Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

we had HP lights on our robot too (little dinky one's)

came up with a really good way to debug autonomous using them though. Basically I would start with all the lights on, and knock off lights as it moved through the maneuvers, this way I could tell if the camera found the target, or the rangefinder saw the wall, stuff like that :).

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

Josh, this seems to be a viable strategy, though one thing has me worried. Isn't intentionally getting a penalty in order to gain some sort of strategic advantage considered Egregious Behavior and therefore subject to a yellow card under rule <T06> ?

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

I think it depends on your definition of "egregious," which is, unfortunately, a very relative term.


If a team were to cross the center line and push an opponent into the wall at high speed, I'd probably call that egregious and potentially deserving of a card, especially if it did some sort of damage.

If you made an auton where your robot just knocked them off course a bit, I wouldn't be so inclined to call that egregious.


It's definitely not a very black and white issue.

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

Is anyone else thinking that prior to St. Louis we may see a major shift towards feeder loading features? With all this talk of specific tube starvation I can definitely see the advantages of at least being able to pick-up from the human players. I mean, at a certain level of competition does it become more advantageous to not throw your tubes in interest of slowing the game and forcing lower scores? Especially against powerful scoring teams.

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

1114 did this at Pittsburgh. They did only human slot loading in the beginning of an elimination match so they could outmatch the other alliance in tubes hung by taking advantage of being able to cross the field faster. I heard 175 used human-slot loading mostly even though they could floor load.

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

It's definitely possible we'll get more tube-scarce as time goes on. Even so though, I'm not sure there's an inherent design advantage in being able to pick up from Feeders. After all, good floor loaders can get a dropped tube just as a fast as good feeder can feed. Better yet, many HPs have practiced 'punching' it down the lane to get it near the end (but still safe). Of course, if it's your opposing alliance's a top-row-ubertube completing tube, you might want to stick with the well-timed dropping/short pushing tactic.

We played completely tube-scarce in the FLR semis against 217, 2056, and 1518. It has its uses. Didn't help us a lick (we all broke, not that I'm convinced it would've mattered), but I don't regret the strategy. Flooding the field only works when you score faster. I do think long-range, good aim HPs will take most days, though.

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

A little late in the reply but the problem was a bad USB Hub that first reversed the joysticks and then disconnected us from the FMS

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

Was it the little square one they send in the kit? Whenever teams have joystick problems that's the first question I ask. That thing is notorious for going bad.

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

We fortunately didn't need to use it this year. And, yes, it is not very robust (in all fairness, it wasn't ever designed to be).

Re: What happened in the finals at West Michigan?
 

Yeah, It was the little square one. We stopped using it and connect directly to a notebook computer we use as a drivers station. What do you expect for $15 part. Live and learn