Quote:
Originally Posted by alicen
At SVR, the very first match on Friday saw a field fault. This was due to none of the game sounds going off. When autonomous ended, some refs and teams alike had no idea because there was no sound to indicate. It was a full 10 seconds before we realized and stopped the match!
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Historically, AV issues are not typically considered field faults, as they are not part of the FMS/Field system. This includes sounds and score/clock display on the screens (the official clock is on both alliance walls). A single instance of sounds not working can definitely cause confusion, but I have seen several consecutive matches played in years past without Auto or End Game sounds - at the time teams were alerted to watch the official field clock.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BethMo
We had a fascinating one in the finals of this year's Pacific Northwest District Championship. Here's my best recollection of what happened:
The defenses were set up incorrectly, and the field "pre-start" was initiated before it was noticed. They fixed the defenses, restarted everything, and ran the match. Team 1425's robot was immobile for most of the match, then ran into the wall until it was e-stopped (looked like it might have been running autonomous routine).
After the match ended, no score was announced, as the head referee, FTA, and table staff conclaved for a very long time (I believe it included a call back to FIRST headquarters). Then they announced the field fault. They said that it was known previously that 1425's robot needed to be tethered and re-initialized after a "pre-start" before it would respond properly to another "pre-start", and that the team had not been given a chance to do that. That made this a field fault.
The match was replayed, and this time 1983 (Skunkworks, the alliance captain) disconnected for half the match, so the outcome was the same.
The field fault match and the explanation for the replay don't seem to have been included in the Youtube playlist, so I wasn't able to double-check my memory. If anyone has more details, please add them!
(The alliance had already lost the first match playing two-on-three with the third robot undergoing repairs. An astounding run of misfortune... but 1983 still ended the event in the #1 position for the district. Hopefully they've now used up all their bad luck quota and everything will be great at St. Louis!)
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Your recollection matches pretty well with what I have heard as well. It was a very bizarre scenario that our robot woke up mid-match and ran into the sidewall until E-stopped. I had also heard that they thought autonomous was triggered, but we have no auto mode that would have produced that set of behaviors observed (all auto modes drive time-based for only a few seconds). In addition to the drive motors running continuously, the collector drove down against the hard-stop, and the climber release motor (typically only triggered for a second or so per match) stalled, smoked, and seized before E-stop was pressed, requiring replacement before the replay.
We don't need to tether between matches to re-connect, but frequently must reset the RoboRIO to get a stable connection with the field. It is something the FTA's are aware of, and an ongoing pre-match connectivity hiccup we are working to root-cause. It seems that redoing pre-start may have had an effect on our connectivity that was not noticed prior to the start of the match.
Throughout Finals, the opposing alliance captain from team 360 demonstrated superb gracious professionalism, both in offering up their timeout to make sure 2907 could make it to Finals 2, and by insisting on a replay of Finals 2 without hesitation after the field fault. Their entire alliance played well and are very deserving of the win. We look forward to seeing them all in St Louis.