Thread: Einstein 2012
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Unread 29-04-2012, 14:54
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LeelandS LeelandS is offline
Robots don't quit, and neither do I
AKA: Leeland
FRC #1405 (Finney Falcons)
Team Role: Tactician
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Webster, NY
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Re: Einstein 2012

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dad1279 View Post
Then you have probably never had your robot randomly die, with no chance to debug/repair/fix a problem that may or may not repeat itself, and may be better or worse at a different regional. It has happened to us, our alliance partners, probably 10% of the teams at any given regional, and has determined the outcome of many (if not all) regional events for the last two years.

This should have been addressed sooner (last year), Obviously the problem was acknowledged by adding the data logging this year. The FTA should make debugging info available, and First should release enough info about the FMS to allow us to debug the situation.

Just to put a dollar amount on it, I'd wager the average team spends more than $10,000 per event. 10 matches per event, $1000/match, $3000 per alliance, $6000 per match for 6 robots on the field. If I was paying a vendor $3000/minute for communications & control, I'd think it reasonable to expect 100% communications.
No, I know we, as I'm sure with every team in FIRST, have had our own issues with communication. Now, I'm a little saddened to say they've never influenced the world championship (I wish we've been to the finals of Einstein), but nevertheless. Yeah, it's frustrating to suddenly lose control of your robot and never know what happened or if it will happen again. But I just don't think it's right to seek blood from FIRST because no one has any clue what happened. Now, I'll agree, it seems odd that suddenly teams who, for the most part, experienced minimal connection issues prior suddenly started dying. And yeah, that points to a problem on the FIRST end. But until we actually find out what happened, can we just start throwing accusations are FIRST? Well, apparently we can. Because people are. And that's not what we're supposed to be doing.

FIRST isn't about the matches. I've said it before, I'll say it again: The matches are a means to an end. The matches are played to give kids a median to get inspired. Playing to win is not what FIRST is about. With or without connection issues, the kids on each team engineered great pieces of machinery. Yeah, we didn't get to see them play the matches to the end, uninterrupted. And yeah, it's reasonable to expect full field functionality for the price we pay in registration. And yeah, maybe precautions should have been taken. But precautions for what? We don't know what happened. I doubt most people at FIRST know what happened. So until then, can we really just rage at FIRST and the people who PUT ON ALL THIS TO BEGIN WITH? We're going to start throwing accusations at the people who allow us to do what we do? I just don't understand how we can act as such without even being sure what the problem was.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bduddy View Post
This is not in any way an excuse. The entire system was provided by FIRST, and as far as I know no bandwidth limits or restrictions were given. If FIRST wants to advertise these advanced capabilities, including camera streams, then they need to provide a system that can actually support them.
I'm not trying to excuse anything. I'm merely trying provide a scenario in which the FMS wasn't the only thing at fault. Yeah, maybe the field wasn't perfect, but it wasn't like it just randomly decided to start dropping teams at a whim. FIRST tries to provide us with the best experience possible, but of course there are going to be flaws in every system. You could spent a month straight refining a system, but I guarantee someone will find a way to break it. That's the nature of the game. I'm just trying to get people to see that there's no reason to be jumping on FIRST's back because the field MAY not have worked the entire season.
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