Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Wait a second. You all mean to tell me that you expect to have a specific soccer ball available to you?

Isn't this just another part of the engineering problem? At my company, we have to begin building things before we have everything in house due to contract issues. We have to begin building things before we have test benches set up. We are a development area, so we're constantly looking for the right material for the right job.

And, in my opinion, if you are designing for a single specific soccer ball, you are being too narrow minded in your design. The manual even states that the "...color and surface may vary." Are you going to deflate your ball to various pressures during testing? Are you going to scuff parts of the ball up during testing? While you could, you probably won't.

Just expand your design to cover a range of possibilities and you'll be fine. If required, test one of the smooth, rubber, non-stitched soccer balls like the ones used in Phys. Ed. and one that is a quality competition, stitched soccer ball. If both work, you're design is robust enough to handle any type of soccer ball thrown at it.

Otherwise, good luck finding one in an auction on ebay or through nextag.

indieFan

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Jason, I couldn't agree more. How do we make the best possible design we can, without having any reference whatsoever as to the specifics of the game piece we are playing with. It is not in the kit, it is not in any store, and now, we cannot even get one, even just ONE! And how do we know that this HS500 ball is really the same, without ever having seen an HS300?

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

The issue is with the camera system, a camera can have trouble picking up different colors or reflection patterns

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

I think you're missing the point.

I look at it like ordering car parts. Nothing better than genuine.
Also, the fact that some teams got it and others have a close imitation (or not) is a problem.
I'm sure everyone involved at FIRST try their best to avoid possible issues during build season, but still, the issue should've been addressed to avoid the same thing happening in back to back years.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Hopefully someone who has the exact ball can compare it to some more widely available balls and post to let everyone know. Our team asked all of the kids to bring one from home and we are testing with all of them until we get a chance at a regulation one. So far there has been quite a bit of performance difference between balls, and getting the right pressure is pretty important.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

It would have been nice if FIRST supplied us with at least 1 ball in the KOP like they did with the orbit balls last year.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Let's run with that question: is it supposed to be part of the engineering problem? If that was the idea, why wouldn't FIRST have just said so in the manual, instead of risking the wrath of the teams (again)? Also, FIRST rightly goes to a lot of trouble to publish specifics about the rest of the field—what indication do we have that they intended to make the balls' characteristics difficult to ascertain (by choosing a supplier with limited stock)? And if it was intentional, it would make for a ridiculous policy—isn't the whole point of using soccer balls to take advantage of their ubiquity? (You stand a very good chance of finding a substitute provided that you can get one of the official balls as a basis for comparison.)

What's the point of testing with vastly dissimilar materials? On the playing field, you're just as likely to encounter a bowling ball as a one-piece rubber soccer ball. Can you even be sure that any of the data you collect with a rubber ball is useful?

If all you've got are balls of the wrong type, then feel free to make use of them, fully cognizant of their limitations—but the whole point of this exercise is to find the ones that FIRST specified, in order to optimize the design for real-world operation.

And yes, real-world operation certainly involves scuffed, dirty and/or semi-inflated balls. I would definitely expect to see some of those on the real field, so if I was interested in my design's performance under those conditions, of course I would test them. (Although, for some designs, it might be sufficient to presume that it just won't work for those balls, and ignore the problem.)

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Yes... if a specific soccer ball is defined in the rules and was available to other teams, then it should be available to my team. Check out the rules of the game surrounding what defines a vendor, and a COTS part and it would be reasonable to assume that FIRST would follow their own rules in regard to game pieces.

I don't know whether having access to an HS300 would make our team more competitive or not, but I do know that covering up for a repeated lack of foresight on behalf of the game designers -- who otherwise appear to have done an excellent job this year, as usual -- is not what I define as "part of the engineering challenge". If it were intended to be part of the engineering challenge, then NO ONE should have had access to the offical game piece. I'm not quite sure why guessing at what the real ball might be like should be an interesting engineering challenge for my team, but not for other teams.

And yes, I was planning on buying two balls and testing them at the different circumferences as specified in the game manual, and I can guarantee that surface scuffing will occur during testing. I try to teach the students to be thorough, and account for and control that which can be accounted for and controlled.

Like I say... I don't know that having some teams have access to the official ball while most others do not will be of any real advantage, but I do know that having one of the balls is obviously perceived as an advantage by many, many teams. That's why the part spec was put in the manual, and thats why they're all gone!

I also know that this problem could have been solved by putting one, ten dollar soccer ball into each KoP. Given the orbit ball fiasco from last year, I am surprised to see the same problem showing up again.

Can we work around it? Yeah... Will it be a big deal when the season is all over? Probably not. Am I going to roll up in a coma for the next six weeks muttering "HS300... HS300...", no. Is this a good game regardless of which soccer ball we use... yeah. But could this whole "sold out" mess and perception of inequity (if not actual inequity) have been avoided?

You bet.

Jason

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

I too have played soccer almost from birth and there is definitely a difference between the balls, some have different patch formations, or even have different stitching, but there are two main concerns, the first would be the exterior texture, if you have a more glossy ball then I believe that it would actually come off your foot (or the robot mechanism in this case) slower, probably holding on a little bit tighter because the exterior has more grip and would stick more. The other big problem is the strength of the ball, how well it holds the air and how much force it takes to turn the ball from a spherical shape into an oblong one, basically what effect your robot would have on the structural integrity of the ball.
Also they all have different aerodynamics.

I think all of that is true and makes sense, but please correct me if I am wrong.

And it is kinda weird that FIRST keeps using small vendors, the only good reason I can think of is that there is less chance of the vendor leaking info.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

The simple solution to information control is a non-disclosure agreement between FIRST and the supplier. The same type of agreement that FIRST requires the beta teams to sign before getting the beta systems.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

So this company, which sells out of their entire stock of 1000 balls in one weekend, didn't notice when they got a single order of some 1000 balls to be shipped to NH? (50 events, 20 balls each = 1000 balls. Is 20 even enough?)

I'm sorry, I think this is inexcusable negligence on FIRST's part. Based on further information provided below, I strike that comment. But it appears they didn't make the supplier aware of the magnitude of orders they might expect.

They probably asked for a quote of 1000 balls and took a good price, without asking how many balls would be left in stock after their order was placed.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Well,
1) I don't even think 1000 is enough cause you have one field, a practice field, and then the usual wear and tear replacements.

2) You can't really blame the company. The company probably has sales of 100 balls of that type in a month, and they weren't expecting to sell all 1000 of their stock. And even then, after a month, the company is just going to go back to selling the usual 100 balls per month, so without prior knowledge, there is no way the company could've prepared for this.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

I have made the determination that this is now the only problem with the entire Breakaway game and senerio.

I completely agree - this is inexcusable considering it happened last year at an even much larger scale. However, I'm always inclined to forgive FIRST as they usually realize the problem and make arrangemets to fix it.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Seconded. This is very common practice in the engineering world when you need to have discussions with vendors, potential teammates, etc. without wanting the whole world to know what you are up to. The penalty for violating the terms of the NDA is a lawsuit ($), so breaches of contract are really very rare. Perhaps soccer ball distributors aren't used to establishing NDAs with potential customers, but the FIRST organization surely is. I'm guessing that it's a conscious decision on their part -- but I'm not sure what their reasoning is.

Re: Soccer Ball Sold Out
 

Well hopefully we will see two things out of this:

1) a lesson learned for distribution

2) Co-opertition. As a mentor I hope that teams that were able to order balls this weekend and ordered enough for the entire field setup will offer some of those to other teams so hopefully teams have the opportunity to appropriately test their machines. Yes it is a competition, but its also about remembering what the intent is: to learn.

I am checking to see if our team got an order in on Saturday, to see if we will be able to help out some other teams, and I hope other teams do as well.

Oh and as for the numbers count on how many balls FIRST has, I would guess that yes they have 1000 that they ordered for the competition, but you need to remember, there are not 50 field setups that exist, there might be say 10 or 20 at most, week after week for the competitions FIRST reuses everything. Each site does not get their own pristine field. everything travels in groups and when everything gets packed on the truck to goto the next regional, they make sure they have all the pieces and parts they need or will get those items to the next event in a separate shipment from the FIRST office.