Some more FTAA tips:
- Understand what the field monitor looks like (your FTA can give you a walk through on practice day). Know what all the lights and numbers mean and learn to correlate that info to the different failure modes robots have. For example, a roboRIO reboot means the robot loses connection for ~30 seconds, while a radio reboot is slightly longer at ~45 seconds.
- The two fuses in the PDP like to wiggle out. They need to be really pushed in hard, harder than you think.
This post has some examples.
- You will have to remind teams of the match flow during the early part of the event. You may have to remind teams to power their robots on - but don't touch their robot yourself. Get their attention, have them come over, and let them do it. They're most comfortable with their machine.
- Keep notes. If you know a robot dropped communication their last match, it means you can be paying extra attention to the status lights and maybe learn something more. If you have an Android phone, I wrote a
simple app for note taking and tracking network issues over the course of an event.
- Finally, be relaxed, have fun and keep cool. It will be exhausting but always stay calm and professional - you are one of the faces of "the field" to many teams. If you're happy and positive, the teams will feed off that.