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Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman
So the pedestal lights upon an end cycle confirmation, and it turns off following the initial possession entry for the next cycle. Can ANYONE give me any justification whatsoever for that blasted light to not be controlled locally by a "pedestal ref" holding a toggle switch hooked to a power supply, lol. Please don't tell me the light inside is donated and has to be controlled by Ethernet I/O or some such nonsense.
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Scoring a goal and ending the cycle doesn't just light the pedestal. It also clears the posessions from the tablets of the refs tracking that alliance and the "assist" indicator LEDs (both the ones on the goals and the ones in the driver stations). For all this to happen seamlessly, it all has to be linked through the FMS.
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You can get rid of all delays related to the pedestal and the field by severing the lighting completely from the cycle process. Pedestal ref turns it on when the ball is through the goal (presume lights on the opposite scoring goal turn off once the end cycle is confirmed - PRETTY OBVIOUS SIGNAL TO TURN THE PEDESTAL ON). Turn it off once the HP inbounds and the first possession/assist light turns on. Note any early pickup infractions and communicate to nearest foul-calling ref. It's not like they'll be busy doing anything else for a bit once the HP picks the ball up....
You will have pedestal lighting times of sub 1-second if you simply have humans do it and make it the only thing they have to track during the match. [More gameplay. Less blar.] <-- Spotlight worthy, no? Make it happen, people. :-P
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It's not as simple as you make it sound. There are many situations where a ball through the goal doesn't - and shouldn't - cause a lit pedestal: an illegal goal, for instance, or clearing a dead ball that got freed.
And there are cases where lighting of the pedestal should be legitimately delayed. Balls don't count as scored if they're touching an alliance bot, so if the scoring robot is still reaching into the goal and contacting the ball, the ref can't end the cycle yet even if the ball is completely through the goal. Also, one of the requirements to score is that the ball remains in the goal, so the ref can't count it as scored until it's clear that the ball won't bounce out.
Even if a ref was only worried about monitoring scoring, they'd still need to be aware of what's going on over the entire field, and there could still be perceived delays in illuminating the pedestal.
Overall, I think the system we have takes some practice to use quickly, but it's pretty good. I understand that Week 1 events reported a system lag, but the updates since then seemed to have dealt with that issue. At GTR East, when I could, I'd try to check how quickly the pedestal would illuminate. Every time, it would already be lit within the fraction of a second it took to raise my head and look after hitting "end cycle".