[DampRobot]

It was a real shame to see amazing teams like 118 and 2056 crippled by field issues. No team should have to see their robot sit on the field and feel that they have no ability to find a solution to the problem themselves. FIRST owes it to every team on Einstein and the community at large to get to the bottom of this.

Talking with mentors and students afterwards, I have heard three theories about what could have caused this. Our lead electrical mentor suspected that the temporary issues could have been caused by a C-Rio reboot. However, this doesn't explain why 4334 was sitting on the field with a red blinking "disconnected" light. A second theory is that 118 (which had two cameras) and other teams were overloading the system, which led to FMS somehow disconnecting them. The most prominent theory is that spectator WiFi usage was interfering with the teams wireless communications.

Personally, I think that FIRST is most likely to claim that the problem was caused by WiFi usage, simply because no other solution presents itself. This theory sounds a bit dubious to me (although I have admittedly next to no knowledge about FMS and wireless communications). The combination of Einstein being a untested, new field and the recursion of the problem on Red-1 (at least during the first matches) makes me suspect some other problem.

Keep in mind that no one, let alone FIRST, wanted this to happen, especially on Einstein. Although perhaps the decisions made at the time weren't the best, if the field techs could have solved or diagnosed the problem earlier, they would have.

My congratulations to the new world champions, and my thanks to the teams that acted with gracious professionalism despite circumstances beyond their control.