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A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel Before reading this just know that I am proud of the FRC community in Israel, and I think we could have the best regional in the world.
Practice games
Disqualifying a team without checking what really happened
1. According to FIRST spirit no sirens are permitted in the stadium or megaphones. The noise some teams created uses these instruments could impact the hearing quality of people. 2. In the first day only one entrance to the stadium was opened. Only after we asked they opened in the third day a second entrance (This was again one of the requested I mentioned in the meeting from 2009 to improve the regional). |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
This is not a rhetorical question, and it's not necessarily directed only to the OP.
Is there anything anyone outside Israel can do to help fix the systemic failures described here? |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
Excellent post. Not being there, I can't be entirely sure of what was done and what wasnt done, but with more and more people posting their take on it, the rest of the FIRST community can get a better idea of what really went on.
It seems to me FIRST Israel has some major issues that need to be worked out, and I think it is probably prudent for FIRST HQ to get involved. |
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From THE FIELD, section 6.2.3: Quote:
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It was obvious to me, as Judge Advisor, that for the most part, as in the US and elsewhere, that FIRST Teams in Israel 'get it'. Their contributions to their school, their community and to the principles of FIRST are truly outstanding. We were able to recognize many of these teams with awards; but many other teams also deserve recognition for maintaining their spirit and demonstrating GP, despite the difficult circumstances. The fact that the vast majority of Israeli teams understand the principles of FIRST is due in no small part to the dedication of Alisha MacIntyre and Yaarit Levy. They work basically 24/7 during Build Season. During the competition, we stayed at the field to work out the technical problems. It also says a lot about the importance of FIRST in Israel to understand that FIRST Israel has 2 full-time Regional Directors. There will always be challenges to overcome in FIRST, especially as we try to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Obviously we had no idea that the communications system, which worked last year in Israel, would have as much difficulty as it did. But it is also apparent that the Israeli Regional is not alone in experiencing technical difficulties. Suffice to say, these issues will be addressed before next year. I am proud to be part of FIRST Israel.....I have seen so many of the kids who graduate from high school continue their FIRST activities as mentors and volunteers, like Leav, despite their military obligations. There seems to be a strange 'illness' that infects the IDF during March as the Regional approaches........ Once a Tick....always a Tick! |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
As the programming lead of an Israeli FRC team, and someone who was involved in fixing many of the communication problem (I stayed all night to help fix it, having found myself with my shoes not having left my feet for 40-ish hours) I feel I'm somewhat qualified to represent the other side of things in many of the subjects from the post above (-not all; things relating to the cost of things and the exact dimensions of the field are not what I worked on)
I will skip the first list of complaints as they talk about organisational complaints and I would not be a reliable source for facts on them. Quote:
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I repeat: There was no inherent advantage to having left your robot on the field as part of the 6! Quote:
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The stadium is not far away from the "Kiriah" - The top Israeli Military center- a Pentagon of sorts (and to all Israelis who are jumping up to say that it's not 100% accurate, it's close enough for the Americans to understand) which obviously also has sophisticated radio equipment. There is no real solution to this problem. You can't ask all of Tel-Aviv and the entire Israeli Military to stop working for three days or stop using their equipment just for a 'bunch of high schoolers with some robots'. Everything that could have been disabled, was disabled, and overall, interference was not the problem. Quote:
1) FIRST Israel invited a company with experts in the field of wireless networking to come help us. They came, and they tried fixing it. They didn't manage because the problem wasn't with the wireless! 2) At this stage, FIRST Israel invited an expert from the top Israeli Millitary's Intelligence group's (8200) Networking team. The guy is part of a team that has been credited as one of the best computer intelligence teams in the world, and is one of their elite networking experts. I think that would qualify as an expert from outside. The expert stayed with us all night long, and although he went to work or rest (not sure) for some period, he was back in the arena in time for the finals to make sure that everything was running properly. I doubt he is reading this or will get this in any way, but he is: It was truely a mindblowing experience working with you; I consider myself somewhat of an experienced networker and my understanding of networking nearly doubled over that one night. Thank you! 3) Throughout the whole time, we had experts from the USA, including the designer of the system himself with us on Skype. While they tried to be helpful, we always seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of them and they weren't much use in the end. Quote:
Assuming absolutely no compression, and maximum resolution (640*480), a single frame from the camera is 900kb: The maximum FPS if I remember correctly is 15FPS. That means 13.5 MB/s MAXIMUM per robot on camera info. All other info is at worst half a MB per second (and I'm exaggerating here). That means 14MB/s/robot*6 robots (again, assuming all robots are using their camera at full resolution, with no compression and full FPS)=84MB/s - Well bellow the spec of 802.11n! This is also assuming all robots on the field have cameras at that full bandwidth, which was clearly not the problem at the Israeli Regional this year. Now, even if we did decide that we wanted to go with a direct method- It is IMPOSSIBLE: The FMS is not build for that - it is built for a single router that communicates with the robots, and if anyone believes that they can write a new FMS during a regional, and test it to a level where teams won't try to crucify you like this mentor for example, then you are clearly either on something, or inexperienced in software engineering. Actually, you'd have to rewrite part of the FMS protocols for this to work which would mean changing the code for each driver-station and rewriting the dashboards. WEP was not necessary after the steps we took which I will explain bellow- a laptop or cellphone COULD have connected, but because we disabled the DHCP server they would have to have defined a static IP which was in our subnet, something which I doubt anyone would do on purpose, and I doubt even more that it could happen by accident. Quote:
-- Now to explain some of the problems we fixed: (not all) - The DHCP server was on at first, and the WiFi did start off as unprotected, although it was protected before the first robots tried entering the field. The problem this caused is that the DHCP tables filled up and the leases of IP addresses were far from expiring, which means that the router did not have the resources to manage the new IP addresses connecting to it. Disabling the DHCP server and cleaning the tables, moving everything to static IPs fixed part of the problem (this is the 1AM part) - After that was fixed, we discovered that the FMS router and the robot APs were not on the same subnet class. The robots were correctly configured on subnet class A, but the FMS was somehow locked on class C. We tried to unlock the FMS's router to work on class A, but nothing seemed to work. At this point the expert from the IDF went home and returned with his router from home, and we used it for the rest of the testing and the competition. (This was approximately 4 AM, when my dad woke up having fallen asleep in the car, after I told him to wait for me because I'll "be there in a minute"...) - Although I was so tired I was nearly out of it by then, I think that we also limited the bandwidth per connection to make sure that it wasn't that problem. No robots reached their maximum bandwidth. Although this hasn't come up in this thread, but in others before it: some people claimed that bad programming was to blame. I disagree. I saw the code of many robots, my robot also can communication problems and I had 6 programmers go over the code line by line, of which one is a software engineer and one is a former software engineer which now teaches computer science. If something like bad code on one robot can crash the whole system, then something is inherently wrong with the FMS. I will not respond to the whole MisCar disqualification story, I don't know what happened there with enough certainty, nor do I wish to get involved. As for the stadium, that is logistics and organisation, of which I had no involvement either. I hope this post brings new information to light and explains part of what happened. I would actually take the opposite stance and praise FIRST Israel for doing everything within their powers to get things working, even when it cost them more than they could usually afford. (Thanks Alysha for offering me a hotel room, even though we never actually got to the going to sleep part of the night :P) |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
Dear RandomStyuff,
I haven't read the whole post but from what I got to I see that you are mixing things. Yaron pointed out things from his point of view, so don't judge him too harshly. Inspections were horrible, you may have not experienced it because you didn't pass through pits or that you don't know the rules. The practice field was small, and the fact that it wasn't real is even more frustrating. I am sure Yaron is aware of the fact that you guys stayed up all night (I helped the first night). And he is not blaming you for helping, but blaming FIRST for not getting proper help. Or being stubborn in using the same methods again and again with slight adjustments. And before you say they did bring experts let me say, it was too late. The problem should have been found and fixed by the first day. And any other problems by noon the next day. Yaron is right in my opinion when he said that every robot should be checked because you yourself didn't know what the specific problem was, as I understand these comm problems can come from bad code to bad routers to magnetic disorders, which some robots might have due to bad inspections(I know ours was checked for grounding, but that was ours) and problems such as bandwidth load. So by not eliminating the problems one by one, we can only guess what the bigger problem was. I know there wasn't time, but tough and wise decisions should be made, and not rash and unfair ones. I am sure that with so many people activated the right way we could have achieved much better results. |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
I am glad we came to the Israeli Regional and have refrained from weighing in. But, I must clarify the above comments of the professional inspectors. Our inspector was not going to pass our robot because he could not find a volt meter on it. He had no clue about FRC rules.There were indeed robots with illegal nonKOP motors. I and my students saw them and could not believe it. Agian, this is not to bad mouth anyone or the competition but just making sure that the facts are true.
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Let's hope these issues are identified and worked out before the championship........please ........ (I'm bringing my Tylenol). |
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In the future, I recommend you coordinate with your regional committee and the other teams to see what field components can be made available. I appreciate your taking the time to detail all of your frustrations. We are listening. We are extremely proud of the efforts you are making and I look forward to seeing some of your teams at the Championship. |
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Israel is another story. It's pretty expensive to ship an FRC field over there, so they have to build it there. Then the practice field may or may not be built. If it is built, you can expect it to be the low-cost one, or brought in by teams. The official field, though, should not be. If, for some reason, the official field is not built to official specs, or is built highly unevenly, then I think that FRC HQ, here in the U.S., needs to know. Whoever is responsible for building the field according to the drawings needs to know how to read them. If you can't read the drawings, you probably shouldn't be building the field. |
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PS: Thanks to Random for presenting the other side of the coin. It just makes the picture a bit more clear. |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.
From "The Arena" Section 6.1 "The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations." The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements. |
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When you say "low-cost field elements", are you referring to the low cost design drawings on the FIRST website under the "Arena" section? Because this year, as I stated, the vertical posts in the low cost design were 4 x 4's, not 1.5 diameter tubing. |
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Since we were allowed to measure the field, I wanted to make sure all teams knew the measured dimension so that my team would not have any advantage over teams that were not there at the time. Also I had no official position this year I just lent a hand where it was needed when my team didn't need me. -Leav *nominal - number specified on drawing, actual dimensions will vary between two dimensions specified by the tolrerances. |
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Another thing is the visible difference between the blue bumps and the red bumps. If it is so different than it is not engineering, and I thought one of the purpose of FIRST is to celebrate science and technology. You can not celebrate science and technology and forget about engineering. You invest hours volunteering and mentoring students in more then one team and assisting many others teams in order to eventually participate in a celebration of science and technology. The Israel regional, and I am maybe the most sad person in Israel to admit it, was far from a celebration of engineering, it did not serve as inspiration to many teams. Having said that and all what I mentioned in my previous post - nothing, and I repeat nothing is directed to the field people who were brought to an unbelievable situation by wrong decisions for the second year. As a volenteer who spent three months with 3-4 hours sleeping each night being away for the whole night several times I am the last to show any disrispectfull to any volunteer in FIRST, and if someone took my "complains" as personal, this was not my intentions. I still want Israel to be the best regional in the world. Else, why would I mentor my student to assist so many teams in Israel. The general manger called me and the other mentor of MisCar the worst mentors in Israel because we push student to follow the system approach thinking model engineer follows. For me the FRC competition is very important, not because it is so important to MisCar to win, but because the competition is the only way to examine our process, to show students that inspectors, judges, teachers, engineers and other student appreciate thier achievements. If a well designed, well written code was able to be tested only for one game and only for 1 min and 50 seconds because of communication problems (the lift system was cancelled because the diameter was so out of the range, it was too danger even to try it), then something is wrong. No matter what best IDF or any other expert in the whole galaxy will say - this is not the way to run an event of 52 teams with over 1000 HS pupils and more then 100 mentors. You can not expose students to such a disaster. Too many pupils were crying, our captain was even brought to a first aid assistance because of what FIRST Israel general manager forced him to do!!! And you know what, if all this was happening only to one team then I would say, sure they need to check themselves first, but it happened to many other teams. Having expressed my self so long, I must also refer to another issue. You know me since 2006 we have been meeting In Israel and in Atlanta every year. Mentors in MisCar are devoted to FIRST goals and spirits - to all of them, and when FIRST-ISRAEL general manger blames us as people who are nor educating our student to the same values as we believe is .... I can't even find the word (and not because of the lack of English) to express my feeling on this. And regarding your post about the FRC community in Israel - For all the US readers, I repeat again, Israel could be the best regional in the world because of the teams in it - only the management should be replaced. And I am not speaking on ALISHA who you know I respect and care for. |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
In the US, standard steel tube diameter tolerance for .500" to 1.700" steel tube is plus .005, minus .000. That works out to a metric tolerance of plus .127mm.
I can see where it would be very aggravating if the field wasn't even built correctly on top of all the radio problems ...... |
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It is pretty annoying that I do not know your name (Yaron is my real name :) ). Your post really brought new issues to consider. I want to assure you that I respect the hard work and the extremely long hours you were exposed to failures in engineering that you are not responsible for. I (and everyone from MisCar and from any other team who know how much work need to be done in order to organize such an event) appreciate very much every single step you and others have taken to assist in solving problems. There is an idiom: a smart move is not to enter a situation that a clever move can fix - this is what FIRST ISRAEL should have done. Almost all of the details you mentioned are known from 2009, nothing have been changed, on the contrary probably got worst with communication networking in Nokia. Israel is known for best HiTech - no reasons can justify Israel regional to be less quality regional than NH!!! I hope that you accept this and understand that not even one word of my long posts are referring personally to anybody. I want to improve FIRST ISRAEL at least as you, but unfortunately I can not join you in praising FIRST Israel for the 2010 regional. My feelings are heart not only because of all the mentors from many teams who are desperate but also for students who said never again - there are other excellent robotic programs with lesser disappointment from the final celebration of science and technology - the competition - mentors and students might consider these. I personally will not do so, and continue in assisting FRC teams in order to improve the FRC community and hope FIRST Israel regional will be a better celebration of good engineering. |
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Well, first of all, my name is Niv, I'm the programming lead of #2212 (The Spikes from Aleh Madaim Lod), so now you know my name.
I apologize about my rant earlier, I know that it wasn't a personal attack of sorts against FIRST Israel or anyone in particular. At that moment I saw it as somewhat of an attack and therefore had to respond. I think FIRST Israel did most of what is in it's powers to get things working. That's what I said throughout my post earlier. I did not imply in any way that the Israeli Regional was done well! I see the Israeli Regional as a failure in many areas, including the technical areas I helped fix. I do not think that blaming anyone is the correct thing to do, it will not solve anything and we will not redo the regional this year. I do think that finding the problems so that we can attempt to fix them is the correct thing to do, and if what you tried to do was give constructive criticism to help for next year I apologize for the way I reacted. The problem is that statements such as "the management should be replaced" does not constitute constructive criticism in my opinion, and should not be thrown around without having seen their side. I can only give you the part that I saw, during the night. Yarit and Asaf Agmon stayed with us until nearly morning, and Alysha stayed for pretty much the whole night. They really did everything within their powers to fix what they could, and gave us all the resources we asked for. So who do you wish to replace if everyone was doing their job to the fullest? Maybe the addition of a technical manager to the management with more experience in networking is in order. Maybe more coordination with the teams on building the field is in order. But the management of FIRST Israel did nothing less than everything that they could. I agree that the Israeli Regional can be much more than it is. For the past two years, ever since we have moved from the old radio based system to a fully IP based, networked system, nothing but problems have plagued us. Some of it is related to us having to use equipment that is different from that of FRC regionals in the USA (due to military usage and decisions of our version of the FCC, the frequencies used in the USA and some of the channels used are illegal here in Israel, and therefore some equipment that uses these settings is also illegal and not permitted into the country!). In my team, the programmers and some of our builders (most of our team is majoring in Computer Science, including our builders, which is pretty awesome because they actually understand what is possible in code) have started talking about possible solutions for next year, because even with this year's "fixed state" there were problems. Communication: The communications problems were mainly due to networking, not wireless, but they stem from the wireless in the equipment other regionals use not being legal in Israel. One possibility is asking for the FMS equipment to be sent earlier, and then tested with 6 demo-bots, and fixed before the competition. Another possibility is contracting the networking to an external company with expertise in the field. From the awe of the networking expert from the IDF that I worked with, he was amazed by the robots. Although it is not the goal of FIRST to bring adult technologists into FIRST but make FIRSTers into adult technologists, I believe this time it might have proved to be a two-way street and would certainly not be surprised to see him next year at the regional. With enough time and now greater understanding of the FMS, I'm sure that he could help iron out all the little bugs that made even the eliminations un-optimal. As for the bad code issue; I am not sure if the issue stems from bad code locking up the field, but just in case it does: Most of the teams have programmers which barely know their code or what they are doing. Last year I went to two teams, both rookies, and taught them programming from the basics of what is an IF and a WHILE to moving the code onto their robots. This year, one of my programmers went and did the same to an additional rookie. I'm sure other teams exist with programming experience that stems from what they taught themselves or what other teams taught them in 4 hours, or even only from what they learned during the 2 hour lectures at Tel-Nof (I'm pretty sure that identical lectures existed also in different places, but Tel-Nof is closest to me. These quick courses do not teach proper programming, and many teams stick with what they see makes the robots move, even if it's not well done. While I doubt that these coding errors are the cause of the problem, cancelling out that possibility is very important, and better programmers overall would raise the level of FIRST in Israel. An idea that came up in my team(and yes, we do sit around a table and just talk about ideas related to FIRST, we are a bunch of people with no life :P) is to host a summer programming week. I'm sorry for my posts being this long... |
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My main job is a director of the Israeli natonal center for technology teacher. Although I can not run workshops for students I can organize workshops for teachers (or mentors). We have just finished one in Tel Aviv. We will have another one this July, all details (in Hebrew), in the center website: moretech.technin.ac.il I think we luck mentors with deep understanding of engineering education especially in the field of progrmming, networks, communications and sensors. FRC is for students being mentored by adults, let us work in both direction, improving the mentoring process will improve student learning, improving student learning will teach mentors new and facinating domains, my best teachers in my 22 years of field practice were my students. Leomi Robotic center at the technion has the resources to orgnize workshops for students and I began working with the director to organize joint workshops. In the meantime, MisCar organized in the north severl times in the last four years intensive seminars open for all teams in all aspects of FRC. In the last workshop seven teams came from all part of Israel. We will continue to assist any team. Take care, Yaron |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
I'm not sure that going through the mentors is the correct way here. I know FIRST is partially about the students learning from the mentors, but I think that in every field where students can manage alone, it's even better. For example, in my team, we have 4 programmers who are all students, and a mentor which is half mechanical and half programming. In terms of mentoring us in the programming team he sits with the team and helps prioritize different goals (such as that it's more important to get our swerve drive system done than program our own event-based library) and goes over our code at the end to see that we have no errors. Now, maybe that's just our team, and I do realize that my school is not normal in that computer science is our expertise, but I really do believe that when possible, FIRST should be a student thing.
I think a better solution is rather than mentors teaching mentors which teach students having students teach students. I've already started getting the ball rolling on this with my school to try to organize this. I assume that if I do manage to get this up and running you will hear about it soon enough... |
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
FIRST Israel had many problems that not communicate to the field.
THE INSPECTORS they were not following the rules at all THE PIT PRACTICE FIELD I didn't know that teams brought their field. If I knew it my team would have bring tower and bumps as the rules which looks good(the tower in the practice field was looking very bad) THE PIT AREA The light in the pit was weak. we could not see any thing in the robot circuits. the reception desk could not say any announcement to the teams becase the noise. the pits were not orgenized and there was a full mess. THE STADIUM To get to the pit you had to go by a kiosk becase the gates were not open. THE FIELD I agree that the field looks smaller. the field in the pre seasom was much bigger(the pre season field was by the rules of length and width). the bumps if many teams robot tried to drive over the bump and fail it's okay, but they were not trying if the knew in their school that their robot can drive over the bump. the tower was okay(my team's robot has an hanging mechanisem and it works) the tunnl was okay and you cannot blame it was not okay because I saw many robots that designed to drive in the tunnel by querter of a milimeter less then its height. it's not wise because the tunnel cannot be built ecsactly every time. THE COMMUNICATION] As I said before, the system had to be test at least 3 weeks before the competition with 6 robots in NOKIA Arena. everyone know what happened in 2009. everyone know that what is legal in US is not legal in Israel. everyone knows the BIG problem was becase something they don't know till now. the guesses of what the problem was are fine but truely; one team wrong code cannot affect 5 other robots. my guess I think should be test more seriously; the place of the arena is bad. it's near to the "kerya" - "Israel pentagon", there are 150 wireless networks that you can to connect with the laptop in NOKIA Arena. the signal is not the signal in US. the routers place was not the most intelligent as our mentor who works in this section said. the routers place was wrong and how big the router is ("the biggest router in israel") it doesn't matter the need to provide communication to a little place of 54*18 foot(if i am not wrong). THE EVENT COST the teams should not pay 11500$ every year regulary. it's not realistic. the Arena is free (TEL AVIV muni. donate it). The field router should be rent by a company in the US or to buy one after 2 years of event testing if the router is successful(eventhough I don't think the router had a problem). the field except to the electrical should be built in israel. as a new member in this events(See you in the championship) it was painful. but I have to say some good words; I think FIRST spirit was the best thing that happened to Israel regional. it happened thank for the mentors, volunteers and the best students of ISRAEL. |
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