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Unread 26-03-2010, 05:39
RandomStyuff RandomStyuff is offline
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FRC #2212 (Spikes)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Rookie Year: 2008
Location: Israel
Posts: 42
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Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel

Well, first of all, my name is Niv, I'm the programming lead of #2212 (The Spikes from Aleh Madaim Lod), so now you know my name.

I apologize about my rant earlier, I know that it wasn't a personal attack of sorts against FIRST Israel or anyone in particular. At that moment I saw it as somewhat of an attack and therefore had to respond.

I think FIRST Israel did most of what is in it's powers to get things working. That's what I said throughout my post earlier. I did not imply in any way that the Israeli Regional was done well! I see the Israeli Regional as a failure in many areas, including the technical areas I helped fix. I do not think that blaming anyone is the correct thing to do, it will not solve anything and we will not redo the regional this year. I do think that finding the problems so that we can attempt to fix them is the correct thing to do, and if what you tried to do was give constructive criticism to help for next year I apologize for the way I reacted.
The problem is that statements such as "the management should be replaced" does not constitute constructive criticism in my opinion, and should not be thrown around without having seen their side. I can only give you the part that I saw, during the night. Yarit and Asaf Agmon stayed with us until nearly morning, and Alysha stayed for pretty much the whole night. They really did everything within their powers to fix what they could, and gave us all the resources we asked for. So who do you wish to replace if everyone was doing their job to the fullest? Maybe the addition of a technical manager to the management with more experience in networking is in order. Maybe more coordination with the teams on building the field is in order. But the management of FIRST Israel did nothing less than everything that they could.

I agree that the Israeli Regional can be much more than it is. For the past two years, ever since we have moved from the old radio based system to a fully IP based, networked system, nothing but problems have plagued us. Some of it is related to us having to use equipment that is different from that of FRC regionals in the USA (due to military usage and decisions of our version of the FCC, the frequencies used in the USA and some of the channels used are illegal here in Israel, and therefore some equipment that uses these settings is also illegal and not permitted into the country!). In my team, the programmers and some of our builders (most of our team is majoring in Computer Science, including our builders, which is pretty awesome because they actually understand what is possible in code) have started talking about possible solutions for next year, because even with this year's "fixed state" there were problems.

Communication:
The communications problems were mainly due to networking, not wireless, but they stem from the wireless in the equipment other regionals use not being legal in Israel. One possibility is asking for the FMS equipment to be sent earlier, and then tested with 6 demo-bots, and fixed before the competition. Another possibility is contracting the networking to an external company with expertise in the field. From the awe of the networking expert from the IDF that I worked with, he was amazed by the robots. Although it is not the goal of FIRST to bring adult technologists into FIRST but make FIRSTers into adult technologists, I believe this time it might have proved to be a two-way street and would certainly not be surprised to see him next year at the regional. With enough time and now greater understanding of the FMS, I'm sure that he could help iron out all the little bugs that made even the eliminations un-optimal.

As for the bad code issue;
I am not sure if the issue stems from bad code locking up the field, but just in case it does: Most of the teams have programmers which barely know their code or what they are doing. Last year I went to two teams, both rookies, and taught them programming from the basics of what is an IF and a WHILE to moving the code onto their robots. This year, one of my programmers went and did the same to an additional rookie. I'm sure other teams exist with programming experience that stems from what they taught themselves or what other teams taught them in 4 hours, or even only from what they learned during the 2 hour lectures at Tel-Nof (I'm pretty sure that identical lectures existed also in different places, but Tel-Nof is closest to me.
These quick courses do not teach proper programming, and many teams stick with what they see makes the robots move, even if it's not well done. While I doubt that these coding errors are the cause of the problem, cancelling out that possibility is very important, and better programmers overall would raise the level of FIRST in Israel. An idea that came up in my team(and yes, we do sit around a table and just talk about ideas related to FIRST, we are a bunch of people with no life ) is to host a summer programming week.

I'm sorry for my posts being this long...
__________________
Because using your robot's cannon to shoot at your nation's Minister of Education is worth all the 6 weeks of no sleep!

Last edited by RandomStyuff : 26-03-2010 at 06:33.