pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Looks nice, very nice.

Two questions, one driven by the Ghost of Field Controllers Past, and one more by my own curiosity:

1) Has the new controller been run through the wringer yet?
2) That has to be the awesomest control panel in quite a while for the field (2004 coming in behind). Is there any significance to the buttons lighting up?

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Will the laptop on the left provide real time scoring? Once a tube is scored. Its pretty much scored, sans a spoiler.

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Looks pretty sweet.:cool:

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Right now the real time scoring will be done by 2 people via Palm Pilot or other device watching 4 rows each of the Rack. The laptop will be used for official entry of scores (ie: not relying on real time) and is a work in progress. As of right now, the red or blue teams can score all of the rings which is an impossibility with the number of blue/red rings on the field.

The math works as far as scoring goes, but needs to be tweaked to not allow a team to score more than the number of rings on the field and only allow the max number color of rings.

The guy running the system explained this to myself and a few others and actually racked up the whole Rack to score all the rings for blue and I think it was an (impossible) but impressive score of over 800.

Pretty amazing how algorithmic and pattern driven math works.

The rings on the laptop are fully controllable by clicking in the ring.
It basically scrolls between NONE, RED, BLUE, BLACK, NONE and repeats. etc etc.
It's very simple to use.

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

That's wicked sweet (and I'm not even from New England).

So who was the new vendor for the field controls again? I wonder if they're hiring control engineers? :rolleyes:

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

colorful :D

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

I dunno. Looks too simple to me. I don't think people are gonna know what to do when they can't set their watches to the field breaking down.

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

I'm not sure what people are going to do this year, i mean, they don't have the scoring system to piss and moan about evidently... So perhaps CD will be a bit closer to people having the "warm and fuzzies"?

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Yeah, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving...I will remain skeptical until week 1 is successfully run without any major or easily testable scoring or control issues.

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Agreed - the previous FIRST scoring company had a pretty neat bouncing logo. (Which tended to make the rankings display freeze as it bounced around the screen). Doesn't mean that the system was any good, and it seems like they spent more time on that than anything else.

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Ignorance is bliss...

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

I also got a chance to get a close look at the provisional field control/scoring system last weekend (including the architeture behind the pretty screens, and the basic technology that is being used). While admittedly still a work-in-progress, it appears to be a good solid system that will address our needs. One of the biggest differences is the level of professional maturity and experience in the new software team verses the prior provider. These guys seem to actually know what they are doing, and have some real backgrounds in writing complex systems and real-time software. That gives me a much higher level of confidence that we will have a reasonable, robutst, and fully tested field control and scoring system ready for the regional competitions. Only time will tell for sure, but it seems that the current software providers are hatching up a pretty good solution to the problem.

-dave

Re: pic: FIRST's New field control system
 

Who's doing the new one?