Quote:
Originally Posted by Schnabel
<snip>
Joe, I get you are trying to stay unbiased in this, but you are also trying to point fingers at FIRST for any dropped communication issues that appear on the field. That isn't a fair assessment. There's still a level of responsibility for the teams to take care of their own hardware and ensure that their robots are capable of playing the game at hand. Teams that take the time to make their wiring clean and ensure proper connections and relief and provided to their electronics rarely have issues. <snip>
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I don't know what to say. I can't think of a single case in my engineering career where I got to say to management, "yes our customers are having a crummy experience but really, we just have dumb customers. If we had smarter customers we wouldn't have these problems."
I am trying not to flame out here but it is hard because I know how much pressure most teams are under and I sympathize with them when they have to watch their robots sit dead for so many matches. Nobody wins in this case.
Do I blame these teams? Yes. Yes, I do. But I blame FIRST too. And if my (anecdotal*) experiences at NEF-Reading and NEF-UMassD are any guide, this seems like a pretty big deal and I have not observed an appropriately big deal response from FIRST (e.g. a tech update insisting that no robot will pass inspection without X, Y, & Z features in place).
Dr. Joe J.
*which is why I was asking if there was anyone with data that could shed light on this. I am suspicious that I am just generalizing a few bad experiences to the general population.