Thread: Einstein 2012
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Unread 29-04-2012, 15:31
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Re: Einstein 2012

Quote:
Originally Posted by LeelandS View Post
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.
I don't think people are directly going after FIRST. We're going after the system FIRST provides. There is a difference. We're saying that the system does not work. Because FIRST provides the system and expects us to work with it, we expect FIRST to fix it, which they haven't exactly done well in the past. They've given it a pretty good shot. This year, it just wasn't good enough.

Quote:
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.
First, I agree that playing to win is not what FIRST is about. But after that, please replace FIRST with FRC, FIRST Robotics Competition. There is a difference. This is a competition. I don't compete for second place, I play to win. If this is not a competition, then why do we compete at all?

It's reasonable, this being a competition, to expect that anything provided by the competition organizers will meet spec. Try playing a night NFL game without the lights. A hockey game when the ice is very soft. A soccer game when the lines have been worn down by weather/lawnmowing/playing, and not repainted. Because items that FRC either supplied or spec'd failed at a critical time, and nothing appears to have been done, on multiple chances, to fix it we can indeed say that FRC needs to try to fix the field connections, whether on the robot end or the field end. Boy would I like for it to be on the robots--then it means the system works. But doggonit, if a robot is working "perfectly" and the only thing that changes is the field and it doesn't work, then I'll tell you that the robot sure ain't the first place I'm lookin' for that problem's cause!

Quote:
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.
Einstein's entire season was spent in storage. Most of the other fields seemed to have issues that were traceable to one or two units. Einstein should have been the issue-free field because, after all, it didn't get 300 teams trying to connect through it, possibly breaking stuff. Instead, it had 12 teams, who had worked well up until Einstein. This was Einstein's entire season, and it didn't work properly--either that, or the robots, which had connected and had largely problem-free operation the entire season, suddenly and completely died.

For the rest of the statement, I agree that someone will find a way to break any system. But if 1/6, or is it more like 1/3 or 1/2 of the users at a given time the system is supposed to be working are having trouble, that someone is most likely the system itself. Am I saying the FMS is the culprit? No. I'm saying that something in the field is the most likely culprit. Whether it's the FMS or some 25-cent resistor in the boxes or the wireless networks I don't know. But if I'm FRC HQ, I'm going to be going in with as many experts as I can find to solve the problem.
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