2011 Lone Star Regional
 

On behalf of FRC 3320, Miracles & Machines, the team wanted to say we had an amazing time at the Lone Star Regional this past week. It was intense and insanely fun.

Thank you to 2936: Gatorzillas and 2857: DiscoBots for inviting us to make an amazing alliance. We may have had a jaguar blow up and create quite the show in the finals but we wouldn't change a thing, it was definitely memorable.

Thank you to 118: Robonauts for being such a great team to befriend and for loaning us your minibot and letting us keep it. We hope to work with you more often in the future.

Lastly, thank you to the volunteers of Lone Star to make our competition experience one that we just didn't want to leave.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

The DiscoBots 2587 had a great time as well. Thank you to the event staff who did an excellent job all weekend.

Thank you to Team 2936 Gatorzillas and 3320 Miracles & Machines. That was one of the most intense elimination rounds I have ever been a part of. Having a minibot save us in the semifinals and then one beat us by one point (96-95) in the first match of the finals was just insanity. You both put together great robots and more importantly great teams and I would love to be on an alliance with either of you again.

Congratulations to the Regional Champions Teams 118 Robonauts, Team 1477 Texas Torque, and Team 1801 The Dapper Dans. You had a great alliance that played the game extremely well; it was a blast to play against you.

Special thanks go to Team 57 the Leopards. We had a gyro issue in our first semifinal match against them and we use completely closed loop gyro code to be able to control our drive train. Team 57 went to their pit and brought us their gyro from the kit of parts. We didn't actually need to install it but it was a great example of gracious professionalism. (We are still not sure what the problem was but we believe the gyro hadn't calibrated properly).

Congratulations are in order for Team 1429 - TEAM KAOS. They won both the Woodie Flowers Award and the Regional Chairmans Award. A fantastic team and example to all of FIRST.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Well I was going to start another thread in the Thanks forum, but this one seems kicked off already, so....

First, thanks to 624 for drafting us and 1817 for their support in the elims. I felt really good about our alliance, and I think we'd have made it to the finals if not for 57's precariously hung ubertube in that second semi. C'est la vie and all that.

Congrats to 2587, 2936, and 3320 for the comeback win in that semi and for giving the 1st seed a real run for their money. Given what happened in final match 2, I still think you guys should've used that gyro I loaned you during the semis.*

More congrats to 118, 1477, and 1801. You guys were truly a force to be reckoned with and that was a well deserved regional win.

Finally, huge, HUGE congrats to 1429, Team KAOS, and their head mentor, David Scarcella. The Woodie Flowers and Chairman's Awards were both extremely well deserved and a long time coming. We're proud to know you guys and work with you when we get the chance.


*Yes, I loaned them a crucial part after their first semi match against us. No I wasn't stalling in my search for it, I really couldn't find it till the 2nd match was about to start. And then they didn't even use it and their gyro went wonky again in the finals. Ingrates. ;)

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Thank you again Kevin for the help. Like I said I still believe the gyro is fine and that both problem matches were the result of a calibration issue caused by the quick turn arounds and not fully understanding how the gyro calibration works. We will be testing this when the robot gets back to our shop this week.

Also all three of our alliance robots had petty catastrophic failures in the first 25 seconds of the match. 3320 smoked a Jaguar and had to be disabled, our gyro code was having fits, and 2936 had their minibot fall to ground. The 1st seeded alliance put up a score of 131 against us, even if we all had been working well it would have been hard to top that. Congratulations again to 118, 1477, and 1801.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

We had a great time at the event and got to meet and get to know a bunch of new teams. Great group of volunteers that made the event run so smoothly.

Thanks to 118 and 1801 for an great elimination alliance.

Thanks 2587, 2936, and 3320 for some great finals matches.

I'm very proud of our friends at 1429, who helped us so much with our Chairman's submission this year, for winning both the RCA and WFFA!

We took video of our elimination series (I think Q1-2 is missing)

2011 Lone Star Regional - QF1-1

2011 Lone Star Regional - SF1-1
2011 Lone Star Regional - SF1-2
2011 Lone Star Regional - SF1-3

2011 Lone Star Regional - F1
2011 Lone Star Regional - F2

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Here here! I second, third, and fourth everything that's already been said!

Special thanks to team 3326 for loaning us a jag to run our arm when we fried a Victor (darn those victors!). All in all it was one of the best regionals I've been to. I have attended Lone Star the past four years and the level of gracious professionalism has never been higher. Thank you to the judges, mentors, volunteers etc.

BTW:

CONGRATULATIONS KEVIN SEVCIK!!!!!!!!! Your guidance and mentorship has helped so many teams (including my own) and individuals that a single award just doesn't seem like enough. :D

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

So proud of 1477 and 118 on the win! After competing with these guys in San Antonio week one I knew once they had there bugs worked out they would be a force to be reckoned with. I can't wait to see both teams in St. Louis after even more time to iterate their designs and get there drivers even more practiced. Championships should be absolutely crazy with these guys!

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Congrats to James and 1477 for another big win. Texas Torque has been improving their standards each year. Glad to see their hard work pay off!

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

First off, what a well run and organized regional Lone Star was this year. But wait, it's like that every year. Lucia, you rock!!

I really look forward to this competition because of all the friends I get to see, and the new ones that I get to make.

FRC 118 was so good to us this year. It was impressive to visit their facilities and watch them work. Then to talk to the mentors all day Friday and Saturday, and pick their brain on their thought processes and strategies was truly eye opening.

Props to FRC teams 118, 1477, and 1801 on their dominate win. That was one unstoppable alliance.

Congrats to Scott and James from 1477 on their performance all weekend. Very solid and fun to watch. I only wish it was that good in San Antonio. :rolleyes:

What can you say about Magic that hasn't already been said. A really unique scoring monster on the field. Should be a force at Midwest this weekend.

Vic and FRC 1801 has waited 7 long years to hang that blue banner. Nice job and congratulations.

The Leopards from FRC 57 had a consistent scoring machine this weekend. A definite improvement from Alamo. Well done Kevin!

The Discobots overcame some early challenges to be a consistent scoring machine in the quals and the elims. They gave the #1 alliance all they could handle.

Congrats to FRC 2936 the Gatorzillas on their 2nd place finish. Team 2587 was a perfect choice to create a strong alliance.

This was the Cryptonites from FRC 624 first appearance this year. They did a fantastic job and will be a force in Colorado next week.

Again a huge THANKS to all the volunteers that make this one of the best regionals each year.

Kris, great job as usual as emcee! You keep everything going!

Good luck to the winners at Championships in St. Louis!

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Congrats to 118 and 1477. It was awesome playing alongside yall at alamo and it was great chilling with the 1477 mentors. See you in Stl.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

I still can't believe the Jaguar literally blew up in our robot. We can't wait to take a closer look at it when the crate gets back.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

That's one of the reasons that we don't use them. Victors are much more robust, and they don't take up as much room.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

I've never had a jag explode on me, and very rarely had them fail. I think it's because we use rate limiting code to prevent instant changes in direction and we're absolutely religious about covering up our electronics board whenever we do any metal removal on the robot. The former is admittedly unique to the jaguar. The latter is necessary no matter what you're using.

I sure would like to see what made that jaguar explode. Pics or it didn't happen. Also, was it a black or a grey jag?

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

We use jags cause they're more powerful than using victors. The only weakness to jaguars are metal shavings have easier access getting in. Our current guesses are metal shavings got in. The only reason we would use victors are because of space.

A grey jag. I'm pretty sure metal shavings got in cause I asked the students a little later:

"so, did you guys remember to cover the electronics when you were repairing the arm earlier?"

their response: a blank of look of let's not tell our mentors! lol, ah man

Honestly I thought it was an awesome way to go out. It's funny, we have friends at National Instruments and Texas Instruments that want to get their hands on it to see what happen. (hmmmmm, redesign for next year?)

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

How do you figure?

<PS, regional was awesome, 3320 was awesome>

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

I think you might need to check your specs again. We get faster and higher responses with the Victors.

We also found them to be a lot less durable. We have had several fail due to stress, where we have experienced nothing like that with the Victors. They just work.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

I'm calling BS on both sides here without some sort of verifiable data. First, the Jaguar isn't going to be terribly more "powerful" than the Victor. The FETS in the Jaguar have slightly lower on resistance, which means slightly lower power lost to heat, but it's pretty minimal and the Jag's current sense resistor probably makes the whole thing even.

Similarly, the Victor isn't going to have any quicker response than the Jaguar to a specified output voltage. They both use the same PWM rate, processing time is minimal, and I'm not going to get into whether the Jag's 15kHz chop rate would react any faster than the Victor's 120Hz chop, because you guys aren't capable of noticing that difference.

And both speed controllers are just as easy to drop metal shavings in. In case you didn't notice, the FETs on the Victor are right under that fan. The leads are exposed and just waiting for a chance aluminum shard to vaporize them.

There's only a few actual differences between the two:
1. The Victor is smaller, lighter, and more expensive.
2. The Jaguar has a more linear response curve. Meaning 20% input actually gives you 20% output. The Victors ramp up the output rather quicker than the input and then level off, so 20% input gives you something like 30% output. This may account for Paul's "quicker response".
3. The Jaguars have built in voltage rate control, which prevents you from rapidly switching between positive and negative outputs. The Grey Jaguar was likely to blow a FET driver under these conditions, which is apparently what gave the entire line a bad rep for reliability.
4. The Grey Jaguars had captive screws that were never meant to be fully removed. They left metal shavings inside the case if you DID force them to unscrew, which added to the number of failures. Which is rather more operator error than lack of robustness. Black Jaguars have fully removable screws.
5. The Jaguars have current and temperature limiting features which kick in to protect the speed controller from damage under high load conditions. The Victors will let you beat them till the breaker or the Victor blows.

And that's it until you get into the laundry list of features the Jag has that the Victor doesn't. So as far as I'm concerned the robustness of the Black Jaguar is still in the proving stage but looking good and there's little performance difference between the two aside from the linearity of the output. I think anything else is hearsay and confirmation bias unless someone's got some actual test data to back it up.

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

THank you TI & IFI for providing options for controlling motors in FIRST. Maybe one day we will have more motor control options and more things to debate...

Getting back on topic to the people Thank Yous !

Huge thank you to Lucia , LSR was so smooth and really fast. We were out of awards at 4:30 this year !

Volunteers :
Craig for scorekeeping, J. Rogers the FTA, Kris the "MC" , Lyndon "Mr. Inspection" (notice how all of these great volunteers are NASA/Robonauts!) , and Kevin for picking up the slack , you guys are awesome year in year out and LSR would not be the same without you.

Thank you 3103/57 for setting up the rookie workshop in week 1. That made a huge difference for a handful of rookies.

Thank you to 441/2276/624/3335 for helping out with the Houston scrimmage this year ! Maybe next year we will get a few more teams

Big congrats to student leader Victor and team 441 , you amaze me every year and I wish you the best of luck in college.

118/1477/1801, great alliance and best of luck at Champs

2936 & 3320 , Miracles & DiscoZillas has a nice ring!

624/57 - leopards and green capes just works ! Hopefully it will be a recurring trend !

Last but not least !
1429 1429 1429 .... Woodie flowers, chairman's , website , qualified for VEX worlds, BEST nationals, FIRST Championship , ,....
All this success is going to dry up your piggy bank

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

oops, I meant versatile not powerful, sorry haven't gotten time to wind down from Lone Star still...

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Congrats to 1477, 118 and 1801 for their 2011 lonestar win!

Thanks 57 and 1817 for the great run our alliance had with one another!

Awesome job 2936 and 2587! You guys sure gave the number 1 seed alliance a run for their money!

Thank you gatorzillas for combining forces with some of the 624 members in order to help out 3758. :D

And why is their never an archive for Lonestar's matches? :(

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Thank you to team 57 and their 2 mentors who helped out 2969 with our drive train issues. It was a big help and the kids really appreciated it. Ended up being something as simple as doubled up omni wheels that was causing the issue.

Thank you again

FRC team 2969 Sam Houston High School - Hurricane Robotics

Re: 2011 Lone Star Regional
 

Based on the above information, I also believe it depends on the application of the device. It would be interesting to see if a team or a group of teams would test the JAGs and Victors under similar conditions and collect data to be posted on CD as a white paper for all to reference for future use. Let's not favor on device over another unless it can be backed up with data. This is how engineers determine which device should be use over another, not by individual gut feeling. This could cause issue as was seen in the past without data to back up claims of problems. Think about it.:confused: ::safety::