A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

What were some "unfortunate events" that happened to your robot or your alliance's robot that costed you big time during a match?

For our team, it happened at 2009 hawaii regional during the first semi-finals match..
Our alliance was 3rd seeded and we were versing number 2 seed.
Our alliance captain's robot rammed a wall during autonomous mode and the battery connection snapped. The whole remainder of the match, they scored on the dead bot. It was pretty much devastating. It costed us the chance to be a regional finalist or winner.

It's unfortunate these things happen though.. but with gracious professionalism, win or lose, the experience was worth it!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Team 2502 was graciously picked by Team 93, a regional super powerhouse, and team 3009, a regional powerhouse rookie. If you took away Team 3009's number, you would probably guess that they were a long time veteran.

We got in to quarter finals. We were 3rd seed alliance, facing some good robots, but like we were just "perfect" alliance (a power dumper by 93 that could like outscore all three combined, a power defensive bot by 3009 that was a HUGE box with a tilted top to deflect rocks and pin to no end, and us with a decent shooter that was okay at everything.) and I mean the 6th alliance was good (Robettes, 2177, and two more bots) and we were facing them.

Then the match started, and because of an autonomous screw-up, and paralysis to half of the robot (a jag that controlled the left half of the robot had its wires just pop out), it cost us the round by like 10 moon rocks, which we could've easily scored had we not been dead the whole round (filled trailer) and had we been able to go pin/help out & score.

Then the second quarter finals match started. We were really hyped up that we were gonna be able to play a good match.

Nope.

Amidst the CRAZINESS between Quarters 1 and Quarters 2 trying to fix all the screwiness we got during first quarters, we overlooked one thing: tightening the T-Slot fasteners on our 80/20. Of course, at the most convenient time, our robot's chain that controlled the intake of the moon rocks ran off the sprocket, thus allowing us to drive, but not do anything with the actual scoring...

But we had a memorable experience working with such great teams and learning what we can from our devastating mistakes..

We're still happy where we got as a second year team, especially from our first year, last year.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

In our first match on Cuire, the FTA basically wouldn't let us reboot our bot so it could connect to the field. We ended up losing that match only by 16 points, if we had won we would of been in the finals :(

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

The first match after lunch on Friday, the TechnoKats had one alliance partner totally absent, and the other partner's robot stopped moving after ten seconds. A later match also had a nonfunctional alliance partner robot. Those were the team's only two losses in qualifications. Death is contagious: a dead robot kills the entire alliance.

(On the other hand, win can be contagious as well. The Galileo high score was set by an alliance of 45, 67, and 111.)

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

On Saturday on Galileo we had two robots stopped working due to radio problems. the FTA refused to replay the match even though one of the NI techs said the problem was with the NI equipment.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

we went into eliminations at hartford on the number 1 alliance with 121 and 173 and it looked like we were going to win the regional. first match of quater finals started and our bot didn't move the entire time. the other 2 quater final matches we won but didn't move in auton. same was true for the first match of the semis except we lost and the second match after our programmers tried to fix the problem the driver station said no code and we did not move at all causing us to be eliminated which destroyed our chances at making it to atlanta.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Unfortunately, we faced 121 and 177 and 1507 in the quarterfinals.

BTW, great job 121, 177, and 1507! And thanks 2771 and 365 for the valiant effort!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

How about Team 922 in Curie division.
They get to there pit area and NO ROBOT!!!
Robot was in Kentucky for some reason. It didn't arrive till Midnight Friday morning.
I helped inspect it and it needed some changes made. I think they missed there first match :(

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

One of our students helped them build a "spare" bot that I think they used to compete in their first match -- and won!!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

1726 had a very impressive machine and played very well in Newton all week. You were at the top of our list! What a great set of matches...your alliance was very tough.

Congrats on such a great year!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

For our first 4 matches, we didn't realize that our motors were literally burnt out, then, we replaced the motors, almost missing our 5th match, but, we wired our motors wrong, and we couldn't do much... then, once we had those working, we had some issues with our ball collector, which we had to replace parts on (we were the ones running around looking for paint rollers) we got that fixed, but in the next match, I (our driver) accidentally brushed the tank/arcade toggle button without noticing, and we lost hold of a half-match pin... making our score go from 80-75 to 88-91 (our loss)

the next match, our last, we forgot to load our hopper before the match and our ball collector still wasn't working well enough...

overall, our best CMP score was 54-54, a tie.. making our CMP record 0-6-1

talk about a series of unfortunate events...


BTW, thanks sooo much to all the teams that offered their help while we were fixing motors, and looking for paint rollers!!!!
-Z

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

(Most of this stuff is stupid insignificant stuff until you see Friday afternoon's story, which is quite an adventure).

Okay. I'm sorry folks, but I think it's going to be hard to beat my story. I think that someone's hexed me and it has trickled down onto my team.

Before the trip
The week before leaving, a series of drop ceiling lights and flourecent bulbs die, and the day before we go, my microwave goes, all before houseguests are staying to watch my dog. I fix the lights, buy a new microwave, and go on my merry way.

In school on Wednesday, the day we depart, I call our transportation department to confirm the pick up time on Monday, as our flight time was changed, and they said "Bus? What bus?" -- apparently when our trip was approved, the appropriate people neglected to tell the transportation department, but then we get on our merry way.

Our bus comes speeding into the parking lot, and we load into the bus to head toward the Philadelphia airport. We quickly unload baggage and make it into the terminal with about 1:45 before our flight departs.
We hit the check-in counter, and we get one 75-year old man to check in 31 people. It takes one hour and 30 minutes to check us in (before TSA). Thankfully, in that time, we discover our flight is delayed. For two hours. And a half hour delay ON the runway. There was an "incident" on our flight which, upon landing, took us ANOTHER half hour to get through, and we arrive at the hotel at 11PM.

Thursday
Thursday, on the way over, I twist my ankle. I go to first aid at the stadium, and they have no ice. I go to Papa John's booth, get a plastic serving glove, fill it with ice, and try to ice it up. I get told by event staff that I can't keep my foot up elevated on the seats. So I then went to the Omni and bought an ace bandage and wrapped it all weekend.

Inspection this year was very difficult to get through, and we got failed a few times for things like wire coloring and fitting in the box (because we touched the wall). What was frustrating is that they would find one thing wrong, fail us, and send us back, to find one other thing, fail us, send us back. We went through this process 3 or 4 times before getting the sticker.

Friday
Friday morning, we were excited to be able to participate in the Robot parade for winning NJ Chairmans!! After leaving the hotel with a few stragglers, I was disappointed to see my kids not in the stands. Turns out that when I said "Be in the stands by 8:00", that someone (student or mentor) thought that meant "8:15 is okay". Needless to say, 90% of my students missed us in the parade. That made me livid, but I eventually got over it.

**This is where the story starts to get good**

So matches start, and we start losing. Our team was playing relatively well for our capabilities, but we just couldn't cut the mustard. After going 0 - 3 we had a pretty good match coming up with a local powerhouse this year, 816. In auton, we hit another team and break our elevator, a part of which falls onto the floor. We think that we get disabled for it. 816 hits another team and has a wire issue that causes them to shut down. We end up with a tie in that match. This was match 57. We also have one on 65, so we try to get our robot fixed up the best we can while on the field. Sadly, we've lost power to the cRio and we can't figure out why, so we have to bail and return to the pits.

We go back to the pits and can't figure out why the cRio won't boot while the PD block is sending appropriate power. We call the NI guys over, and they test it, ask us to take it out so they can take it to their booth to test it further. While there, I notice the winner of the cRio drawing, team 2590, a team that we helped in mentoring! I go to spare parts to get a new cRio, and they're closed. So then I go to 2590's pits but they're not there, so I call them to let them know that they won, and to beg and plead to borrow their new cRio since spare parts had already closed for the day. They come back to the pits 30 minutes before closing time, and after a nice photo session with some executives from NI, we rush to install the cRio in the pit.

As we install it, Drew, one of our programmers, starts to boot his laptop to update the firmware and code for the cRio discovers that his computer has crashed. He reboots only to later find out that it's a physical drive failure. So we not only lost our cRio, but also our programming laptop! But let it be known that Drew's a smart kid, and had a relatively current version of the code on a pen drive in his laptop bag. We decided to set up my freshly-formatted laptop with labview back in the hotel room, so we reach for the bag with the backup code.... and it's gone. As it turns out, it was left on the field. Lights in the pits dim, they're kicking us out... fade to black.

Back at the hotel, the programmers work feverishly to update TWO laptops with current versions of labview and the WPI libs, and write ALL NEW CODE in case we can't find the bag with the back-up code. We make an effort to get there bright and early saturday morning. No rest for the weary.

Saturday
Everyone gets to the stands on-time! We get nice seats next to Buzz and skunkworks, two great teams. Programmers get to work, kids get food, awards are given, and "let the games begin!". Did our team make it? Did they get the cRio programmed? "YES!!! We're up!! We're out there!" Then whack, two more losses, and we land 86th place (out of 87). We've got our crate coming to the pits before our robot even makes it back from our last round. We pack before QF's are finished. We go back and cheer one some great teams in curie and galileo, and sit back and watch the show on Einstein. Some kids need to go back to the hotel to drop some things off, so I escort them back. We get back to the park about 40 minutes later. I get in line for food -- no plates to speak of in sight. Once again, I'm livid. Not even Karaoke could make my night better (especially because it was booked up).

As the party wrapped up, our team got together and sat to watch the last couple acts, which led up to the fireworks. As I sat with my students and my wife, my anger washed away while bathed in the lights and sounds of the show. I can't explain it -- but watching my kids as a group smiling at the show, and realizing that they had so much fun, made this entire trip, and all of its adventures, absolutely 150% worthwhile. We all headed back to the hotel in positive spirits, reflecting on how funny all of the ordeals were.

Sunday
To add insult to injury, a kid puked on the plane on the way home. We just couldn't catch a break!!


Team 1089's journey to Atlanta this year was a long and stressful one. But we have this saying on 1089 that really fits in well:

Life is a Journey, so Don't Stop Believin'

See y'all again soon!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

In the second round against 217 on Einstein the chain that ran our belt snapped forcing us to play defense.

First mechanical failure of the year had to happen at just the wrong time. :P

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

We let down 222 at Philly when our chain snapped during eliminations for our intake rollers forcing us to play defense with a non defensive drivetrain =/. According to many outside of our team or friend circle, we could've won that regional with the partners we had. 222 has an insanely good robot(Archimedes winner anyone?) and 316 does as well.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

While we were building our robot, the student assigned to put our chain tensioners on decided that our chains were tense enough so we didn't need them and didn't put them on. Flash forward to the middle of Friday at Los Angeles. We were up against a tough alliance, so our strategy was that we were going to bait the other team's best scorer into chasing us around the entire match, which worked for about thirty seconds until we hit a wall and threw a chain. Naturally, the opposing alliance took this opportunity to fill our trailer until no more balls could fit.

And to add insult to injury, somehow someone or something reset our CRio while we were putting the chain back on...and we didn't notice until our next match had started and we weren't connected. :eek:

The only other failure we experienced all season was our conveyor belt jamming because we left off...ONE WASHER. Oops.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

a wire going to our helix motor came loose and caused us to loose coms' for one match..
then when we were soldering it on I cut my hand open on the FP.....

and then I got my lip cut open on something(havent figured it out yet)

thats it though, we've always built our robots to be indestuctable(and heavy):rolleyes:

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Florida:

This part is all very fortunate: We go into alliance pickings seeded 10th, ready to have to pick in maybe the 7th or 8th spot. We get picked by the 1st seed, 1144, naturally we say yes. All is well.

1st Match: 1144 starts moving in autonomous, then just stops about 5 ft from the station wall. They get loaded up for about 30 seconds until we ram them to get them out of the way of a dumper and they start working. (We found out later than they had reset something at the exact time we hit them). We lose the first match 70-68 because of that.

2nd Match: Everything goes well we win 79-53

3rd Match: Auton starts, our robot doesn't move at all. Light is blinking. Auton ends, robot doesn't move... at all. We play around with all of the wires for about a minute and then our coach jumps in, in a moment of desperation to play around with the wires.. we get a 10 point penalty and DQd. Our trailer gets massively loaded up - we lose 50-36.

We talk to the FTA and field monitoring people, they claim our robot was in "working mode" the entire time - one of the field people even said they saw our robot "up and driving around", which was kind of impossible when it was sitting in front of the outpost wall with the light blinking. Anyway - the field was not kind to the 1st seeded alliance at Florida and staunched any hopes we had of making it past the QFs.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

This has taught me never to go out to lunch again. In a Match right before lunch a robot was stuck on ours for the entire 2 minutes and 20 seconds (some of you may remember that i am so sorry whoever's robot that was ^^) well in our next match our robot controls shut down. Turns out that the robot who lodged onto us disconnected a few wires from our black box. Our team usually does a system check before every round, but due to long lines at the cnn center we were short on time.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

hey 2443!
Maui right?
Congrats on making it to CMP!
Thats really exciting. I saw your record.. 5-2! thats good. Im suprised no one picked you for alliance pairings..

but see you next year or sooner!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

gee, mr gregory, you seem like you had a tough time... at least the kids had some fun... :p

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

I GTR this year we made it to the finals and won our first match against 1114, only to have our robot break down. After calling a timeout our alliance partner 188 was 5 seconds late to the field and couldn't play in the 2nd match.

Finally, in the 3rd match with about 10 seconds left we we're leading but they shot a super cell which bounced off a robot and into our trailer with a final score of 97-90 for them.

I'd Call THAT unfortunate. But it was still lots of fun and full of gracious professionalism.

There were a couple other parts to this story that I left out and can be found http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&highlight=GTR

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Lol. Chris, you need a hug? :p I hear thefro gives out random hugs lol

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

ooh, i think i got one at the wrap party... yaaayyy... mr g deserves one fo sho...

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

On saturday(1977): We begin to recive talks from the two top teams at the regional about going on an alliance with them. We go to our first match. Our robot rams full speed into another robot on our alliance in auton. We lift the robot up about 4 in. When we strart driving around after auton, Our trailer comes off, costing us the match.It came off becuase the trailer hitch got bent. Ok, we move on. Next match, We get through auton without incident, but half way through teleop, we lose connection to the feild. We still won the match, but it was our last match. We don't get picked during the alliance selections. We end up ranking 21st out of 48 and become 4th in line for robot replacements in the elims.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

GSR:

Our robot was re-inspected before the elimination rounds and during that time our digital sidecar became unplugged. The field had communication, but the orange light was not blinking. This technical difficulty on our part caused to robot movement, and we were an easy target. Team 1276 and 87 did an amazing job at putting up a fight but our trailer was full. In the next match since we did not have an autonomous in the first match, 87 flew across the field and pushed us back in front of the opposing human player at the outpost and he scored a ton of shots on us. We thought that we would be out of the way in time before the would come in that direction.

We lost both matches and our team felt so bad because these were our errors.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Though there was a very definite series of unfortunate events that cost 1712 this year on Archimedes, I think a better example is perhaps from a couple years ago while I was with 116.

It came on Galileo back in 2007. The qualifications were a bit rough, with 116 facing 10 opponents (11 if you count the fact we faced #1 seed 1425 twice) who were in the elimination matches and only having one partner who did the same. Match 68, where we score 6 tubes but ultimately only have 2 points due to spoilers and penalties, sums up pretty well the qual matches. Needless to say we didn't seed in the top 8 (3-4 record, 54th seed) despite being one of top individual competitors.

We were picked 6th by 1595 and were joined by one of my favorite teams in FIRST, 93. We became the only alliance to stop the Thunderchickens before Einstein since 2004 when we defeated 2272, 45, and 217 in quarters.

The semis where the real unfortunate events begin. We squeak out a victory in match 1 against 173, 1902, and 1319. Match two was much rougher, with what we referred to as the cursed spider foot (4 distinct scoring attempts resulted in tubes on the ground) and a massive row of 7 for the other alliance. We spoiled their row (cutting it into two rows of 3) and placed a single tube. If we had went back to 93s ramps earlier and not bothered with the tubes we might have won 30-16, instead of losing 16-2. The worst part was when 1595 lost their arm to a (completely legal) hit by 1319 at the end of the match, costing our alliance one of our scoring machines.
The third match involved 1595 attempting to play defense without their arm. With hindsight being 20/20, we should have opted to replace them with #1 back-up 1382 (a defensive ramp-bot) who would have likely filled this defensive role better. 1595 accidentally de-scored an opposing tube while defending 173, which resulted in a 10-point penalty. Going into the end of the match, both 116 and 1595 are on 93s platforms, which raise into the air. With only seconds left it appears both will receive bonus points, but then 1595 slides off as time expires, falling to the ground. We were still leading with 116's bonus points and our rack scores, but the penalty from earlier flipped the outcome of the match, and helped the other alliance advance to the Galileo finals (and eventually to Einstein).

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Team 3062 had a couple unfortunate events at the Championship.

1. Our first match after lunch on Friday, one team wasn't paying attention to the clock and didn't get their robot or human player to the field in time. So, it was a 2-on-3 match. What hurt even more is that we were paired with 1218, Vulcan Robotics, with their Taz Robot (an awesome robot). Without that human player, there were two bins of balls that never made it onto the crater for them to pick up and score.

2. During one of our Saturday qualifying matches, the other alliance launched a super cell at the end of the match, it missed one trailer, bounced off a robot and landed in one of our alliance trailers. We lost the match by 3 points, 91 - 88. Fantastic match!

3. Our last unfortunate event was after the match stopped, we were winning 60 - 54 with the RealTime Scoring. After the official score, we lost 58 - 68. It was the first time I saw a score go down, without penalties.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

That reminds me..
Another one we had was during a qualification match against a high seeded team.. we were in the queing area when the match before us finished..
Unbeknownst to any of us, one of our alliance HP had to go get something..
and didnt make it back in time. So there was an outpost with a full set of moon rocks the whole entire time.
We lost the match (its alright though) and went to talk to there team to see what happened. He was held up by other teams moving their robots to the pit and queing area...and by the time he got back, they wouldnt allow him on the field..Its really unfortunate!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

With rocks being scored so quickly that happened a couple of time in our favor. We would be down 10-12 points, and come off with the win after the official count. Unfortunately in happened in favor on the Archimedes champs in the first round of the finals. The real time score had us up 14, but after the official count we lost by 2. You win some you loose some.:) The next round wasn't close.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

There's no way you let us down...you're being too hard on yourself. In the first match we lost together we lost a drive chain near the beginning of the match and were left limping around and not scoring well. Things happen in FIRST just like they do in real life. It's all good!

Our first unfortunate event caused us our only loss of the Pittsburgh regional. Unfortunately we never replaced the fuse in the spike with a resettable breaker. For those that know our machine you also know that meant we couldn't open our flap or flip our hood to score any moon rocks. We lost that match 87 - 71 with us holding about 13 moon rocks.

The next real unfortunate event came Saturday morning on Archimedes. It was our last match of the day and we were going up against 1 of the 2 undefeated teams in our division 2354. Well I went and connected the controls up as I usually would making sure the cables were out of the way. Long story short somehow the serial cable became disconnected between the end of autonomous and the beginning of tele-op. Thankfully my drivers didn't waste time panicking and listened as I not so calmly told them the cable is unplugged ;). We went on to win the match, but not without much stress.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

I'm sorry if I mentioned 3009. I really meant to say 3007.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Freshman year in 07 we went to the NYC regional. Things were going really well for us when we were selected as the overall 2nd pick. When the 2nd round came by, the next selection was another ring scorer.

We did awesome in the QF's. Won our first SF match with a decently large margin. Then the second match almost right in the beginning, our human player threw a tube onto our flag. We couldn't remove it and we couldn't keep scoring for it would incur a rather large multitube holding penalty. We play defense and wait to just climb the ramps of 522, our alliance captain. We climb the ramps, we are cheering like mad because we think we are in the finals. We then see a referee huddle, and are not happy. The refs make a call that the RAMP we were on, was somehow supported at the bottom by a tube. We took a snapshot of this claim and hushed up not arguing with them (we don't argue calls). We figure if we really deserve to win, we'll win the next match. In the first seconds of teleop in SF match 3, our human player once again, scores a ring on our flag. Needless to say, being the main tube scorer on our alliance, we lost that match. The opposing alliance- a team we started and mentored lol 1302.:o

We showed the picture and match video to the NJ refs the next day, their call: we would have gotten the bonus points if they had been making the call. Being the honorable team they are, 1302 came over to our pit after winning the regional and gave our human player one of their medals, it was his senior year. Its one of the reasons I love mentoring teams, you get to see what nontechnical things they learned from you.

C'est la vie.

Match vids on TBA Semifinals NYC- http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team/11/2007

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

2009(with team 2228):

-We used a fisher price motor for our ground pick up mechanism (basically a conveyer belt with poly cord and wedge top) and we had a couple jams and some breaker trips.

-Once at the Hartford Regional in Coneticutt we accidentally plugged the joysticks into the wrong usb ports so i (co-pilot/shooter mechanism) was driving and our driver was turning our turret. It took us almost the entire match to figure out what was wrong, mainly do to the fact that our traction control wasn't working and the wheels wouldn't turn till i pressed the trigger.

-Also at Hartford we had a communication error with the field (our "guess" seeing it worked fine tethered and our wifi block was on out at the field) and the field hands wouldn't let us back on the field, despite the huge window of time before alliance pickings. As a result we had a greatly deminished chance of being picked, and weren't, because we couldn't prove to the other teams there wasn't a problem with our robot.

2008(with team 1930):

-Last year at Finger Lakes we forgot to plug in power to the left CIM motors so we just spun in place and had a group slap because of this incident.

-Also we ended up having another robot puncture our side plating (32nd inch aluminum just so we had a place to put our sponsors)

-And finally we had a hard hit with another robot and our claw mechanism that knocked of one half of our claw because we forgot to put the final welds on it and it was only tack welded.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

This year we only had one on field failure during a non-practice match. In Match 58 on Curie we were playing the Thunder Chickens. We knew that we'd need to play hard defense to win the match. 60 seconds into the match we held their alliances to 20 points when we hit them head on to help our partner pin them. Apparently we went hit them we jarred our master ground connection loose and the robot died completely.... We still tied the match 58-58.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

well, our robot was fine this season, but i cut my finger open on a moving chain/sprocket. that was a fun way to spend Thursday at nationals. So i went to Atlanta, all ready to play frisbee the whole time, and the first day i injure my throwing finger, and didn't get to play at all. Now, two weeks later, i still don't have full feeling in that finger...

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

Only I would get stung by a wasp while trying to dismantle our pit after the Palmetto regional. I guess that's why they want you to wear gloves; the rogue wasp in Littlejohn Coliseum!:rolleyes:

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

In seeding matches, 3 things killed us:
we had a harvester of pvc pipes on our front with just a thin cardboard like sponsor board, and during auto, playing in the center pos, we rammed into another robot so that their edge hit our harvester, and our harvester fell apart and prevented us from moving (we took a video of our matches from our camera, and you can see it collide with us very hard!) the programmers changed it to turn and then go forward slowly in auto after that
We put in a dead battery (6V?) and crawled
we were downloading the movies from the robot, and we had to go up, so we took the laptop to the staging area, finished, but forgot to plug in our WGA, and our light was BLINK.BLINK.BLINK.BLINK the match as we got scored apon

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

In a semi finals match, in the third match, we had a bad battery and our robot didn't go anywhere.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

During the qualifying rounds at the Arizona Regionals, our robot actually caught on fire! We couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, so we rewired it to see if that would make it stop smoking. Our alliance won that match, but it counted as a loss for our team because we didn't move at all. We found out later that it was our jaguar that caught fire and we didn't have to rewire the robot. Even though we lost that match horribly, we still got chosen by the number 1 seed to move on to the finals. We did awesome in those and ended up winning!

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

WATCHDOG! We kept getting it in the worst matches and we checked and rechecked the code and there wasnt anything wrong with it from what we could tell.

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

We missed all our practice matches and 2 of our qualifications at kettering due the code not permaenatly loading to the robot. Because we were hit so much our gyro got outta whack all the time and the turret was at least 1/4 turn off. during our 1st elim at kettering our DS fried and two PWM's got switched so the turret couldn't move... need I go on this was a rough year for the robot, very few mwchanical problems though:)

Re: A Series of Unfortunate Events
 

In qualification match 57 (about 1:45 into the video, you can see our fan stop spinning), I knocked our competition port loose right as we were getting ready to score. The connector had tape on it to indicate that it was for station number 3 (why I will never know). Anyways the tape prevented us from screwing in the connector, so a little jiggle here, and my hand coming down on the cord knocked it loose. We had to wait what seamed like forever for the DS to restart, then right as it started we took off. I think we scored some, but mostly didn't at the end.