[SteveGarward]

Originally Posted by BetaHelix

IMO if your driver station falls off its your own fault. I don't want to sound mean, but FIRST provides Velcro on the DS shelf for a reason...

While you may have your opinion and are entitled to it, be careful of inflammatory comments without experience.

We had our DS knocked off at CIR this weekend as well, despite having velcro on it to secure it, as we have had on that OI case for the last 4 years. This did absolutely nothing in our case. I have never seen a robot hit the wall as fast or as hard in my 7 years in FRC. And when you are watching your own robot at the other end of the field to see if its auto worked, you aren't necessarily watching what's coming at the wall in front of you.

We had maybe half a second to react before the DS was just above the floor, laptop now closed, and hanging by cables. We lost all manipulator controls for that match, and the USB port they were plugged in to did not work properly again. It seems we also lost the other USB port in use at the time, which later was intermittent and unreliable, and at this point, seems to be the reason we lost drive control in the middle of our last two semifinals.

We are buying a new DS laptop today as a result.

Did we use velcro? Yes. Could we have stepped forward to catch it? With Spiderman reflexes, yes. Were the refs within the rules to not replay the match? Yes. Did I have a very unhappy drive team? Yes. Did the team adjust their auto? Yes.

Was it our fault? No, I don't think so.