Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

It's discussed on the FIRST forums here: http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=15097. Matt says it's from <G16>, but I think the reasoning is specious at best.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

I've seen this happen in empty goals, so I think there's something else that can cause it.

Regardless, the cause is the same; the ball counter working the wrong way. Every time I've seen it happen it was corrected (either based on the authority of n people other than myself who caught it, or the authority of a volunteer counting the in/out manually).

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

Hey thanks!

Though i have to admit it got pretty hard at times, 8 out of the 16 matches the kicker malfunctioned and stuck out of the robot, blocking the rollers, leaving me with a tiny bit of intake on each side of the kicker to work with.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

There is no standard of inspection for breaking the plane
in the rules, other than to eyeball the plane. When robots
are suspended from the top it is easy to eyeball the plane.
Eyeballing the plane is difficult for robots that hang on the
vertical pole if they slip down the pole and make contact
with the plane, removing the air gap that would otherwise
exist.

The lower hanging clamp on our robot was clearanced the
day earlier in order to produce a more reliable latch on the
top clamp, given the bump in the carpet as you approach
the tower that we had not replicated in testing at our
shop. This produced the angle for the lower clamp.
We added "feet" of 1 inch box tubing, but neglected to make
sure that these feet did not extend past the platform. The
head ref made the right call in the elimination match and
clearly paid a lot of attention to this issue during the
eliminations as would be expected once it was realized
just how tough this particular call is. The earlier call
that "missed" the problem is not relevant to making
the correct call in the elimination matches.

The best alliance won SVR and the alliance that eliminated
our alliance earned their move up the elimination ladder.
It is as simple as that.
We move on to the Sacramento regional next and we will
most certainly have re-worked our hanging clamp to remove
this issue, among other re-works that are also in order.

See you guys at Sacramento!

Eugene

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

All in all this was a great event! I had an awesome time.

Thanks to our alliance partners 1868 and 675.

The 675 crew is really cool. :cool: Very enthusiastic and dedicated group of people. It was an honor to play with you guys again. Too bad we never got up the ramps. Ah well, there's always CalGames. I think I drove everyone on my team crazy with that cowbell you gave me. :p

Also thanks to 1868 for the pick! Robot was a good striker, and a tough machine.

I was very proud of the way our alliance performed in the finals. Despite the odds, we managed to tie the red alliance in the first match and put up high scores in the following matches.

Team 971 is pretty amazing. Their robot is proof that good ball control is the key to winning. Even without a functioning kicker or a hanger they were able to easily score 10+ points single handedly. Congrats guys.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

We were honored that you accepted our pick! We really, really wanted to be on an alliance with you given your team attitude and technical aptitude.

I have to say, this was an incredible event. If you had told me my first year, when our robot could barely move, that one day we would be team captains for 3rd alliance, pick the legendary team 100, and almost beat 254 in finals.... I wouldn't have paid attention.

I wish they would give "Most Spirited Alliance" Awards instead of just team ones. We would've won for sure. Congratulations for the win at San Diego and have a great time at Championships! We wish we could join you. :)

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

Are there any pictures of the Poofs or 971 floating around? I'm dying to see them.

Video would also be more than acceptable. :D

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

No problem, Scooter.

:p

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

P.S. 971's last 3 qual's, the drive Jaguars fried and the robots performance was very unimpressive. Luckily 254 gave us Victors to replace with for the Drivebase CIMs.

(i would watch out for those jag's if i were you)

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

darn programmers....:rolleyes:

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

Scott you were on fire out there! Sad to see that the kicker wasn't fully functional, but I'm confident the team will get that working by championships (and the other collector too, hopefully).

Loved the Poof's bot too, and they're only going to get better...I predict they'll get 2-3 in auto consistently by champs, and hang even faster (if that's possible).

And how about 649? I can't believe they lasted all the way back around with they way they were driving and the defense they played. A steal of a pick, and the perfect partner to round out that alliance.

Big congrats to MVRT 115 on the RCA. I don't know you guys all that well, but it sounded well deserved.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

We on 649 actually had a similar problem, and were forced to switch to victors Saturday morning. We were worried our poor performance wouldn't get us picked, but thank you 971 and 254 for picking us, despite are total lack of offense.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

The jaguars didn't exactly break. They would work intermittently, which is in some ways worse. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was. Scott was noticing that the problem was getting worse and worse as the qualification matches went on. We finally correlated that during a match, Scott hit the wall and pushed against it in high gear for a tiny bit to grab a ball. When he tried to back up, one drive side immediately started acting up. It seemed like the Jags had trouble with the momentary high current draw that was caused by pushing against the wall, and then waited for a second or two before coming back to life. So, we'll be using Victors in our drivetrain and with our other high current motors from now onwards.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

This is a designed feature of the Jaguars. They have an overcurrent fault protection built in that will trip before the 40A breakers will. The fault automatically clears after 3 seconds.

The Jaguars are rated for 40A continuous, 60A for 2 seconds and 100 peak.

Re: 2010 Silicon Valley Regional
 

This issue plagued us (649) all of Friday, with our wheels locking up when we rapidly changed directions. We limited our max speed in code for the last round on Friday to reduce current draw before swapping out swapping out for Victors Saturday morning.

We put on a decent performance after that for our last three qualifying matches. Given our trouble moving cleanly for the first seven, it's not much of a surprise if any team found us risky as an alliance pick.

(We also had a rather embarrassing issue: a metal staple found its way into our digital sidecard, occasionally shorting it out. Oops... Thanks to Kiet of 254 for finding it and pulling it out for us. It was jammed in there good.)

Anyway, IMO, a more proper solution to this would have been to limit how fast the motor could change speed in software, instead of swapping to Victors.