Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

We all used our going to other team energy at the Regionals.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

Seconded. Having seen what I've seen, a good set of team numbers (IMHO) is:

-4" tall, 3/4" stroke, blah blah blah
-All in one line, horizontally or vertically
-In one color or pattern set against a different, non-transparent color.

A decent example is that of 968. Compare their robot with 254's in this picture. While the Poofs' numbers were legal and fine, that red border to RAWC's numbers really did a lot of good to help make them stand out against the clear hopper. Same thing goes for 348's robot.

It's not a big change, but it would be a welcome one.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

Where on the robot would also be a good specification for team numbers. As a scout I know that even if it is easy to see a robot's numbers in the pits or when close to it, with the wall and people in front of you, it is nearly impossible to tell who's who on the red alliance (process of elimination was what we ended up using most).

Also, it was very difficult and almost impossible to scout when teams stood up to cheer for an entire match. i can understand when a team is announced, but during the match could teams please sit down?

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

What was particularly annoying was teams who wrote their team numbers on their bumpers and nowhere else. Also, I saw a lot of teams have large numbers and everything, but the colors were so close to the color of the background that you could not read it.

It's pretty bad when one has to borrow his or her teacher's binoculars match after match.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I know FIRST likes being at the cutting edge of technology and all but it's really starting to interrupt the flow of the events when it breaks down. Sometimes you can be too cute and now they want to try this complicated light stunt. I have a bad feeling about this....

I also have to say I was genuinely disappointed in the Woodie Flowers display in the Hall of Fame. I was hoping for more than that and truly hope more will be done with it next year.

And I know FIRST can't really do anything about it but the week 2 regional pileup hurt alot of regionals and something has to be done to keep them from being drained.

Also for those of you who keep misidentifying our lead mentor Ron as me a big slap on the hand!
This is Ron


This is me


Big difference!
I'm like ten years younger and far more handsome!
GET IT RIGHT ALREADY! :p

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I only have two negative things I can say about this year is about seating for our scouts. It's annoying when one goes to the seating area early with all of our scouts only to find out that (literally) six rows of seats are being saved by one person and no one else. If that was one of my major beefs, than FIRST is doing pretty well. My other major beef was that the area for booking practice matches was chaos, a mentor on our team (hes 6'2) had to reach our over a crowd of people scrambling to write their team number down in order to reserve a much needed practice spot.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I'll keep that in mind when I go to watch/volunteer at FLR next year if you guys will be going.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

...and you don't have a soccer ball painted on your head!


Anyway, back to the topic:

1. The camera code wasn't as bulletproof as some teams needed. While it worked perfectly for us during build and in the pits, it almost never worked on the field.

2. We spent a long time trying to figure out how to make the Gear Tooth Sensor work. Never did use it in competition, but carried the 6 ounce gear the whole time.

3. I agree with deficite, team numbers need to be better visible and more uniform.

Already posted the things they did well this year.

Don

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I did not make that mistake :)

We have to learn to do better with scouting and try to get the rest of the team more involved. We had little spirit on our team, but we are starting to improve on that.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

What do you guys think about making a flyer with the basic rules of the game on it that spectators could get at the door. I'm not talking about a full manual with all the little picky rules but just the basics.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I had my whole team here plus guest "recruit members" visiting the event. Over half of our group was new students and mentors. We were not competiting. We were the ones with the yellow hard hats. We were there only Friday. We had a great day for new student recruitment.

Ed

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

During the finals, the balloons that were apparently part of the chairman's award celebrations made it impossible to actually watch the whole field from the second level. This REALLY pissed me off. From one position, I could not view the red centre target. From the other position I could access, I could not see robots aiming at the red centre target. So either I couldn't see the shooting robots, or I couldn't see if the balls go in. Everyone else on my team had this problem as well, but with different areas of the gamefield obscured.

-More matches would have been nice, although I understand this is not possible with only 4 fields running at once.
-Assigned seating during the einstein matches would have been nice. We were lucky enough to get a contiguous block of seats, but many other teams were not as lucky.
-Access to the upper levels (even if only for the team media folks) would have been REALLY nice. It's annoying to have to try and take pictures over top of people standing in front of you, and it's bothersome to stand in front of people in order to take good photos. If only media people were allowed on the second level to take photos, that would eliminate camera-wielding folks getting in the way of spectators, and would eliminate spectators getting in the way of camera people
-Plugs near the practice field would have been nice. Laptops that have serial ports are getting older and older on average, and their battery lives are decreasing as well.
-More vigorous enforcement of practice field times. It would be very nice if the practice field was wireless and it simply disabled robots once their 10 minutes were up. No more "but just one more reload and test please!".
-I don't know if it would be possible, but if einstein was located in the centre of the dome without the black backdrop, it would be possible to have approximately twice as many people watching it at once.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

My biggest gripe this year is the fiasco with the new controller. I don't know why it wasn't found earlier. Inadequate testing? But to spend a year laying the software groundwork to really control a robot and then having all that go into the dumper because the controller didn't work properly is very annoying.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I think that there were many various problems that FIRST could have fixed and made easier. EX. They only needed a limit switch for the Center Goal Counters and they wouldnt have glitched as much as the one FIRST used did.. Scoring in general was glitched, like in the lower goals, but I wont go into detail because they did their best.

I think the copmetition was decent. I think a little more work and/or effert would have made the game awesome.

Hope they fix it for next year.


-Pavan

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

I'll second that, Tim!

The 8722 in the 2006 controller has a very long errata sheet, so long, in fact, that it is clear that all of the errata have not yet been found. There are a number of teams that have software that simply does not work reliably on the 2006 controller and I think that it would behoove IFI to either back up to the 8520 chip that was supplied for the 2005 competition year, or use these teams to test a new chip revision for the 2007 controller during the off season until it gets a clean bill of health. We have gremlins on the 8722 based controller that were not fixed by patches, although the 8.2 battery voltage "indicator of death" did evaporate.

This was a major headache for us. We really don't want to be using the 8722 next year, unless the errata, including those not found yet, evaporate. We would much rather be writing software that chases the green light, then the red light, then the blue light...

We would happily pay IFI $120 to "down grade" our 2006 controller to the same chip used in the 2005 controller as the cost of the solding equipment required to change out the nine dollar part exceeds $120. Past using the 2006 controller for comparison purposes for a "fixed" 2007 controller, we won't be using it in the future because of its gremlins.

So, if anyone from IFI is reading this thread, could you please give serious consideration to dropping back to the 8520 PIC chip in 2007? Team 1280 would be happy to beta test the 8722 until its gremlins are cleaned out, but actually attempting to use it on a competition robot in 2007 is not a very good option for us.

Eugene