.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I am on IE at my school with a shared T1 hittin' a blank for any video content. I get the same error message as Elgin :(

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

i cant get to the live feed either :confused:



Edit: as of 3:24pm the webcast is functional. :yikes: :)

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Argggg, the webcast comes back up right after my team's match and goes down right before :(

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

i know mike it sucked! :confused: o btw thanks for giving me the flu lol

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I thought today was good, most of you prolly didnt see me, I was on the right side when you went in, on the bottom at the front of the bleachers, my hair was sppiked, and I was really shy, usually, I didnt meet anyone. But that Hyundai was eh, I mean, you can't make a lot of power out of it! As for the matches, I thought Team 20's robot was insane, scoring almost every time it could, team 126's was pretty awesome as well. My personal favourite one was the one that sounded like a staple gun though.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

For most of our matches in auto it was best for us to score our 10 balls in the corners than block anyone. However one match we used our auto to block team 20 hopefully we will get to use it more tomorrow. :D

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

It was discovered at one point that a couple of cables that run under the bleachers, between the field and the pits, had been damaged. One of those was a cat5, which is why the team ranking data was not updating, and the other was something relating to the webcast, which may explain some of the webcast problems.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Does anyone know if the stats for todays game is posted online anywhere?

I wasn't able to view the webcast today either

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Rankings

http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Eve.../rankings.html

Match Results

http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/CT/matches.html

Awards

http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/CT/awards.html

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Want to know another problem the people that run the Convention Center are nuts. They want to charge for everything and give you nothing. On our practice field, one of the workers on the Convention Center said that we had to unplug the green light on top of the center goal because it was not in our contract to use the electricity. :ahh:

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Oh yah, getting haggled by teammates because I wasn't trying to get girls numbers or anything all day was fun too...even though there were quite a few pretty girls there, haha.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Congrats to 195 and 20 for their awards this year. Well deserved :)

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thank you.
Our programmers worked hard on the program and I think they deserve the recognition for their work.

Congrats Team 20. :cool:

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Yeah, Southington must have gotten back before me, as I have to go to New Britain then to southington, since I live in Southington.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I'm liking the new venue, there is a lot more space. Food seems to be better, although I almost paniced when they were having problems with the soda machines. ;)


My only complaint so far, is that the camera seems to like the overhead lights somewhat, and I only realized now thats why our autonomous works fine on the practice field (No lights in the background) vs the real field. Now that I realize this, it's not hard to fix... Maybe warn the teams about this next year?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

This is typical of union run venues, which it sounds like the Convention Center is. Some venues and unions are worse than others. I don't know what arrangements FIRST has set up with this venue. If you speak to someone from FIRST at the comp they should be able clear it up.

Doing trade shows for the company I work for I've run into this. Even if there's electric available YOU can't plug YOUR stuff into it YOURSELF. If you need something plugged in you must tell the contractor in charge of your booth and then they will tell whoever is in charge of plugging things in and then someone will come by in an hour or so (if you're lucky) and plug that cord in for you. The Convention Center isn't that bad but there are places that are.

The same goes for compressed air and waste drains that are also available at some venues.

(The thing that really makes the venues happy is when you have contractors secure everything to the floor with lead shields and lag bolts. Better yet, you really make thier day when you use`RedHeads instead! :D The company has been "fined" several times for this, $90 per use of shield/lag and $150 per use of RedHead. With some of our equipment we have no choice but to secure it for safety reasons. It's cheaper to pay the "fine" which is really the "bill" for repairing the floor than having a piece of equipment fall over on someone.)

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I'm hoping to get a few minutes to get into the pits and to actually see some matches tomorrow - if you're from CD and you see me please say Hi so I get to meet you! Hope you all had a chance to watch our AWESOME Vex event - we had a blast on the other side today! :D

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I think I know why I didn't meet people, because it is EXTREMELY difficult to talk to people I do not know. So, if anyone would like to say hi to me or something, it would be cool, as it's a little easier for me to talk to someone if they start the conversation.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Did anyone notice how many Woodie Flowers Award Regional and Championship winners, and UFHs there are at UTC NER this week? We never got a chance to grab a picture... :(

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Im enjoying the convention center very much this year, so much nicer than having it at the Meadows. I got to see some good matches this year (when I get to leave the pit...). Everyone get some rest so we can have a good morning tommorow!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Come over to 1784's pit tommarow. You wont have any problenms

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

And Volunteers of the Year!
Congrats to Kathie and to UTC NER for picking her for this award!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

The webcast keeps cutting in and out. Is this hapenning to anyone else or is this just me?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Same exact thing happening to me too.

Hopefully this ends by the time the matches start.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I guess the webcast can't handle Dean Kamen :ahh:

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Is it just me, or did the webcast just go down?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Yeah, it has been on and off all day, just so happens the time we really want it to be up...it goes down.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Any chance that FIRST will post the elimination alliances on the regional info site?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

You really only see it when they post the results of the matches. They never post the actual alliances.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Will they post the match list of the quarter finals after the alliance pickings?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

That i'm not sure about, sometimes they do, sometimes they dont. Its all dependent upon the regional, and if they are putting things up in a timely fashion.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

The match results have been put up a couple of minutes after the match, and the standings have been updated...so hopefully they get the list up :p.

[edit] The feed is back up [/edit]

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

The feed is back down again.....any chance that it'll be back up before the elim's start at 13:00?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Congrats to 177, 176, and 1124 on a fantastic win today.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Like Corey said, congrats to 177, 176, and 1124........amazingly played elemination rounds!!!!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thanks. Not exactly 14-0, but not bad either :D. What an amazing day, congrats and thanks to everyone who helped made this possible and competed with us, we had a lot of fun.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

to second Alex, i want to thank everyone who helped us get so far. thanks to 176 and 1124 who did an awesome job!

Go UTC teams!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I'd like to second that and congratulate team 177, team 176 (our sister team, go Hamilton SundStrand), and team 1124 on their win.

Also team 236 on Chairmans award and team 178 on Engineering Inspiration :) :) :)

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Good job teams 176, 177, and 1024, hope to see you at Nationals.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Congrats to teams 176, 177, and 1124, awesome matches today!

What was everyones favourite match? I really like that time Team 20 was on its side and scored as the third bot on the ramp for Blue, and the match where all six got onto the ramps.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I liked the convention center a lot.. and I know we had people walking in off the streets to watch (Had someone ask me to explain the game to them).

Noticed the lights above the field were off today, was that to help with the camera? If so, thanks.. it helped.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I have just found an instance where the live scoring / crew counters / score keepers had an incorrect score at UTC. In this round, there was an obvious 10 Pt's scored in the lower goal, and the live scoring agreed. The alliance that scored these 10 Pt's received the 10 point bonus, giving them 20 points. At the end of the match in discussion, there were 2 robots from this alliance clearly on the ramp. There were NO penalties, yet the alliance received a score of 26 points which is physically impossible (with what was scored). Also, balls where scored in the one point goals throughout the match with at least one shot in the center goal, yet in the end the alliance received a score of 26 instead of what they actually got.

I looked it over again and it seems as if the other alliance was given the score that rightfully belonged to the alliance in question...

Did anyone get video of the QF's at UTC?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Considering we got knocked out on that match, I didn't really care for it ;)

Great job 177, 176, and 1124! You were an amazing alliance and you worked extremely well together - congratulations on a fantastic win. Thanks to 126 and 20 for picking us - we were thrilled to be with you and look forward to working with you in future competitions.

Thanks to everyone who made the regional possible - I know my team had a blast and I'm pretty sure most other teams did too.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Yeah, I had to feel for your alliance, you guys got 'pwnt' there, but it was an exellent peice of, I guess you could call it 'strategy' by blue.

That was my first regional, and I must say, I had a load of fun!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

After seeing this regional, I think that the higher-ups at FIRST over estimated how much banging around the bumpers would compensate for when making and enforcing the rules. After that last match we spent about half an hour banging on our robot trying to return it to something close to its original shape, and we're a team with 15 years of FIRST experience and a very solid chassis. There are rookie teams that given that 2 on 1 type of abuse would have been left as a pile of bolts on the field, and that really isn't what the game is about.

On a side note I don't think playing "Na-Na-Nahh-Na, Na-Na-Nahh-Na, Hey, Hey, Hey...Goodbye" with a large portion of the audience singing along and waving their hands after a team is eliminated from the competition is really part of what FIRST is all about either, and that happened multiple times today.

-Brendan

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

While "Na-Na-Nahh-Na, Na-Na-Nahh-Na, Hey, Hey, Hey...Goodbye" was not played when we lost in the final match, I definately felt for teams who had just been elimated when it was played. It is not a "gracious" choice of songs at that particular moment. I'm not sure who chooses the music, but this should definately not happen.

On a more postitive note, we had a great time in our first visit to UTC. Very nice venue and very good teams.

Congrats to 177, 176, & 1124, and especially the Ticks for Chairmans!!!

Thanks to 181 for picking us!!!

We hope to see many of you in Atlanta.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thanks a lot Scott. I have to say that enjoyed UTC as well. I think one of the funnier parts was the mascot dance.

Kudos to the winning allience of Ace's High, Bobcats, and the Uberbots. You guys had some pretty amazing chemistry working.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

The 230 alliance was with the Ticks I belive, that was an awesome dance!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Funny, because I just heard a very, very similar story about a match.. Nothing can be done about it now, so I'm not about to worry about it

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I have noticed the same thing with the scoring in the instance stated above...I have also heard something about a scoring mix up. In the second qualifying match of the Alliance #3 vs Alliance #6 round the scores were switched...giving alliance 6 a win instead of the second loss which they recieved. I do not know whether this is tru or not. I would really like a ref who might know anything about this to please post because the scoring needs to be fixed. they have done a very poor job of the scoring (from what I have seen at UTC) and I want to make sure that it is fixed for the rest of the regionals so that this doesnt happen to anyone else...please if anyone has anything on this say something!!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I was talking about QF match 4-2.

181, 358, and 558 vs 195, 236, and 230

181's alliance was given the 35 and 195's alliance was given the 26.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

UTC Scorekeeper here, the scores that were entered were verified by the refs and myself. In fact, during the finals, the real timer scorers and the automatic sensors were dead on a majority of the time. There wasn't a finals match that people were given the wrong points and having the wrong alliance lose.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

That confuses me then, because in QF 4.2, it was not possible to get a 26 with what our alliance had done. Win autonomous with 10 balls entered in the corner goal, and two robots on the ramp. That would give our alliance a minimum of 30 points, and more points where scored during the match in the corner and center goal. I don't know exactly what happened, but something did.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

During the finals, it seemed to me that there were a large number of scores that made no sense. In general, the teams who won were the teams who should have won, but the scores seemed very off from what they should have been. I think that the live scoring needs to be fixed, because as a driver, I know that I use it to try and tell who is winning to plan what I should do.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I agree...I know there is nothing that anyone can do about it now but I would like to see the confusion cleared up so that people arent looking at the scores saying "how is that possible"

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

In QF match 4-2 there was a penalty that was not recorded on the screen when the score was shown

The score was:
181's 35 and 195's 36 with a 10 point penalty making it 26
The penalty was on 236 for "excessive ramming in user control mode"

in the match before
236 got an almost identical pentaly they got 5 point penalty for ramming in auto mode.

The first penalty showed on the score board, but the second one didn't. 195 alliance would have won both matches had there been no penalties. Guess we need to be a little more gentle


btw: 195 presentation of UTC regional http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdebner...7594080430030/

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I thought that it the scoring was done quite well in the finals. I saw the volunteers manually counting to verify during all rounds and when we questioned the score on the first match against the 126-20-571 we were given a very clear explanation that satified our question.

On another note how come no one has pointed out his yet here?
The UTC Regional was won by an ALL UTC Team Alliance.

177 The Bobcats - UTC Power - Alliance Captain
176 Aces High - Hamilton Sunstrand - 1st pick
1124 The Uberbots - UTC Fire and Security - 2nd pick

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I find it interesting that during all the qualification rounds, 236 played the same way as they did in the elimination rounds but in the elimination rounds they got called for it. For example, their auto mode that was used against us in the qualification matches; they were not penalized. If a team is not called on something during the entire event, how are they supposed to know that a penalty would be a result of it come time for eliminations?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I like all the pictures Josh, but did you take enough?

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Definitely want to post that the venue was excellent, there was a lot of space in the pits, and even though the stands were a little on the small side, they definitely were filled the whole time. Even though they do need another starbucks...definitely need my coffee at 8am to function correctly

Thanks as well to 176 and 1124 for being great alliance partners. go UTC

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Congratulations to teams 177, 176, and 1124. You guys were great and show what’s really possible to accomplish in only 6 weeks. You demonstrated a perfect mix of offense and defense doing both very well and adapting to changing circumstances like an alliance really should. When you were on offense you scored your points against the best we could throw against you and on defense you kept us from scoring our points.

I know 177 will play again at Philly and I’m hopeful we’ll see you guys in Atlanta (sadly we were shutout of Philly this year), and we get to see 176 and the dancing deck of cards again in two weeks at the Long Island Regional where we saw them last year. I hope 1124 is able to go to the Championships this year, or that we see you at one of the many off-season events.

My thanks to Teams 181 and 558. You guys made up a terrific medal quality alliance. My hats off to all three drive teams, you really made things happen out there on the field. Good luck in Philly 181 and I wish both you and 558 were going to Atlanta this year.

The UTC New England Regional committee did a lot of work and it showed in the quality of this event. It was a great experience. Lovely venue. Lots of space, everything in one place, 10x10 pits with wide aisles (to my eyes, we usually play under more cramped conditions), lots of practice space, plenty of tables for eating, compiling scouting reports, programming as well as lots and lots of spare space for team meetings and all the other events such as FVC, FLL, the robot art show. The MC, Blair, was awesome we’ve experienced him at several other events we’ve attended in the past.

There were many things I just did not have the time to take full advantage of, such as the Vex tournament and the FLL demonstration, but I saw a little bit and sat with some of the Vex teams strategizing during lunch and could experience the spill over excitement.

People working the concession stand were wonderful. They were very nice and always helpful. In fact all the people we met at the regional were extremely nice to us. Connecticut is a wonderful place. I was probably the grumpiest person there, due to diet constraints I subsisted on granola bars or lettuce salad for breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner. Not enough coffee in my system either. I got a little snappish when people stood between the camera and the practice field target light.

Mike Betts of 177 asked me as we were leaving "Did you have fun?"
I have to respond with a resounding YES!!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I still dont know...they had not announced a penalty at all though as they did in qualifying match 4-1...im still a little confused...and the point about the penalty getting called during qualifications is definately tru...we had discussed the issue at our stradegy session before the eliminations...there was no worry about such ramming calls because they werent called in qualifications. if they had been called during qualifications then we wouldnt have used it in our stradegy. from what i get out of the whole situation with scoring and penalties is that it was disorganized. if you arent going to call a penalty, dont call it. if ur gonna call a penalty, call it all the time. the scoring wasnt working properly all weekend...to fix this there should have been people specifically watching the goals...and only watching the goals...3 people per side...they would then add everything together per side...then bring it to the refs and add in any necessary deductions for penalties. from what i saw as human player...the ref would count...but the ref is also watching the game for penalties. im sry if anything offends anyone i just need to vent a little bit because speculations and confusion should be cleared up

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I can clear up some of the speculations and confusion right now, speaking as a volunteer who was involved in the goings-on at the scoring table.

True, the counting system from National Instruments was not working properly all the time. That's why the data it generated was used only for the real-time display. There were three people per side (from the field-reset crew, not the refs) watching the goals and armed with mechanical clicker-counters. They reported to the referees at the end of the match, and the head referee wrote down the scores, added information about penalties and DQs, and handed the sheet to the scorekeeper, who then entered the data into the system.

UTC regional
 

Congrat's to all of the teams that competed in this regional particularly team's 176 177 1124. The match between you and gale forces team was the best one of the tournament. WHAT A MATCH!!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

wel wthere or not there were problems with scoring the match between 176 177 1124 and 126 20 571 was by far the best match in the regional congrats to 176 177 1124

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I was a little curious about one of the final scores that my team recieved in the final seeding round on Friday -- my team alone got 8 balls in the lower goal in autonomous and then won autonomous, and later in the offensive period deposited an additional 9 balls into the lower goal (dont remember what the rest of my alliance did). My bot got to the top of the ramp (only one), and we incurred an offsides 5-point penalty. Final score for our team was 9. Seems to me we shoulda had 8+10+9 = 27 at the minimum (I watched a video replay to confirm this)

but eh, its ok we had fun anyway, almost as fun as if someone picked us (team 1493) for the elimination match (we were reserves)

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thanks...i hope it will be better with less confusion about scoring in future regionals and at championships

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thanks! They were amazing matches. In my mind both alliances deserved to win. Hope all the teams do just as well at Atlanta!

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Thats entirely true, I dont know how the judges could have called a 10 point penalty, we didn't back up and ram anyone, we were pushing people around, which is entirely legal.

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

Yes, it too bad that the Ticks got called on penalties in the finals for play that we felt was consistent with the way we played matches in the qualifying rounds. What we all have to remember is that these penalty calls are up to the discretion of the referees and we all have to respect their calls. Both matches were tough and both aliances played well. I hope our aliance partners understand and don't feel like we let them down. Sometimes the calls just don't go your way!

Nice job to both aliances in those two exciting QF matches!

Matt

Re: 2006 UTC New England Regional!
 

I was one of the score keepers at the goals.. it seems odd about that score being so far off, however, I did see a few teams scoreing when their light was inactive, and they clearly didn't know because they emptied their whole hopper into the goal ( i believe two teams did this, I'm not sure exactly which).. The problem I had with counting is that sometimes teams would come in with like 12 or 13 balls and the other alliance would just start grabbing balls and throwing right away, so if like 7 or 8 balls were dummped within 2 seconds of eachother we had to use our best judgement..

I can speak specifically about your team and say confidently that I counted every one of your balls when your machine was at my goal.. Your machine only spit out 2-3-4 at a time, so if somebody did screw up I'm sorry to hear that

During auto mode it wasn't so much the case because after working with the robots all day thursday and friday we pretty much knew that team XXX uses 5 balls, team XXXX uses 7, etc.. so we knew what to expect from most of the teams.

Another issue I saw is that some of the rookies and 2nd year teams (I was really impressed with the rookies this year) were throwing balls in their goals when their light was inactive, so at nationals or future compeitions make sure your drive team understands when to try and score.. Also I think 237 or 126 was throwing balls at their back bot to suck up, and I found it kind of humorous that in one match they probably threw 4 or 5 balls into my goal unintentionally.

We did the best job we could out there, and unfortunatly we have human limits.. The refs don't catch every penalty, inspectors don't catch every issue, and this year the score keepers won't catch every single ball.. It sucks, but I'm affilated with team 1071 and they lost two matches by 1pt so I understand the point of view from the teams and hopefully if anything the teams understand and respect that there will be human error for this year's game.