Re: Varied color light trick...
 

Yes, I heard it at West Michigan too. I bought it at first, until he said they would change every .67 seconds in the final period. Then I remembered it was April Fools Day! :D

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

It wouldn't be Mountain Dew in Atlanta! Pepsi products are all but Taboo in that city! :D

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I think if there was any hint in it at all about next year, it is this:

Lights.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

Lights Lights Lights..

Grr, so as Corey and I stood on Einstein as Dave was announcing this, we nearly had a heart attack..GRR..

I have a feeling that lights will most definitely be involved in next years game. What kinds of lights..who knows..but lights.

Secondly, it makes me wonder as Sean pointed out earlier...maybe they will change up scoring or change something during the games..who knows? As Dave said..maybe they want to make the game harder and harder.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

who know's?
remember at the beginning of this season the hint was pool noodles, and they just turned out to be for bumpers, not an actual game peice...
it could just be somethink like that again....like a diversion.

ooo sneaky.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

well the first thing to notice is that the lights the women were holding, were LED's instead of cathodes, the shield like thing dave was holding were cathodes, thes both had red and blue lights, but the alliance LED's on the robots display red and blue, perhaps this has some meaning as well.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I highly doubt the lights will be used in game pieces, because first off the game piece will be fragile especially with the CC lights and secondly they will need lots and lots of batteries.

So If you really wanna think about it, think about a nonmoveable field element or your robot.

Or perhaps this clue also has something to do with the 2000 mailboxes that were ordered to be sent to the FIRST headquarters..... ;)

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

im not a programer, but i dont think you could train a camera to look for all three colors, because red, green, and blue make white lihgt, and then the cam might freak out becasue there will be nothing but white light, un less the match is in the dark, which would be pritty cool, but maby you can program for three diffrne colors

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I'm not a programmer, but I imagine you could make it look fore red, green, and blue seperately by putting a switch on the OI to tell the RC to change what color it's looking for.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I don't know how serious they are about the changing colors, but the idea was clearly evident throughout the finals, first with the three LED panels, then with the cold cathode shield. Even if this sort of thing doesn't make it into the game next year, its worth using it as a development project during the off season (then again, thats probably exactly why they did that). Either way, it will give our programmers something to do during summer.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

Picture this-

different tasks around the field with different colored light guides. You program the robot to visit the different stations and use the guides to do the tasks. The field has screens so the robot has to explore to find the lights in auto.

Sounds a bit like Lego League but arent those kids now of FRC ages?

The visual appeal of this would be great. And the random play patterns of the robots would be challenging.


Of course we could strap colored diodes on punching clowns and have the robots stuff them in a volkswagen....

So now Kristian and Alexa-you have some homework to do- he he he

WC :cool:

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

It wouldn't really be hard to cope with this....all you do is change the filter on the camera unless the light changes spontaneously or blinks..in which case.....

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I would be prepared to bet with some one (you choose the stakes) that there will be multiple colored lights next year. I am not sure if they will be one color for each team or one for each goal or for each period or for something different but there will be more than one color.

I will also say that unless they give us a new camera we will not have the color changing every 2 or 3 seconds since it would take that long for the camera to initialize the new color. I cannot wait to see what they will come up with. I am hoping the give an opportunity to combine autonomous functions (like aiming the gun) with user control.

The camera is only capable of finding one color at a time and must re initialize between colors, this process takes a couple of seconds during which the camera cant be moving. To make multiple colors a realistic goal the colors would have to either change in a predicible pattern (ie between periods) Or remain the same color for a substantial amount of time.

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

I think that the game will be very confusing. After reading the ideas i have combined some of them to create this. The next match will have moving targets. They probably wont move very fast but after 30 seconds or so (depending on how long the game is) the targets will change. There will be 3 targets. But the catch is that each color is a certain amount of points (red=3, blue=2, green=1) or whatever. so now everyone is chasing moving targets and defending at the same time. Idk. but it sounds like a very interesting game. :D :]

Re: Varied color light trick...
 

Lights aside, I think the practical joke alone is going to have a major impact on next year...

I wouldn't be so worried about suddenly changing colors or whatever, I think that the true point of concern is in the idea that suddenly the game could change without warning. This could be an advanced warning from FIRST. I don't think there was anyone in the arena who didn't recieve a huge wake-up call when they said they were changing the rules.

I don't know about you, but I think that next year the mere possibility that there could be a major change in the game rules for the championship finals alone could make me think a little harder about the design of our teams robot.

Great job to everyone this weekend!