As stated in our "unveiling" thread- we had two problems caused by the field today
First- the height dimension for the overpasses has been getting lower and lower. By days end the sag had them down to 76" from the floor. A number of robots, including us, want to clip the bottom of the ball just under the overpass to pop it up. So if you counted on a more or less 78" be wary because it may be way off from that. We slammed the crossbar on our first outing and spent the rest of the day trying to finagle some solution to this inconsistency.
Second- Our IR system worked flawless at home. We pointed a dozen different remote controls at it, shot it through windows, pipes, cupped hands- well you get the picture. In the pits it worked like a charm.
On the field it suddenly became erratic and lost signal. Hmmm. After an afternoon of anguish we found the culprit- that damned flag beacon. The IR system to count the laps was mounted right next to our receiver and the beacon was blasting the system. We cut power to the beacon and it worked fine. So we moved the receiver and shielded it and that seems to work fine. Thanks to 1676 for the button we formed into a beacon shield.
As for game play- picture driving at rush hour when you are in a hurry to get home. Everybody- arm or no arm- needs the walls to corner the ball. And there is fair arm to arm contact.
Everybody is velcroing their control systems to the operator station because runaway robots in autonomous are smashing the far walls and tossing the controls off the shelf.
Overall the game is not as wonderful as I would have hoped.
WC
