Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I just got home from watching the UTC elimination rounds today from Hartford. Being that I drove in the elim's at FLR, I think that the FLR elimination rounds were run much better. At UTC the time in between matches got to a point where it just seeemed like stalling. At FLR, the head referee actually had a stopwatch going for everything in the elimination rounds that needed to be timed such as these cool-down periods. FLR is a very by the book regional and though maybe they should lengthen the time between matches, they are doing EXACTLY what FIRST says to do.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

The head referee at UTC also used a stop-watch to handle all of the time issues (timeouts and cool-down periods).

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Even though the head referee may have had a stopwatch the entire time, are you sure that he was following the time contraint rules extremely meticulously? At FLR, we almost had to go out in the finals with only 2 robots on our alliance because of one robot barely making the time constraint.

I do think, however, that while the competition must keep moving, FIRST should sometimes be a little more leniant to the time constraint issues, especially in the finals.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I am glad the referee's at UTC followed the rule book and gave the robots a cool down period. Your motors can run powerfully for only so long before their performance degrades.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

The time between final matches are a bit hectic, always have a fresh battery or two standing by, if needed ask to borrow one from another team, you should have no problem getting one. Also i know team 836 a few years ago, back when we were using the dewalts had some spare fans rigged up with some spare parts just to cool down the motors every second we could. You could fry an egg on the dewalts after a good finals match.
By having so little time in between matches you really get to test the durability of your robot. Think of your robot as a stock car racer running and running and not a drag racer that has to be rebuilt and fixed after one time out.
But I haven't been around first in about a year i am sure some things have changed since my high school days.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I don't know the exact system for timing that they had at SVR for the finals, but there were videos between some of the matches. The video between the first and second match was particularly helpful, as it allowed us to find the disconnect in the distribution block and fix it without calling a time out.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Luckily, we had enough time between the semis and finals to fix our drive. Our chain had fallen off and we were about to approach 111 about "lending" us their timeout... luckily we didn't need it.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

You actually can't "lend" timeouts this year. The end of T20 shocked me when I first read it

With all the talk of GP and helping your opponents, why would they actually put that in the rules? I think it was probably to prevent 2 consecutive timeouts.

Of course, there is nothing stopping Wildstang from calling a timeout to touch up their tie-die paintjob :D provided it wasn't following another timeout.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Wow... I didn't know that. It's all good though, they ended up needing it after the third finals match, I believe.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Better not tell the Refs at Chesapeake that, we called a timeout in the 2nd finals match when clearly all of our alliance robots were ready so that one of our oppenents 1848 could make some repairs. Its all about being GP, and of course our official reason for the timeout was for changing batteries and letting motors cool;)

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Cool down period?

Back in my day we didn't have cool down periods. We had a can of compressed air held upside down.

And we liked it that way. We loved it. I have fond memories of drenching the old drill motors with that stuff between final matches. You started as soon as the robot was off the field and stopped when the robot was back on the field. Maybe you hit the breakers with some loving to keep them from glowing.

Is it good for the motors? Not at all. But then neither is getting the motors that hot in the first place. Pour on the Thermal-shock-in-a-can! It's still a viable option today.

-Andy A.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I bet that works well to get them cooled down. It's really, really cold on the hands once it's turned upside-down.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Not to argue about this rule again, but this rule specifies that you cannot have cascading time outs which, as I understand it, means that two time outs cannot be called in a row.

The cool down periods at BAE did not bother me. At the begining of each cool-down period, Andy announced that the teams would have a five minutes. Yes, I do believe that is 1 minute more than the specified amount of time. But I would rather see robots that have had time to cool down and are working.