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Posted by Lloyd Burns, Coach on team #188, Woburn Robotics, from Woburn Collegiate and Canada 3000, ScotiaBank, Royal Bank Financial.

Posted on 4/30/99 6:03 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: We almost missed a match posted by Tom Vanderslice on 4/29/99 9:54 PM MST:



PROBLEM
One problem I noticed at the Great Lakes and at the Nationals was that
it was difficult to know what the current match number was. I was going
to tape a match we were in at Great lakes, and went from the pits to the
arena, only to find that the match had been completed. The display with
the current team numbers has a small line at the top showing this, but
sometimes, if the picture displayed was not exactly focused or there was
some noise in the signal, it was unreadable (to my aging orbs).

We had the match list in our pit, circled with our matches, but to
find the match number ahead of the announcer, so we could start to
navigate out of the pit at Great Lakes, one had to look at the match
monitor to see who was playing the current match, get back to the list,
and scan it until the numbers popped up. Time consuming and inexact.

Showing the current match number on the corner of the current match
video wouldn't work at the nationals as only the Einstein match was
displayed.

SUGGESTION
Something as simple as a line at the top of the 'Teams on Deck'
display showing 'Current Match No.' would rectify this. At the
Nationals, the two match numbers could be displayed - they would be
recognisable by even/odd as to which theatre. This and the match list
together would eliminate much of the need for the announcer calling
8 or 16 teams every 5 minutes.

If the announcer is a good thing to retain, then
announcements could start out with
- just the team numbers {'cause everyone would know they were team
numbers if there were no words attached} followed by
- 'for match ###' (not to be pronounced 'the match formerly known as..')
- perhaps the two items above repeated *once*,
then on to team numbers for the next match.
Less is MORE.
Simple may win. :-)


: My team didn't really find the sound level to be a huge problem...but
: what would have been nice is if the 'on deck' list they had up on those
: big screens was something more than the next 20 matches!! It was fairly
: useless that way...It would have been nice if they had done something to
: at least highlight the matches they had already called or something...
: because there were a couple times where we were still working on the robot
: when our number was called and we completely missed it...

: my 2 cents,
: Tom
: Team 275