2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Week one is fast approching and I thought I'd get the ball rolling on the disscussion for Peachtree.

Any teams planning anything special for the social?
Any thoughts or predictions about how the competition will play out?
Any pre-event pics for those scouts out there?;)



Peachtree Regional website

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

I can't say much,but I know that my team will be hosting the Social this year so hopefully all of that turns out well. :D I encourage everyone to attend. We're looking at having the massive commons, the theater, and the gym open for the social. We're even thinking of getting some inflatables.


As for the actual competition, apparently it's crazy packed this year, so I'm definitely looking forward to meeting all of the teams.

Predictions are a bit sketchy, but usuals always come into mind.

1746 has placed #1 in 2007 and 2009, and it's only a matter of time before they come away with a win.

1771 has had extremely strong robots for the past two years, and I believe this year will be no exception. Look for them to place strong and with a pinch of luck, come away with a win.

342 makes a strong showing as well as 832, 1319, and 2415.

Look for one of these teams to be standing when the dust has settled come Saturday afternoon.

There are *11* rookie teams at the event. That constitutes roughly 1/5 of all of the teams attending. A pretty staggering number IMO.

Week one regionals are the most interesting because they are the most watched and judged. I think that it'll be interesting to see that come week 1, who's building in their pits and who's running practice matches.

EDIT: Tanner, it's official.

It's up on gafirst website. http://gafirst.org/index.php?option=...2&It emid=151

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As much as I know, the social will be hosted at Peachtree Ridge High School. Connie and our teacher mentor have been discussing it for a while, but I'm not sure if the word it out yet.

I'm sure the regional will be awesome, but that's more of a reason for us to make it awesome!

Edit: And Sunny beats me to it. I knew that would happen if I waited...

-Tanner

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I do not think the cat has been let our of the bag yet on the social....well i guess it did in this thread:rolleyes: :D

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It's on the GAFIRST website. Not much, but it's there.

-Tanner

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1379 will be at peachtree :) we missed everybody last year!

the only teasers we have up so far are on the CD photo gallery :p

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Team 1002 the Circuit Runners will be there (I'm still crossing my fingers for getting to see our robot work).

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Team 2655 will be there again this year. I can't wait to see all of the friends we made last year.

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Did anyone get video of the scrimmage? Come on guys, 12 days till Peachtree and it's too quite. Plus, my scouting sheet looks pretty empty:rolleyes: .

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Quiet*

And scrimmage was definitely interesting. Not many teams seemed to be interested in hanging. Quite a few mecanum drivers an a couple of decent kickers.

And an empty scouting sheet means a busy Thursday. :D

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We would have loved to come to the scrimmage, but we had several wheel setbacks (as well as 2 snow Saturdays ...in GA?) So we were still working at 8:30 last night. Looking good now though, just a few tweaks this afternoon and then pack it up. I wish we weren't playing week 1 though.....

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Wow. We were really disappointed to see that 1771 and 1746 weren't there. :'(

We're a little scared of the week 1 regional too, but total panic hasn't hit us...yet.

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I wish my team 442, Redstone Robotics could be there but we kinda decided to go to Orlando's regional, but hope you guys luck!

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343 is not making the trip to peachtree this year... but i was wondering if there was a webcast that anyone knew of that i could watch it at home.

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O.K., so no Looking Forward post this year:( . So what are your "looking forward" thoughts about Peachtree and week 1?

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*tired*

How about that social? I certainly had more fun, spite not singing in RockBand.

-Tanner

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hm...

Well the social definitely was fun. I don't how other teams felt since we were kinda loose since it was our campus, but with everything to do, it was definitely poppin.

The regional is definitely going interesting.

The robots that seem to have success are the ones that can quickly run the ball to a goal, or push a ball into a goal. The seeding system is really weird, and don't count on the best robot walking away with the trophy. Defense is so heavy in this game, I wouldn't doubt that a couple of "ball pushers" walk away with the win.

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Congrats to the winning alliance!! This regional was very entertaining to watch!

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Well, here's my reply to P'tree.

We spent all of Friday trying to get our suction cups to work, and we got them working early Saturday, and we had a couple of really good matches. In finals, the precision it took to line up the cups proved to be too much as we were barely able to score when heavily defended.

I can also say that I was surprised by how the game ultimately turned out. Strong kickers like 1771 and a couple of others, were defeated by "plowers" with mecanum drives that would easily push balls into goals. (1466 and 34 mastered this move)

The above is a bit..."disappointing." Or, it definitely did not seem like it would go this way. Granted that pushers like 1466 did need kickers to kick balls back into the close zone, but scoring 4 balls in a qual. round is pretty good.

P'tree went well, and I guess I learned something about this game that my team will take into Palmetto.

- Sunny

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Congratulations to Team 2415 - The WiredCats for winning the Peachtree Regional Chairman's Award! I'm proud to say I've worked with them in the past, and they are truly a great group of kids :) Go Cats!

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34 not moving was a disappointment. Everyone on every side of the field wanted to play an even match, and 34 was the highlight of the opposing alliance. I think it's unfortunate that it happened, on the fourth match of best of 3.

That said, congratulations to the Red Alliance! 1771's doing pretty awesome so far!

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That was a tense finals. All the teams that made it were great. Lots of fun and hope to see ya'll again.

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Very long finals. Congratulations to both alliances. You both fought hard and well for several ties.

I'm not sure how the refs/crew came to the conclusion for the final match, but I do think it was unfair to the alliance. I don't know what they should've done, but I just think it was slightly unfair. 'Twas just a very special situation and yeah.

Congratulations to all the teams who won awards. And a little shout out to GSMST (3318) for winning Rookie All-Star, congrats.

-Tanner

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A couple of observations:

a) 1311 is sort of in the 'we are not worthy category' on the issue of being a finalist there. There are some really great teams out there.

b) The last game was so lopsided it would have been much nicer to 'lose' in a close exciting match than the circumstances there.

c) It was fun, it was great. We are thrilled to have had a chance to participate in the finals.

Congratulations to CA winner 2415. Congrats to all the regional winners !!! Congrats to the record number of rookie teams and we are looking forward to seeing you again next year.

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As I told the teams on alliance 3, I was pleased with the outcome, but unhappy at the way it occurred. After being on the other end of eerily similar events last year in the quarterfinals, I can certainly sympathize with your frustration. I don't know why 34 didn't work the last match, any more than we knew why our alliance partner didn't work last year. It was ruled a robot fault in both instances. As the saying goes, sometimes the breaks go your way, sometimes they go against you. Fortunately, last year, the team took the loss as a challenge not a defeat, and raised $5,000 in less than two weeks to get into another regional, and won that regional. Disappointment and frustration can be very motivating.

Congratulations to alliance three on a hard fought battle, and we look forward to see all of you again, if not in Atlanta, then next year at Peachtree.

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In regards to the final match of the day, I can't say I'm happy with what happened. But it is what it is. Both alliances had great robots, and I wish we had gotten to see a real match occur in the end.

I was one of the team members in the question box, and this is what we were told by the refs and other staff. What happened to our robot was something of a "freak accident". The main breaker somehow slipped out of place by fractions of fractions of an inch. Never in my 3 years in FRC had I seen something like that occur. For team 34, they had 12 volts showing on their battery for the very beginning of the match. Then it died. It was a battery borrowed from the field, so we were all thinking there was something defective with the battery. The field staff said that because it had shown power at the begining it had to have been an issue on the robot. Would have been nice to let us check the voltage on the battery after the match to solve the mystery, but it'll just remain that way I guess. We could have gone on forever out there and never gotten anywhere, so thats that.

Anyways, congratulation to all the winners out there. It was a fun 3 days.

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The Field management system keeps a log of data coming from the Drivers Station (classmate) and the robot. Those logs were reviewed for both teams that had issues in the final match. There was nothing in those logs that pointed to any kind of field error. Both robots had steady battery voltage throughout the match (all 135 seconds). The battery from 34 was later removed and tested. It still showed a full charge. What was relayed to me later was that it was apparently a failure of the main breaker. My own team has had some experience this year with the main breakers not actuating properly.

We do not have the luxury of rerunning matches until we get a result that has nothing whatsoever to do with robot parts failing. Would you also want to rerun a match when a robot breaks a chain 2 seconds into autonomous? Perhaps the biggest difference there is that no one would claim field failure when a mechanical part breaks.

For those that think that gracious professionalism should extend to the beneficiary of these failures calling for an extra match, where's the professionalism in not accepting the very best efforts of the volunteers who do their very best to run the event as fairly as possible? We'd all like to see every match decided with all robots performing at their best, but sometimes that doesn't happen and we have to accept it. Graciously.

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Concerning the final match between alliance 1 and 3 ...........

The field did not fail. Unfortunately the main breaker on our robot did ......

I've seen this several times before concerning other teams, but this time it bit us. Our robot turned on just fine and connected properly to the FMS but one second into autonomus, communications was lost. The 120 Amp breaker opened up (not tripped) when the significant current started flowing (because we turn on our drive motors during autonomus).

I'm proud of our team, our robot, and especially our drive team. I would only change one thing if I could ............... that dang breaker. ;)

This is a somewhat common problem so be warned. It could happen to you next time .......

Congrats to alliance #1. We'll meet again next year. :D

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Ed,
Too late to check now, but the breaker does have a failure mode that that prevents high current flow but appears normal otherwise. As a test, if the red button is tapped lightly and the breaker opens or becomes intermittent, the internal contacts are out of alignment.
There are also issues if the mounting/frame should flex, small cracks in the case develop. I have seen cracks pull the internals out of alignment.

Do you still have the breaker?

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Al, is this misalignment more likely to occur this year with the violent impacts caused by bump traversal?

I might be adding something to our pre-match checklist...

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What a regional!

I would first like to express the amazing professionalism that the mentors have expressed in this thread. Martin Wilson (1771) and Ed Sparks (34) are showing just what this is about. Ironically, Martin won the Woodie Flowers Award last year, and our team "broke", and now Ed has incurred the same fate. Might there be a Woodie's curse?....(insert spooky sound here).

It was very different having the first weekend of matches this year. Thank you and congrats so much to the volunteers, refs and judges for your patience with our teams while we knew you were learning too.

Congrats to all involved, but especially to our new partner/mentee GSMST, Team 3318 for their Rookie All-Star Award!!
Also from our school district, Gwinnett County: 1379 winning the Industrial Design for the sexiest bot, 1261 with an inaugural Dean's List winner. 3 awards and a regional win for our school system is pretty cool!

See you at the Dome!

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Yep, It's still on our robot (but not for long). It's mounted on a piece of 1/4" polycarbonate that spans two frame struts. I doubt that the breaker had a chance to flex but I'll check things out when it gets home.

Thanks!

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Breaker failures are not unknown. There were several reported in last year. We even had one that was caught before ship date.

Absolutely - kudos to the volunteers !! They made the best call they could. Especially it being a week one event !!!!!

1771 / 1466 / 1683 flat out had the best game in town next to our b-list robot. We build robots like Georgia Tech does football. Pretty good but not good enough. 1771 rolls into the Peachtree like Alabama or Texas football. Definitely on their game.

Super congrats to the winning alliance. I wish we could have made it a little more tense and closer finish. Enjoy the win.

Our breaker is on the bot and shipping to North Carolina. We are going to replace it. We can bag it for someone to look at or we can take a look at it ourselves. Are you interested in looking at it ? Do you want to see it in Atlanta?

The Dean's List thing is something that concerned me (because of the short notice) but my fears evaporated when the winners were announced. The Dean's List winners are outstanding !! I got to spend some time with one of them at a previous engagement. Outstanding indeed !! Gwinnett county did great and also congrats to CircuitRunners for producing an EI and a Dean's List'er. In their 3rd year of existance and a TON of work Westminster 2415 bagged a Chairman's - Congratulations -well deserved !!

And super Congratulations to Ed Sparks for the WFFA. I was surprised to learn that he was not a prior recipient. Congrats indeed !

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On the breaker, we should start a different thread in Electrical I think. The breaker problem I have seen in the past is due to a manufacturing error. As the parts are resistance welded, one of the contacts is welded out of alignment. Since the breaker is a bi-metal disk formed in a particular way to stay in contact until heated, this misalignment has changed it's shape. Although it passes testing, slight vibration causes the breaker contacts to separate. As a defect, the problem exists from the very beginning so a breaker that has made it through several matches and practice does not fall into this category. These breakers all fall subject to the tapping of the release button.
The base structure of the breaker is bakelite or similar material. If a crack develops in the base, the parts pull out of alignment inside the breaker and it becomes subject to electrical failure with movement. Hard hits to the robot frame coming off the bump could damage the breaker. Ed Sparks, I doubt a breaker mounted on polycarbonate could be damaged in this way but hardware may have been over tightened or something could have hit the breaker. In reading over the thread again, it was posted that the robot never stopped monitoring +12 volts throughout the match, so I am confused as to the report of a bad breaker.
Ed Barker and others, you can easily open a suspect breaker by drilling through the rivets that hold it together. This will reveal the internal contacts and spring action. If you find something interesting, I would like to see it in Atlanta.

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I've seen students tighten the mounting bolts so much that the housing of the breaker cracks. This makes me think we could be causing the problem ourselves. I'd like to see some more info ont he best tests for these to weed out potential problem breakers. Perhaps this is something that inspectors could also look for.

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So it looks like 34 and 1311 both had a main breaker failure on the last match of the finals. What are the odds? There's gonna be a lot of nervous teams in future finals. :ahh:

I'll put future comments on this into the "new thread" when I have some credible data and I will definately disect the culprit when it arrives back in Alabama.

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Al, when I walked up to the robot after the match, there was absolutely no power on the 'bot. I believe the 12v statement was in error or perhapse true when the FMS first linked (before autonomus). The FMS guys told me that the log shows a disconnect in the 1st second of autonomus. I'm 99.99% sure it was breaker failure.

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Ed,
I reread the post from Alex on page 2. He said you had power at the beginning of the match but then failed. He also mentioned you had a field provided battery? Is it possible we are looking at the wrong part? Bad battery, cable or connector?

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Congrats to everybody for an intense three days! I can definitely say I hope we never have to attend another week 1 regional...:p

Congrats to the inaugural members of Dean's List, Team 1311 for KPC and B Entrepreneurship, and Team 1002 for winning EI for the third year in a row! Also congrats to 3318, 1379, 1771, and 1261 (we Gwinnett-ians have to stick together, right? I'm a Norcross kid at heart :D)

Thanks to everyone for their help and support! We were having a ton of robot problems, but received many very appreciated offers of help. Huge thanks to 832 and 2974 for picking us as their alliance partner!!!

Concerning matches: I can't say I watched the last match where this controversy occurred...however, whatever happened happened. There was one instance where we too had to accept a ruling many people thought somewhat unfair, but we're looking forward to the North Carolina Regional where we can compete against some of these awesome teams again!

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Al,

It's true that we used a field battery so I suppose I cannot completely rule battery or connector failure out. We apparently had full voltage at linkup and then nothing 3 minutes later. I'm still leaning to the breaker. I actually saw this breaker failure happen to another team on Friday (I was on the field as an inspector/troubleshooter).

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Team 2655 had a great time at Peachtree!
We would like to thank 281 for picking us for their alliance parter, 1379 for being a great second alliance partner.
You guys made our day!
We would also like to thank 2751 for helping us fix our cRio. Thank you so much for volunteering your time!
Also a big thank you to all the judges and volunteers that were very patient with us as we worked through our various robot problems.
Congratulations to 2415 for winning the Chairman's Award and to 1002 for Engineering Inspiration.
As always, you all are awesome!
Also, congratulations to the finalists and winners. Those last few matches were the most exciting of the whole tournament.
Looking forward to North Carolina and perhaps less technical difficulties!

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congratulations to 1771, 1466, and 1648 on taking the regional!

also congrats to 3318 on Rookie All-Star! we hope to work with you guys next year too!

congratulations to 2415 on their chairman's win! you guys have coem a long way in such a short time, keep it up!

A big thank you to 281 and 2655 for picking us to be on the 8th alliance with them, we had a great time!

and a congratulations to my own team on taking the Industrial Design Award!
by mid-day saturday, the judges had informed us they had nicknamed our robot "the smart car one" :cool:

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I just reread the post also. His comment about a 'field' battery has to be in reference to team 34 and if I were a good lawyer I'd classify it as hearsay. I'd prefer to defer to Ed Sparks et. al on their battery supply.

Regarding the ref statement about 12 volts - I'm with you there. I don't know how you get a good telemetry stream stating you have 12 volts and then can state there is no power to the robot. I'm NOT throwing the volunteers under the bus. They made their call and I'm good with that. But it don't make sense.

We can't do our assessment until April 1st in Raleigh. I'll quarantine the part and meet you in Atlanta. I don't want to open it until you have had a chance to see the part.

I absolutely don't believe we had a battery problem. We spent a fortune on a new 10 bay Deltran charger and had a total of 6 brand new batteries in our fleet plus 4 from last year. And a couple of students working on power management. We played ONE match per battery the entire weekend. The battery would come out and straight back to the charger. I know it isn't optimal for the battery but we can deep cycle them after the event. Even with all that effort we don't have the S/N on the battery for the failed match. We need to improve that.

One issue we need to inspect is a loose connector to the PD or power switch. That is an open question in addition to the potential defect on the switch.

Don't you love it - great great training ground for the students !!

"Just because it looks like a robot doesn't mean it is a robot." - Ed Barker

Al, BTW - I got drafted as a rookie barely useful robot inspector under the fine tutelage of Ed Sparks. I didn't get to put as much into it as I would have liked but hopefully it helped out. I think I'd like to volunteer to help out in Raleigh. Who do I talk to?

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Ed,
You were trained by one of the best. If you would like to help out, go to VIMS and sign in for Raleigh. If they have open positions they will contact you. If you work there and like it as much as Ed and I like it, we might need some inspectors in Atlanta.
Do you know what the charge current on the multibay charger is? These batteries get really upset if you charge at over 6 amps. I suspected early on in the build that battery damage from falling off the bumps and other rough handling would be a problem. As you know I want to find a smoking gun on problems like this.

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As one of those FMS guys poring through the logs, I think (and will verify with FIRST) that the battery voltage being reported is not actually coming from the robot but instead from the classmate. I now think the classmate is reporting the last known voltage it saw. The FMS shows the change in status pretty much immediately when the robot loses its link to the field. At the scorekeeper table, we're constantly monitoring this and when we see it, send the FTA to look more closely. Sometimes it is obvious. When we suspect an issue, we try to get someone to pass the word to the team to look at likely causes. There are a lot of electrical connections on current FIRST robots where any one bad connection can take you down for a few seconds or an entire match.

The match could not have started with the breakers on 34 or 1311 being open. Something clearly happened to both.

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Ray,
The voltage monitor should be coming from the stream of data passing from the robot. To use something from the Classmate seems counter productive to trouble shooting. Since the voltage monitor is the jumper on the Crio analog module, it is passed as data from the Crio to the wireless bridge. It is not essential to Crio operation but does give the field monitors some additional life blood data to help trouble shoot problems. Unfortunately, there are a variety of issues that can cause this loss in the data stream. Only one of which is a total power supply failure.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Al, I have no doubt that you are right. What I'm saying is that the classmate, upon losing the link to the robot, continues to report the last known battery voltage to the FMS log. In my opinion, it should instead report something like 'Unknown', since it clearly doesn't have that data. Thus when we say that based on the FMS logs, the battery retained its voltage throughout the match, we're being at best misleading. With FMS lite we should be able to test that.

The FMS logs in the match at question did show the robot link being lost to the robots in question during autonomous, but not simultaneously. There are many reasons the robot link might fail. We've seen ethernet cables come unplugged and cRios get jostled enough to make a bad power connection drop out and force a reboot as two examples. One is possibly recoverable during the match, the other not. I'm wondering if there was enough startup current draw to pop the main breaker on a robot that was going for its fourth match in about 30 minutes.

And by the way, I am learning something new today - from you and the others in this thread.

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Ray,
To be sure the log showed a drop of communication but continued to show a voltage? That is certainly misleading.

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Al,

RE: chargers
People tend to choose a faster charger when they really need more smaller chargers. It is my understanding that the batteries for FRC like to be charged at their sweet spot of about 2 amps. So we bought more batteries. I think the economics support that in terms of battery life, performance, and cost per charger channel. Or at least that is my theory.

It is the Deltran 10 bay 2 amp charger. Available from dealers everywhere. We got ours here. Deltran PN 021-0134.

RE: telemetry
In my business the issue of what a downstream telemetry link does with bad data is a common discussion. But in this application it seems like it is clearly a 'range telemetry' type of problem. Therefore the classmate should report what is happening at this timecode and not what happened a while ago. I'm clearly speculating but I'm guessing that the FMS system is polling for data without the benefit of timecode info from the classmate ??????? I'm guessing but inquiring minds want to know.

RE: inspection
I will look into the Raleigh thing. I cannot do Atlanta as I will be getting hammered with other obligations.

Ed

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Thanks to all that helped make Peachtree a success. We had our issues but finished with some nail biting elimination matches. It was unfortunate to end the last match without having all robots functional but such is life.

Team 1848 (SOUP) would like to thank 34 for their great offense up front and 3139 for their great defense. With us in the middle feeding balls forward we were a great team. Thanks to 1311 for filling in at the last minute.

The #1 alliance had some great robots and are deserving of their win. Unfortunately we won't be seeing you for FRC at the Championships but hopefully next year.

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Hopefully we can now move on to other cool things at Peachtree. What else was cool?

How about when 590 hung for the first time?
How about when Oscar threw up his battery? (Sorry, but it went immediately to long term memory for me.)
How about when 1261 shot completely down the field in autonomous? (Sorry, once again, ingrained.)

I truly believe Coopertition was epitomized with our Elims trio. I loved the timed autonomous shots of 1771, then 1683, then 1466 pushing them home. Granted, I think the most we saw was 2, maybe 3, but the point was the teamwork. Okay, maybe it was cooperation, not coopertition (they really need to get an emoticon for a Copyright for that "coopertition" thing here), but it was excellent communication and solution.

Great tournament GAFIRST!!

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Just a reminder: If you're going through Peachtree withdrawl NASA has many matches online at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/frc-peachtree-regional/v3.

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Oh I'm so going down in history for that this year... That's what I get for moving the speed from 20% to 100% when also changing when it turns on. Doi! Our alliance partners weren't too happy afterwards though, but at least you have to say it was the most surprising autonomous done. :P

Seeing robots climb is still awesome to me.

I don't remember who the team was who pushed three balls in at the final match, but I quite liked that moment (spite whatever call was made for the scoring). 'Twas very lucky and exciting to watch.

*goes to see if I can find that autonomous on ustream*

-Tanner

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God...that was..."scary" to say the least. Our autonomous composed of charging the kicker, and I was getting bored of that, so I convinced our programmer to code something basic, even if that meant going forward. Unfortunately it went backwards. I remember thinking "CRAP IT'S GOING OVER A BUMP...it's ok...it'll stop...CRAP IT'S GOING OVER THE SECOND BUMP."

We also managed to damage 2566(One of our alliance partners for that round) and I do apologize for that.

The one time that 590 got itself up, it looked to me like they were all over the ball track, which I thought was an immediate DQ...

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It was team 34 during the first match of the Finals. 34 was pushing 2 balls but a third ball kicked by SOUP rolled up our top plate and dropped in a split second before we got to the goal. You can find the video on the "Blue alliance" website. I've watched it 10 times in disbelief. :cool:

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There are matches on TBA? I don't see any matches with video on my end.

-Tanner

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Just as our robot was working again... :ahh:
Ah well. Our media guy got a nice video of it.

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Can you please link the blue alliance page? From what I see, they don't have any videos of P'tree from this year.

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http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5239242

It starts near 00:06:30.

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Wow, I just watched that again. I didn't realize that we kicked that one over you and in.

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It bounces behind us, lands on our top plate and rolls to the front. Good thing it had some velocity on it ! So cool ....... :cool:

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Is the video of 1261 shooting across the field up?

If so, which video is it? (I don't really want to sift through hours of video. :P)

Edit: Found it just as I posted.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5207857/highlight/54230

Made a little highlight thing for it, when I found it.

So, remember kids - always (and I mean always) make sure you've got your negatives and positives in the right place.

-Tanner

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Ed,
The end of finals match 1 was more epic than you know. My video shows Team 34 pushes 3 balls into the goal in addition to 1848's midfield shot that bounced on your back.

That's 4 balls scored as time expires! WOW.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

that was very cool. I also wanted to see the bot that grabbed a corner of the tower succeed at elevating.

That is what I love most about the Peachtree. Seeing cool things done by students. Meeting up with my regional friends. Celebrating accomplishment, especially those that aren't reflected in final matches. And the final matches are always the best.

And then there's the party after the truck is finally loaded. That's not to be missed.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Ray, That was Flash 1319. Stop by a visit us a Palmetto. I hope to see you there.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

The FMS team station log is just recording the messages the Classmate/DS is sending FMS, i.e. the Classmates pushes the messages to FMS just like the FIRST DS did last year. There's a message every ~100ms. Therefore FMS is just recording what the Classmate sends it, if the Classmate is reporting voltage at comm loss, its something the NI firmware guys would have to correct. The log has the match timer in it so you can tell exactly when FMS recieved the Team Station message.

I'll bring this up at the post week one meetings tomorrow....

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Sweeeeeeet .......... :D

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Thanks for getting back on this. Seems like what needs to happen is to report in with packets every 100ms and if there is comm loss then set a comm loss flag of some type or null the data. Then it would be clear on the FMS log.

Good luck with your conference call.

Thanks,
Ed

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

OK Mike, for coolness factor, how about getting all those teams through inspection on Friday? Before we were allowed in on Friday morning, they made an announcement that fewer than 50% of the teams had passed inspection, and to please lend aid to help other teams. I walked through the pits to help out, and found that I couldn't tell who's pit was who. There were sometimes people from 3 or 4 different teams in one pit helping them get ready. I guess I was slow, because I couldn't find a team that need more help than they already had. That is coopertition!

As for my coolest moment, it had to be our second semifinal match. Not because we won, but this was the only time during the competition (or any FIRST competition in my experience) where everything went exactly as planned. Autonomous did exactly what we wanted it (all three teams, it looked like a ballet performance) The drivers all drove to perfection, nothing broke, the other team played well, no penalties, no hard feelings... I didn't feel like I needed to throw up afterwards....

Anyway, as poor as the camera work is, here is a highlight reel of that match.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Thanks for sharing the issue. Last year, team 1795 was out of commission for 4 matches due to communications problems with the competition field. We tried to diagnose the problem Friday night after the qualification matches ended on the competition field to no avail. Right as we were about to pull out of the field, on a whim, we pulled out the solenoid module from our CRIO which mysteriously solved the problem and we were able to play a few rounds on Saturday. Robotics can be a tough game!

On behalf of team 1795 I too congratulate all the winners and thank to our fellow competitors at the Peachtree Regional for their gracious professionalism.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Hey there everyone. This is my first post on this forum. I am a mentor for team 3139, Oxford Omega. The Peachtree Regionals were awesome. They were more exciting than I had ever expected. The social on Friday night was very fun as well. One of our kids got me to race him 3 times through the bouncy obstacle course! I think I'm, getting too old to be doing those things.

Congratulations to 1466, 1771 and the 3rd team that won the finals (sorry, can't remember your number)!!!

To our alliance members (team 34, 1848 and fill ins 1311), thanks you all for putting your faith in a rookie team to join your alliance for the finals. I hate it for everyone that we had our issues. We had bought 2 new batteries for the regionals and we used one earlier in the day and were saving the last one up for the last match. Unfortunately, when we wired the positive and negative wires to the batteries, we crossed them and it caused us to fry all of our Jaguars when we turned the breaker on! Rookie mistake!! I guess you learn from your mistakes...

I am planning on making it to the finals at the Dome next month and hope to see some of you there.

Again, I had an awesome time and can't wait for next year. Thanks again to everyone who helped us along the way and who we met up with over the weekend; it was all well worth it!

Zach

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Of course, I remember the yellow now. We will be there. Hopefully we'll see you successfully elevate. Our team has some interesting new ideas they hope to implement. We had a lot of fun at Clemson last year and hope to have even more this year.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Don't feel bad. I know of a veteran team that had to buy new radios on consecutive days because the team members forgot and wired the power cable to the 30 amp breaker. Twice.

One has already been made into a trophy.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

I hope one of you local guys will post a link to the video from FOX5 when it's available.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Consider it done.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

That would be the combined efforts of the SOUPer driver and the awesome driver on team 34! :P

Anyways, I would like to say thank you to both of my alliance partners and the fill-in alliance. Y'all made those finals great, it was a pleasure to work with/drive with y'all. I hope to see y'all (and possibly drive with you) again next year.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

We are team 1683, Techno Titans.


Special Thanks to our teammates, 1466 and 1771.


We will see you guys at the Georgia Dome.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

I would also like to thank our alliance teams 1466 and 1771 for their outstanding performance and I can not wait to meetup at the dome.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

To Ed Sparks and ALL team members of #34 the Rockets

What a thrill it was to go head to head defense against such a quick and magnificent machine!! As stated in previous posts, even at the buzzer the scores were up in the air. You've got an excellent team and I can tell that your mentors are extraordinary; (congratulations on the Regional Woodie Flowers award). Thanks for the great competition. Thanks to our alliance partners team 1466 Webb Robotics and 1771 N Gwinnett HS.

ONE did you notice moment at Peachtree; the winning alliance of 1466, 1771 and 1683 did pull off a fairly unique trick during the autonomous game in one of the matches in the semis- I believe. Each robot scores one goal in autonomous; 1771 kicks, rolls out of the way; 1683 kicks far court; then 1466 rolls the third one in. Great coordination red alliance.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

More thanks from 1683 to our alliance partners, 1466 and 1771, and to all competing teams for making this year's Peachtree such an exciting event.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Thanks for sharing this highlight video -- reminds us of a kamikaze autonomous mission we unintentionally set out on in our rookie year back in 2005 where we drove a beautiful arc all the way across the field and accidentally rammed an opponent robot at high speed and practically stuffed it into a goal. (However, from watching it on video, it sure looked intentional! Ironically enough, the robot we practically destroyed in autonomous ended up picking us during alliance selections to play defense...)

However, at the end of the 1261 runaway autonomous, the referee is waving a flag for the red alliance -- was a penalty actually given, and, if so, for what?

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Hehe. In 2006, our team had a alliance partner who would sacrifice themselves in autonomous mode to prevent a opposing team from disturbing out autonomous program.

I do believe a penalty was given on our alliance for having two of our alliance's robots in the far zone.

-Tanner

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Ah, that does make sense -- didn't think of that penalty in this circumstance -- I'm simply glad to hear the penalty wasn't for "field damage" or anything of the sort.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Hehe, yes. I believe that was the last thing going through our driver's head.

-Tanner

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Or our programmer's head for that case. But anyways, we were quick to get out of the zone and try to make our offensive assault.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

That was one of the few matches I got to watch from the stands in between our matches. I remember thinking "where are they going?.....wait, another bump?...... I don't think that's what Tanner had in mind..... ooohhh that's gonna hurt..."

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Thank you! We had a blast. I've never seen a finals quite like that before. You guys were tough and very deserving of #1 (We'll get 'ya next year :) ).

I had a very memorable weekend. Finalist, WFFA, Motorola Quality Award, and best of all, I became a grandfather the same weekend. Happy birthday Elaina Mckenzie Johnson !

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

congrats to 2415 for the Chairmans award and congrats to 1002 for EI. If I counted right, that is 1002's 4th EI in 3 years.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Congratulations again Ed!

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Could someone help me out with the team number for the second Dean's List winner? I know Tanner is from 1261, I don't know what team Kyle is from.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

Kyle is from 1002.

Re: 2010 PEACHTREE REGIONAL
 

That was speedy. Thank you very much!