PNW Lessons Learned (Week 1)

[Navid Shafa]

Things went well out here. Nothing below is strikingly new, just thought I'd share:

Originally Posted by Kevin Ross (PNW District Chair)

We had a great weekend for our first FRC events. The events were a lot of fun, and we learned a number of things about the running of this specific game. The following information is a little dense, but it is very important for you to pass on to the appropriate members of your team.

Both Oregon City and Auburn Mountianview ran late on Day 2. There were a number of reasons for this. We have plans outlined below for you to help the event run on time. This includes a few schedule changes.

Schedule changes:

Day 1 opened a little late. We found that setup took a little longer than expected. To adjust for this, the pits will open at ABOUT 5:00 and stay open until 10pm. We were 15 minutes late on Day 1 this week. You may still leave at the scheduled 9:30 time. We added 30 minutes to help with that issue.

Day 2 ran long at both events. We are currently modifying the end of qualification match play to be 7pm on Day 2. The pits still close at 8pm on Day 2. Please check your event schedule for this week at www.pnwfirst.org. We will re-evaluate our schedule changes for the next week based on what happens this week.

Because of how the game runs, we learned that the final rounds take longer than we originally scheduled. The final rounds now run from 11:45 to 3pm at all events. Awards should be at 3pm. The pits close at 4pm, meaning we want to have you clear out your pits as soon as you are done. After the final rounds, the pits will no longer be open for working on your robot and you should be cleaning up.

Transport configuration is being monitored.

The inspectors are watching your robot come and go between the pits and the field. Please insure you are following the rules. Most common violations are height issues with your robot on the cart.

Temporary rule modification from last week.

In an effort to catch up last weekend, we had to modify the rules for getting from transport mode to competition mode. We allowed teams late on Day 2 to setup for game mode while in the queue. That was a temporary rule change approved by FIRST only for that day. We are returning to the official rules for all subsequent events.

Procedure for robot startup:

Across all of FRC worldwide, we had some issues with robots establishing connections with their robots. FIRST is aware of this, and is working on improving things. We have the following procedure for you to follow. This involves steps your team MUST take in order to successfully connect your driver station to your robot through the FMS.

0) Power your robot off before you enter the field.
1) Connect driver station to field using provided cable
2) Verify that DS says "Connected to FMS" in the status area
3) Signal your team to turn on robot (this may happen while robot being positioned)
4) Stay with your drivers station. The FTA’s are watching, and will know if you are having issues.

Robot Setup:

Your team has about 1 minute after your robot first touches the field to setup your robot into game configuration. We found that many teams were taking too long on this step. PLEASE insure your team is able to setup your robot on the field in about a minute. If your team takes too long, the referees are allowed to implement rule G10 for which you can be disabled for the match. They nearly called this a number of times this weekend. Please practice your setup until you can do it reliably in less than 1 minute.

Post game:

Your team has no more than 1 minute to enter transport configuration after the match. PLEASE be aware that the green light on the driver station after the match means you should go directly to your robot, enter transport mode, and leave the field. Be ready as soon as the green light goes on to clear your robot from the field

If you take too long, the rule G11 is a yellow card for delaying the game.

Have a great weekend, I look forward to seeing you at the events,

Kevin Ross
PNW District Chair

[orangemoore]

Transport configuration is being monitored.

The inspectors are watching your robot come and go between the pits and the field. Please insure you are following the rules. Most common violations are height issues with your robot on the cart.

What was the problem with this?

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

What was the problem with this?

My main guess: The underestimated challenge of getting through doorways

[Jean Tenca]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

My main guess: The underestimated challenge of getting through doorways

From what we saw this likely was the main issue. At PNW OC I saw multiple teams slamming their robots into the top of door frames at the beginning of the event. By the end they were having to remove their robots from their carts or tip them to get through. This turned into a congestion and safety issue since the robots are huge this year. I recommend that teams plan for this and make low profile carts for events.

Edit: I'll also add that we didn't factor in our pit height until we got to competition and had to put wood blocks under the front legs so our robot could easily go in and out.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by ScourgeDragon

I recommend that teams plan for this and make low profile carts for events.

With at least 3" Diameter wheels.

[MrForbes]

here's our robot on it's lowrider cart. There are 3" casters under the crosswise 2x6s, and there are pieces of angle and plywood under the robot chassis, screwed to the cart, to support the robot. Today we made a box/handle assembly that screws to the top of the rear end 2x6.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by ScourgeDragon

I recommend that teams plan for this and make low profile carts for event.

We actually got a new cart for this year because of that (also the old one broke, but I think we fixed it)

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Procedure for robot startup:

Across all of FRC worldwide, we had some issues with robots establishing connections with their robots. FIRST is aware of this, and is working on improving things. We have the following procedure for you to follow. This involves steps your team MUST take in order to successfully connect your driver station to your robot through the FMS.

0) Power your robot off before you enter the field.
1) Connect driver station to field using provided cable
2) Verify that DS says "Connected to FMS" in the status area
3) Signal your team to turn on robot (this may happen while robot being positioned)
4) Stay with your drivers station. The FTA’s are watching, and will know if you are having issues.

I feel happy to have been a part of having solved this problem. We found out about it in a practice match and recreated the problem in the pits. It only seems to be an issue when connected to the field or when tethered.

We used network tables and it seems that they can read from the robot but not write to them unless you follow the above procedure. It had us worried for a bit that the fancy control box we used was going to be a paper weight until we found that boot up procedure that worked.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

What was the problem with this?

It wasn't a violation per se. The problem was that many teams had to take their robot off the cart or tempoarally tip it to get through the two door ways between the pit and field at both the ORC and AMV events. It did cause congestion and "waddling" through the door with the robot which is not that safe. Neither is technically a safety violation, but it is possible to build a low rider cart that will allow a 78" tall robot through a standard 81" doorway.

Originally Posted by MrBasse

I feel happy to have been a part of having solved this problem. We found out about it in a practice match and recreated the problem in the pits. It only seems to be an issue when connected to the field or when tethered.

This was an issue known to FIRST before week one and was something that the PNW FTAs discussed when they and I were repacking the road cases for this season. So the FTA at your event should have informed the teams at the driver's meeting.

[Dave McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Mr V

This was an issue known to FIRST before week one and was something that the PNW FTAs discussed when they and I were repacking the road cases for this season. So the FTA at your event should have informed the teams at the driver's meeting.

I do not believe it was made known to teams at the Auburn Mountain View District Event. If I am in the wrong I will happily stand corrected, but our team was only given the fix listed above as a possible solution after our last qualification match on Saturday. In previous matches, when we had trouble connecting, we were made to restart our DS laptop and eventually replace the DS with one provided by the field. This sequence of events happened on at least two occasions.

If the above workaround was known prior to the event, why were we not told how to properly connect to the field? Additionally, when we did have connection difficulties, why was this procedure not utilized? If I recall correctly, never once were we asked to power off our robot on the field to allow the DS to connect first when we had issues.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Mr V

This was an issue known to FIRST before week one and was something that the PNW FTAs discussed when they and I were repacking the road cases for this season. So the FTA at your event should have informed the teams at the driver's meeting.

If that is the case then I am really disappointed in FIRST as well as the event staff. It would have been really easy to figure that out if we had been informed through an Email blast or a blog post. Or if our FTA had any idea. He sent our code out to New Hampshire to have FIRST look it over and they still never told us about this. So if it was a known issue and not shared with the greater community, the fairness of week 1 has been stripped away as some teams sat on the field wondering why their controls didn't function like they did back home.

Also we burned hours of practice time solving a problem that was already solved? How does that seem fair? Sure my team figured it out, but at what cost? It took a long time to regain confidence in our control system after a few inexplicable failures when connected to the field. For all we know that could be what caused us to perform worse than we have in five years.

[Sperkowsky]

Our robot is short compared to many but we still only made our cart raise a few feet of the ground.