I can try and answer some of these...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
- Would leaning on FIRST HQ and the GDC to lower match turn times (i.e. field reset) help? What is the lowest we can get this number? What lessons can we learn from games with low turn times?
- Field breakage, ok this is TERRIBLE this year. Goes hand in hand with match turn times I'd assume. What lessons can we take from the past games here?
- Are FMS connection times an issue? I know it's something we had issues with in NE
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1. 6 minute cycles is as low as I've ever seen them scheduled (and probably 5 and a half is as low as is realistic, and only in the the ideal case). 2014 is the last year I can think of (
example) where that was doable because there was basically no field reset. Give it 3 minutes on average between match start and green lights. A robot takes ~60 seconds to boot up and connect. Add another minute to get 6 robots on/positioned and 6 robots off, and there's 5.5 minute cycles (with a 30 second buffer for troubleshooting/intros/whatever).
2. The main lesson I see, simple fields (2012, 2014) means fast cycles. If the field reset portion can be done in 2 or 3 minutes, then it won't be the blocker in cycle times. The more frequently it takes longer than that, the more likely it is to be the part slowing the event down. As an interesting aside, this year, once the reset crews got in their rhythm, it could go super quickly (at NYC, we had at least 10 sub-7 minute cycles, so it's definitely doable).
3. The current control systems are definitely slower to boot up than others from the past. I spend most of my events fieldside, and many of the robot-based connection delays are due to miswiring (forgetting to plug the ethernet cable back into the RIO after tethering is a big one), forgetting to turn the robot on, or something that is solved with a reboot (add 1 minute on to the cycle time). I actually don't think it's that bad, but minor delays can really add up when you tack on 1 minute per robot reboot.