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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 7/11/2000 10:11 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: Con-Fused.... posted by Ken Patton on 7/11/2000 3:41 PM MST:



Ken,

Actually, I was sick when I saw the references that were sited that called into question the legality of the device I have proposed. My first reaction was to pull up the rules that would allow me to show how I had come to the conclusion that it was okay. Looking it up, I was really surprised to see that the rules were not as I had thought. If you doubt that I really believed this was okay, look at my first posting. It is clear from my wording that I THOUGHT the rule involved building things that carried electricity from legal kit materials. As to how I came to the conclusion that it was legal in the first place, I am afraid that it is lost at this late date. Another argument agianst my belief that the device was illegal is the fact that we openly shared the device with a number of teams and then posted a reference to it on this website.

Even so...

You call it cheating. I disagree for a number of reasons:

Many inspectors saw the device, inquired about it and said nothing negative and, more likely, compemented us on its cleverness.

A nunber of tech folks at FIRST knew about it and did not tell us it was illegal, on the contrary, they agreed to help us find teams that might be having 60 Amp fuse problems and could use one of our loaners.

A number of other FIRST teams tell us that they made a point of asking FIRST specifically if it was allowed and being told it was okay.

So...

I argue against the cheating label. Yet, at the same time, I promise to re-double my efforts to follow the advice I often give to rookie teams, specifically, to carefully read and fully understand the entire rule book.

As to the future, I hope that FIRST either make the device officially legal or find some other way to keep from having teams blowing the 60 amp fuse.

Joe J.

P.S. By the way, in the case of the Chief Dephi Team the advantage gained from this device has been more mythical than real. To my knowledge, this device has never been tripped by a Chief Delphi Robot, not even in practice, yet alone in a match. We installed the device in on CD4 in a fit of paranoia after a single blown fuse in a single match (that was as likely as not due to a programming bug coded by yours truly ;-) Paranoia dies hard. We never removed the device eventhough it has never been tripped either on CD4 or CD5.