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Unread 24-01-2017, 17:47
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Ari423 Ari423 is offline
LabVIEW aficionado and robot addict
AKA: The guy with the yellow hat
FRC #5987 (Galaxia)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Mar 2015
Rookie Year: 2012
Location: Haifa, Israel
Posts: 660
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Re: Inspection Stories

Not an inspector; this from the perspective of a student. Unpopular opinion: I love long inspections. I love explaining how the robot works and showing why this thing that looks illegal is actually perfectly fine.

My favorite inspection was at 2016 MAR Montgomery. We made a slight, perfectly legal change but accidentally forgot to get reinspected before we went out for our next match. An RI sitting on the side of the field noticed and brought it to our attention. The head ref, FTA, and LRI were very nice and let us play the match anyway because the change was obviously legal, provided that we get a complete reinspection after the match. The RI came back with us to our pit and made us show that we satisfied every single robot rule in the manual (more than just the standard inspection checklist). We had to show that our bumpers could be taken off and put back on again by 2 people in under 5 minutes (we got in just under 4 iirc). We had to give data sheets for every non-vex or andymark part we used. I think this was the inspector's way of having fun now that the majority of his job was done, but it was fun for me anyway.

I consistently see teams (both rookie and veteran) whose robots break a number of rules and inspectors don't notice because it's not something specifically on the checklist. I would love to see more thorough inspections if FIRST allotted more time for it.


EDIT: I just want to be clear in saying that I was friends with this inspector and continue to be friends with him. If we had a match that we needed to get to, I am (90%) sure he would have quickly redone the inspection and been on his way. We didn't have any upcoming matches so he thought it would be fun to torture us. In the end, it was good because he made some suggestions for how to improve our robot and what rules we should make sure we don't violate. This was a good learning experience and prepared us for inspection at Champs.

I am still a supporter of longer inspections, but I do like the idea proposed in the following post that inspectors should do as much of the inspection as they can by themselves before asking students to help for time-saving reasons. I regularly walk around the pits looking at how other teams' robots work and I rarely need to ask questions. An keen-eyed observer can make out most of the details on a FIRST robot even from outside the pit surrounded by a full-team pit crew.
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2017-present: Mentor FRC 5987
2017-present: CSA for FIRST in Israel
2012-2016: Member FRC 423
2013: Programmer
2014: Head Programmer, Wiring
2015: Head Programmer, Wiring
2016: Captain, Head Programmer, Wiring, Manipulator, Chassis, CAD, Business, Outreach (basically everything)



Last edited by Ari423 : 24-01-2017 at 19:36.
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