Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Hello FIRST team

Aces High Team 176 invites you to attend our annual FIRST Robotics scrimmage - Suffield Shakedown '09.

As in the past, we will be using the official FIRST playing field.

It will again be held at Suffield High School, in Suffield, CT, on Saturday, February 14th.
Cost will be $75 in advance or $100 at the door.

Please e-mail, Arlene Willett at saw869@cox.net, with your intent to attend.

We hope to see you there...more info will be coming via e-mail and on our website: http://aceshigh176.org/drupal/

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Even if your team isn't competing, or you don't belong to a team, stop by and check it out! Hope to see you there!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

125 will be there in full force!! Looking forward to an awesome event

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Will it be webcast again?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I will ask.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Bill, do you need volunteers for setup (on Friday evening) or field reset or queing or anything like that Saturday during the competition?
Let me know! I'll be up in the area (in Springfield, MA Friday night) & also I'll be there Saturday in Suffield for the competition as well.
Thanks!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

When are you NOT near a FIRST event?:ahh:

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Very rarely it seems. lol :yikes:
I'll be crashing up at WNEC that night so I'm there bright & early at Suffield for some fun (and of course some scouting & general info gathering) on Saturday.

It's good when you have friends who let you crash nearby to FIRST events though - it helps the overall attendance count rack up! :)

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I think they were looking for scorers. Unfortunately tomorrow is Wednesday during build season and which is our meeting night and guess what it is going to do. SSSSNNNNOOOOOWWWWW it is build season and it is a Wednesday so of course it is going to snow. When there is no school we can not have meetings. I will try to find out what they need for help. I am sure we are all set for setup because the FIRST people usually come down from Manchester to learn how to setup field.
I hate snow.:confused: :mad: :(

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Didn't ask, but I got a preview of the event press release and it includes info about the web cast:

"A live webcast of this event will be provided by the Shelton Gaelhawks robotics team and can be accessed through www.shsrobotics.org <http://www.shsrobotics.org> ."

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I think everyone will be interested to find out how the new Field Management System performed.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

You know, this is (currently) my only free weekend in February... maybe I'll see if MIT can live without me for a weekend and venture home to the Shakedown. I'd like to come see everyone!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Bob or Bill,
Is there any word on if any positions are available for volunteering or is there someone I can contact for more info???
Thanks.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Yes, Team 230 will be providing the webcast of the event again (as noted it can be accessed through our website www.shsrobotics.org).

I would also like to thank Aces High for including our request for teams to help us restock the Shelton High School Food Bank by bringing donations to the scrimmage. As most of you already know there was a fire at Shelton High only a few days before the FRC season kick-off which kept our school closed for an additional week after the winter break. Unfortunately, in addition to the damage done to the building which has now been repaired, ALL of the food bank supplies (which were stored at the school) had to be thrown out due to fire, smoke, and water damage. :ahh:

We thought that it we could help by appealing to our friends within the FIRST community to help us replenish those supplies which are provided to those in need within our school community. :D Thank you all for your support.

See you in Suffield...

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

HELLOOoooo from the North East :D
Yep its me Old MOE ;) and Team 88 TJ2 the TYE DYE team, oh yeah ???? OH YEAH !!!! :ahh:
We will see all the great North East Teams on the 14th in Suffield CT. Good luck SEEeeeeee YAAAaaaa SOOOooon
MOE and Team 88 TJ2

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

The Suffield Shakedown is a great way to get a feel for the game. It is nice to see other scrimmages pop up over the years in other areas. When we first started we would always try and bring 2 robots, our real robot and the previos year's robot with some 'fittings'. Now the Shakedown has gotten too big for this (which is a good thing) but we always make sure we are there with our robot

I would encourage teams to send members to the scrimmage even if their robot is not competing. I have no data to support this but I think teams that go to the scrimmage have an advantage over teams that do not when the regionals start.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Have the event organizers decided on network settings for the FMS? We'd like to have our robot set up to work on the field Friday night before we leave.

According to this document all we should need is the SSID/password of the network.

Thanks.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

At suffield we will be running the Regional version of FMS, not FMS Light. So you get the full treatment ;)

With that said, just show up to the event with your system configured I/A with FIRST FRC's Configuration Guide. At the event you will recieve further instruction on any additional configuration you have to do, it's quick and painless.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the scrimmage on Saturday... and to meeting some new people!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Just out of curiosity is there a team list ?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Sorry the link at the beginning of the thread sends you to the team's old website.

Here's a direct link to the team list.
http://aceshigh176.org/ss-scrimmage?start=5

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Chris,

You will find it here.

Mike

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I do not think you will be able to do this.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Great Article in the Journal Inquirer today.

http://www.journalinquirer.com/artic...5567886797.txt

See you guys this weekend!

-Jesse

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

***NEW***
We will be holding a NEMO (Non-Engineering Mentor Organization) meeting at 1:15 p.m. in a classroom TBD (check with the check-in table or listen for announcements) at the Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage tomorrow! Please encourage your mentors who deal with the non-technical side of the team to attend. It will be an open discussion on whatever non-engineering topics are of concern to you this season. Open to all adult mentors from all FIRST program teams!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Where is the link to eh webcast on team 230's page?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Top right of the page; here's the link to the webcast:

EDIT: see below

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Just curious. Does the stream play for a while and then die for anyone else? If I restart it works fine for a while and then stops again. Not complaining I'm just trying to troubleshoot and see if maybe it is my side.

Thanks!

Justin

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Yeah, it died on me too.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

DO NOT USE ANY POSTED LINKs- GO TO www.shsrobotics.org like directed.

There is a link there that manages Load Sharing on the servers. If you connected elsewhere we cannot manage the servers properly.

There is an ASX file that points to a Playlist. That will mannage the connections to the servers.

Please use windows media player. All other players are not reliable for streaming live windows media feeds.

IF you have trouble with link:
Copy the Link (in IE this is done with Copy Shortcut)
Then open WinMedia Player
Go to FILE -> OPEN URL -> CTRL+V (pastes link from clipboard)

Enjoy

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I assume they are having field issues/field isn't ready yet?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

streaming it with windows media player i don't have any audio...

so i've been streaming it with VLC media player...

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I've been streaming with WMP and it seems to be working fine. Did you check the audio settings within WMP?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Nice! Just saw a 101. Seems that 30 points is about as low as scores go (for one alliance).

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I just got home to watch the last 30 seconds of the final match. Congrats to 1124, 126 and 195. I wasn't surprised that the webcast was on this late, given the new control system and it being a "shakedown". Could someone who watched the whole event post their observations.

A highlight reel on tomorrow on Youtube would be nice as well. *hint hint*

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

The shakedown was fun, 558 had a great time. It was our first time there and boy! was it an experience!

Thanks Aces!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I watched most of it and two things that stood out/surprised me. First, a good human player can make a huge difference. And secondly, super cells were much more prevelent and important than I expected them to be at this scrimmage.

For those at the event, how did the orbit balls hold up? Were a lot of them broken at the end?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I didn't watch the whole thing either, as we still had a robot to build, but I watched probably half a dozen.

1. Robots that are not moving are death. You MUST keep moving. When someone stopped near a HP they'd get filled up with balls. When someone stopped, a robot of the opposite alliance would go and dump their load. I saw a robot not move in autonomous once. That was bad, real bad. You do not want to start 26 points in the hole.

2. Super Cells are important. While a scrimmage is not a regional, the huge point swings that Super Cells provide, are well, huge. I'd bet a snickers bar that at least 75% of qualifying matches during week 1 could've been one with 2 scored super cells (2 Super Cells per alliance seemed pretty typical).

3. HPs have a tendency to miss Super Cells. Perhaps it was the added pressure, but they'd make orbit balls in from across the field and miss Super Cells that were going into a robot right in front of them.

4. Humans score A LOT of the points. It seemed that at least 20 points per alliance were scored in autonomous. It seemed to me that most alliances scored between 30 and 50 points, so Humans are making big contributions. Obviously, this is a scrimmage so robots may not be in tip top shape, but it's something to look out for.

5. There is a tendency to overshoot. I saw a bunch of robots go for an easy score and miss because their power dumper/shooter gave the balls too much "oomph."

6. It's really hard to dump in the middle of the field. It seemed that if a robot was along the edge of the field, it was pretty easy to pin them long enough to score a hopper full. It was not so easy to pin a robot in the middle of the field.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

What type of maneuvers were performed during autonomous? Was there there any target tracking by the camera?

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I recall Andy announcing that 1124 was scoring with the camera, right at the autonomous/teleop switch, so I'm not sure if it was done in autonomous or teleop.

Mostly, teams just drove straight forward, and there was a big cluster of 5 or 6 robots in the center of the field, as the sitting human players pumped the trailers full of balls. From the webcast I would guess that the majority drove some distance and stopped, while a few just kept moving throughout the entire autonomous.


A couple of teams would drive out 10 feet or so and spin in circles. It didn't seem to work too well at keeping balls out though. I know GUS did it, and I watched a HP sink every ball he/she shot as GUS was spinning, although that may have just been an exceptional human.

At the end of the day, it seemed that the clustering wasn't quite as bad. A couple of robots would get caught up, then they'd get whacked by a newcomer and sort of seperate.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Thoughts and observations:

• This is going to be a fun game once the majority of scoring drifts away from the human players and towards the robots later in the season. But without much scoring going on from the robots, the game is kind of boring.
• The empty and super cells were important, but I think their relative worth will diminish as the average scores go up this season, which is as the number of scoring robots goes up. Assuming you can use them well, and that you have a good human player, they can make a big impact.
• They were experimenting with various things during the elimination rounds where if the field had a glitch, they'd add some time onto the clock and then re-continue the match.
  PLEASE NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.
  I'm serious. As soon as there's a field glitch this year and one or more robots die on the playing field, a good shooter/power dumper can load up their trailer in a matter of seconds. This can irreversbily change the winning alliance of the match. Adding fifteen seconds back onto the clock does not un-score balls in your trailer that would not have been there had the field not broken. If the field breaks down and one alliance stops moving, the other alliance should not benefit from having three stationary opposing robots. The only fair way to fix a field problem is to replay the match.
• There were some really cool driving maneuvers, but most are hard to explain without a video to show it off. All I can say is that everything you thought you knew about driving on a FRC playing field now has to be relearned. Also, experiment with purposely losing traction and then regaining it; some very cool maneuvers can be accomplished with this.
• Like every other FIRST game, those who can score fast and score well will win. Power dumpers were having better chances of scoring than shooting robots, but hopefully three more days of code development will bring some of the shooter robots up to snuff.
• There were no propeller robots at the scrimmage.
• Both of the Anonymous Teaser robots were at the scrimmage, and both had team numbers only four apart.

Do you remember which match that was? :confused:

I was at the event and watched almost all of our matches from about twenty feet away from our robot on the sidelines, and we never had the opposing human player sink every shot in autonomous. Granted this could have been one of the matches I missed, but the average human player accuracy I witnessed with throwing balls into our full-speed spinning trailer was about 30-50%, whereas on stationary or linear moving targets this number often approached 70-90%.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

My observations:

1. When I closed my eyes, the sounds of the competition robots were incredibly reminiscent of a bumper car ride at an amusement park.

2. Scoring was virtually impossible to determine from the stands. I know some veteran numerologists who have amazed me in previous years with their ability to tell the score during a complicated game and even they were baffled.

3. A subtle rule penalty was assessed in at least one game which, to me, was questionable based on the rules. If a empty cell is placed in exchange for a super cell by a payload specialist, only that specific super cell which is adjacent to the empty cell can be placed into play.

4. As expected, it is almost guaranteed that alliances with a no-show robot will lose the match.

5. Unless penalties were being discussed, field reset occurred immediately after a match was over. I never saw an official count the cells in any trailer. As such, I did wonder about the accuracy of the scores in many matches.

Regards,

Mike

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

If you remember before they added time and restarted the match the MC said "you will probably never see this again we are going add time and continue the match". or something close to that.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

There were people in the area of the players stations keep score on some electronic device. That was hooked the scorers table. That way the reset could happen very quick. I would hate to see how long it would take to reset field if you had to count the balls (rocks) at the end of every match.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Even with your eyes opened, it was reminiscent of a bumper car ride. Especially in autonomous.


Even when the field issues caused 10 minutes of non-action, I couldn't tell the score after a walk around the field and trying to count the balls. The stack up of balls inside the goals are too random so 9 balls could look nearly the same as 15 balls.

Definitely an odd rule to me. It seems the empty cell/super cell count is 100% obvious since you have to hang an empty cell.

Additionally, I don't understand why they would assess the "double the points, subtract a ball" rule in the Elimination Rounds??? This would suggest that if we beat the Number 3 Alliance 100-50 in our semis that we would have to give up a ball in the Finals against the Number 1 Alliance??? That would be ridiculous. I would have expected any of those rules to be gone for the Elimination Rounds.

Definitely a challenge, but I'm thinking that if it was your team and our team as the duo, we might have had a better than even chance. ;)

Did they have manual scorers in the end?

Fred <~~~ good to see you guys again, Mike

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I admit, I was dead wrong about the Super cells (and owe my teammate a buck already because of it) though I think teams that can score at will (there weren't many robots lighting it up yesterday except 126 will make it so that the Supercell won't hurt them.

Teams will have to definitely scout Payload Specialist and their shooting percentages and a third team could be picked just for a good payload specialist and an adequate robot (it moves).

The competition season begins just when high school basketball season ends and it would not surprise me to see FIRST teams lure basketball players to their teams. As hot shooter could be devastating. Especially slow or immobile robots and there are good FIRST teams out there with good high school basketball teams in their schools.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I agree wholeheartedly that unless you have a super high scoring machine, losing the Super Cell 20 second battle is doom. But that's similar to other years where the one black ball or the ball on the goal, etc., have been a huge difference. We only won by one point, and in fact, we had the accidentally scored SuperCell in the last game, I believe. I think we won a crucial match (by one point?) in the Elims even after the other Alliance more Super Cells.

And for those that couldn't see it on the WebCast, the Super Cell battle really starts long before that 20 seconds. If you haven't done your Empty Cell strategy and countdown jockeying, it makes thing simply much tougher.

And to boost our ego... was our robot really lighting it up? Since I and my pit team are always focused on our robot's performance and always looking at the bad parts for improvement, I really couldn't give an assessment of how it stacked up to other robots like the Bobcats, the Ueberbots, Buzz, and Trinity. (Sorry if I forgot others, but sad to say, the pit chain only unlocked only a few times a day).

Fred

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Will the videos from this be on TBA? If not, can anyone send me some recorded stuff? I was building robots all day yesterday and really want to see how this game plays.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Yes, but the fix IMHO is a good solution. Holes are punched through a plastic strip, then through the ball, and a plastic rivet is put through the holes. They look similar to this: http://www.plastic-rivets.co.uk/plastic_rivets_pic.jpg

The fix is the best I've seen to keep the integrity of the ball structure. Note that the bottom of the rivet is not sharp but pointy, and can scratch your hands up if you're not looking where you're grabbing the ball.

Thanks to FIRST staff for coming up with a great solution!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

If anyone knows where videos or match results are, I will be happy to add them to TBA. :)

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Are there videos anywhere of the event? We know that 126 won and we have been talking with them about it but we were wondering if we could see any of the matches! It sounds like it was a great event. congratulations to all participants for getting your robot ready early!:)

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I'm concerned this is going to be a tough game for spectators to follow.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I've notice that too. I had a very hard time telling if a robot was scoring or if it was an HP shot while watching the webcast. The Super cells do stand out a lot, I'm not sure about the Empty cells though.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

It is hard to follow the entire field, but pick one or 2 yeams to follow and it's bearable.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

To answer some questions about how the scoring works, or how easy it will be for spectators to follow, this is how I saw things down on the field:

There was one Official Scorer assigned to each robot/trailer in the match, tasked with keeping track of how many moon rocks and super cells were in their robot's trailer. They would increment the counter on their scoring devices as best they could see by watching their trailer throughout the match. At a regional, this data would be displayed as a real-time score on the big screen, which should help spectators follow the match.

At the conclusion of the match, the field reset crew was instructed to NOT remove anything from trailers until the Official Scorer assigned to that trailer made a final count and verified the numbers entered into their scoring device. Only the Official Scorer could release and remove balls from the trailers.

In general, if you can see the whole field, it's fairly easy to tell which alliance has the upper hand, if there is an upper hand. Closer matches might be more difficult to tell, but it's easy enough to see if there are more moon rocks in the red trailers than there are in the blue trailers, even without exact numbers.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

It was tough to follow as a driver! There's too much going on scoring wise to have any clue of who won or who is currently ahead. Unless a team had a trailer filled (which mostly only happened when teams didn't show) it was too hard to try to figure out who won

also, just because you have a no-show on your alliance doesn't mean you're guaranteed a loss. we had that in match 15 when aces high wasn't there and we won.

And how come we weren't mentioned in the teams that 'lit up the field'???
IIRC we were 1 of 4 undefeated teams, and only lost when we had to switch drivers (I had to leave for work, I would have been there if we were 3 hours behind haha)

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I would tend to agree with your numbers Art. The spinning auto mode GREATLY reduced the risk of being scored on, as I was watching your robot compared to others in pretty much every match yesterday.
Then I noticed another team was spinning so I compared them to everyone else, & their bot did much better at defense as well during auto mode.
Spinning code = works well!!
If your programming team can't program anything else this year, you may want to start with this to be defensive, or something completely different. Just program something though or when you're sitting there motionless you're going to get about 10 balls scored on your at least.

Also, there WERE some exceptional Payload Specialists who made good decisions on who to score on (what one of 3 goals to score on) & scored nearly 100% in all matches.
I'm not saying they used & scored 20+ balls every match, but the ones who scored consistently were often seen as "good PS's" & commended by their team mates at the ends of the match at numerous times that I saw.

The scorekeepers who were operating the hand-held devices during the match for the scoring came out after every single match & verified the count in their own trailer they were scoring by hand-held BEFORE the field reset crew could take ANY Orbit balls off the field just to ease your mind.
(The scorekeepers had a yellow arm band on which wasn't always visible & I actually told a girl not to take balls out if a trailer at one point because i didn't see her arm band, but she had it. Oops. lol)

Accuracy of the "real time" scores is definitely a question with the scoring hand-helds in speaking to some of the scorers who couldn't necessarily see the trailer the whole match due to blind spots of it being behind a robot, so they were told to, & happy to verify the scores manually, so this will not be an issue if they continue this practice.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I agree with you Kathie. While I did not attend the event I watched the webcast. My wife and son were at the event and after discussing it today we all agreed that it's not a good spectator event.

I said it reminded me of a rubgy scrum only with robots.

My son said he hopes they play some waltz music at our regional this year as it would fit well with the robors "dancing" around in circles with each other.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I can't remember the match number, but it was early on in the day. The HP shot once per revolution into the same spot, and nailed the trailer 4/5 or 3/4 shots.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I guess that just proves that we will have some good Payload Specialist versus robot matches during autonomous depending on the player & autonomous path.

I would say that is impressive in that case then, but also remind that other trailers that just drove straight got 5+ balls in them by good human players at any given time, & the ones who stood motionless got 10+ on any given time.

It's all relative I guess.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Hmmm if someone could get some videos up before the beginning of week one regionals I would love to see them. Thank you ahead of time if you do.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Some raw video from the stands & near the field from Suffield Shakedown 2009 at various stages of competition:

HERE: http://www.thesixweeks.com/suffield2009.wmv

Thanks to John Boucher from my team (team 237) for hosting it, & hopefully he doesn't kill me for posting this when he maxes out his bandwidth this month from everyone watching it! :yikes::eek::p

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

:eek: Thanks Elgin. I owe you one.

It's just a minute of what was going on at Suffield.

The game got a lot better as the day went on. If you had the surface to practice on, you were ahead of the other drivers. By the end of the day drivers were very even.

The spinning move was the Litchbots.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Haha, what andy said and what actually happened were two completely different things in that respect (-;

The camera had hysteresis, in the sense that when the 545 turret motor went the camera would move (an issue we have yet to address), so he probably perceived this as the camera doing stuff. The turret would also drift in autonomous for some reason. I dunno... new programmers means new code phenomena.

so in reality, there was no autonomous turret control, though the scrimmage made it pretty obvious that we desparately need it (though the second driver did sorta get a hold on the turret by the end of it). Today, in fact, we got a neat control loop done for the turret, and are working on distance control for the overshoot.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Ah, I love it when that happens. We've "accused" of tracking the green light by the play-by-play announcer before. :rolleyes:


Did anyone at the scrimmage notice any burn marks on the field? Our home regolith field is now spotted with brown where the rapidly rover wheels have begun to melt the high ridges. It smells terrible when it happens, and if you run your hand over it you can feel the increase in traction.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Fred,

That would be an interesting alliance indeed... Good Luck.

Mike

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Durign the competition, the officials made a big deal about exchanging the free cells for the super cell directly opposite it on the rack. They even imposed penalties for not following this nit-picky procedure. I just re-read the rules and I could not find this requirement. Rule <g22> reads as follows:

... During the last 20 seconds of the MATCH, each EMPTY CELL in the FUELING STATION may be exchanged for a SUPER CELL. ...

notice it says "a SUPER CELL" - it does not specify any particular super cell.

I think the teams that were un-duly penalized are owed an apology.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

So from the people there what is the overall opinion of the game, bearing in mind how early things are. Exciting? Boring? Good? Bad? I don't like the sound of how much the human player can score, but I'll reserve judgment till I see things with my own eyes.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

Good evening everybody! You might not recognize the name, but you will recognize the face. I am Mr. Davis who has enthusiastically volunteered every year in the setup & take down of the scrimmage fields. I had the honor of official Field Supervisor & to mentor FIRST FTA Frank Merrick. First of all I want to thank everybody involved with help in scoring, field reset, judging, DJ sound, webcasting & anyone else who was directly involved. It is a very energy draining, but greatly rewarding event to be involved in. Now to an answer for how the rounds went. We obviously had to rethink how to reset the field, count scores & get the next round of robots on the field in a quick manor. We changed the sequence around probably 4 times until we obtained the smoothest transition & eliminated round-to-round turn-around from 9 minutes to around 5.5 minutes. I can personally say that having the payload specialist be the only one to load the robot from his/hers own station was the best solution. There was confusion as to when they could obtain those moon rocks. In the end the solution was to bring all bins on the field, fill them & return to each station. I'm sure FIRST will make some changes.
D.C. is waiting for us!!!

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

This is the answer to the legolith wearing. When we dismantled the field we did see a lot of the white powder that was worn off the field from tire spin. Other than a few minor scuff marks , there wasn't any scaring to the field surface.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

On behalf of the event organizers I’d like to thanks everyone for their help and cooperation in running this event. We understand that waiting in queue was the last thing you wanted to be doing on the last Saturday of build season. We thank you for your patience.

We’d also like to thank all of our volunteers who helped with the event. In particular we’d like to thank:

-FIRST for generously allowing us to use their field and for working hard to maintain a smooth running event.

-Team 571 for graciously offering to help clean up after the event and refusing to leave until every last table was put away. They ended up staying over 5 hours, and even drove to WLHS to help us unload the rugs.

-Bob Charrette for donating his time and his truck to transport the field from New Hampshire and for his help queuing robots during the competition.

-Mike Betts for helping teams with their questions on the Labview software.

-Marc Davis for his work on the field as the field supervisor and for his help with other event logistics.

-Jx2 Productions (two FIRST alumni from team 839) for providing music and helping with the queuing of robots.

-Team 230 for providing the webcast which was watched around the country.

-Team 178 for their DREAM FIRST exhibit.

-The countless others who make this event a success. Without them this event would not be possible.

Re: Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event
 

I'd like to double everything Matt said.

And especially thank Team 571 for helping out with pick up.