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Tips and Lessons Learned

Posted by Andy Baker.

Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 5/1/2000 12:04 AM MST


In Reply to: IRI - Hoosier Havoc posted by Andy Baker on 4/30/2000 10:09 PM MST:



This competition went much better than we expected, especially since we finalized the date only 1 month ago!

We did have some lessons learned, and I'll try to share them with the rest of you. If you have specific questions, feel free to contact me (or Tim).

1. Control system: The Innovation First field controllers were great. We rented a system that included 9 field controllers (4 on each side w/ 1 spare), 2 power switch boxes (never before used), and a frequency scanner. Also, as part of the package, we purchased the cables for the system (cables are less re-usable, therefore, Innovation First wanted us to buy them).
....Price: we got a good deal, but I'll let Innovation First quote you the price, not me.
....The field lights are not part of the system, we had to provide those (thanks, Mike Stahl!)
....The robots would not respond on the field a few times, but we think we know what the problem was. If a team was tethered right before the match, then the controller on the robot had to be reset a few times in order to re-connect via the modem. Make sure that you reset the robot controller and the operator controller to get the connection back.
We had to replay one match due to this reset problem, and it was the right thing to do.

2. Make sure that your set screws are tight on the goals and hanging bar. One match, in the semi-finals, team #1 was got wedged under the limbo bar after a tussle with team #68, and they were stuck. As they were trying to get free, they raised the goal a bit, and then the hanging bar came loose. No one knows whether the bar fell off due to the action by Juggy, or if the set screw on the KeeKlamp fitting was loose... so we had to rerun the match. I made sure that the fittings were tight after that match!

3. FIRST (Eric R.) graciously donated their scoring program to us, but we couldn't get it working correctly. So, Jeff Burch developed his own program, using Excel with Visual Basic. It was quite impressive, but it did not figure in alliance picking tie-breakers. Our #1 & #2 seeds had the same Qualification point average, and so did #3 & #4. We finally found the rule, and I think that it is SC5. I believe that Jeff's program is available for others to use, just ask.

4. Leave yourself some buffer time in the agenda. We ran our qualification matches about 40 minutes too long. Our practices started a bit late, and therefore pushed the start of qualifications 15 minutes late. We had a '1 minute performance demo' that each team was going to strut their stuff for a minute before the final allicance pickings... but we had to dump it due to the fact that we were running late. Finals started only 10 minutes late, and the awards started on time, so all worked out well in the end.

5. Have your announcer sit closer to your DJ, ours were too far apart, and they had to rely on hand signals and two-way radio contact. They should've been side by side.

6. Get a good crew of judges. That's how you get your bosses, your community, your local colleges and businesses involved! Give them plenty of guidance!

7. Make your on-field decisions by a group, and make them as quickly as possible. We made two tough decisions, and both times we decided to re-run the matches. (Thanks for teams 67 & 68 for being understanding to our decision.)

8. Get the best facility you can. Our competition was very sucessful due to such a great facility... it was big, and we put the pits right next to the field.

9. Get ready to assign the work. We had no trouble getting volunteers, but had some trouble putting them all into positions. Feel free to double up the assignments.

10. Just do it... as the movie says: 'build it and they will come'!

Enough for now!

Andy B.


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