[FRC Blog] 2016 Easter Egg and More

[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 6/23/16: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...r-egg-and-more

2016 Easter Egg and More

Written by Frank Merrick.


2016 Season Easter Egg

Tuesday night, I had a good time answering questions and judging game pitches on First Updates Now (FUN). Thanks, FUN, for inviting me to the show!

I also revealed a little Easter egg from the 2016 season that, I believe, no one in the community had picked up on yet. And Easter eggs no one knows about aren’t much fun at all.

You’ll remember that the History Patches we gave out to teams at events last season were different from week to week, with each week (along with District Championships and Championship) having a different number on it, DC, or C. Also, each patch was a different color. The color chart is below:



Cognizant readers will recognize this as the resistor color code, used to identify the value of a resistor in ohms using color stripes on the component itself. Yep, the resistor color code. 0 (Black) and 8 (Grey) are missing, because we didn’t have patch-worthy events those weeks, with our unusual Week 0.5 event being rounded up to 1 for patch purposes.

This was the idea of Toby Clarke, FRC Program Manager. If you watch the FUN video, you will see that the hosts, Tyler and Collin, were much less excited about this than I was for some reason. Either they, or I, need to get out more often. But I’m realizing now this revelation may be more exciting in larger font, all caps, italics, and with two exclamation points. Especially if you imagine hearing a cymbal crash when you get to the exclamation points.

IT'S THE RESISTOR COLOR CODE!!



The 5 Strategic Pillars of FIRST

Also on the show I touched briefly on the ‘5 Strategic Pillars of FIRST’, developed by our president, Don Bossi, and his senior staff. These are the pillars we are using to guide our long-term efforts. You can take a look at the end of the video if you want to get a quick overview of these, but Don will be doing a guest FRC blog in July going into more depth. It will be worth reading when it comes out.



A ‘New’ Original and Sustaining Team?

We were contacted by a member of FRC Team 250, Dynamos, from Albany, NY, USA asking about Original and Sustaining teams. Teams declared ‘Original and Sustaining’ by FRC are pre-qualified to attend Championship in recognition of their long and unbroken dedication to the program. The team member, Brendan Murphy, indicated that Team 20, The Rocketeers, who had already been identified as an Original and Sustaining team, actually became Team 250 at some point, before Team 20 and Team 250 split several years later to become two separate teams. So, it makes sense for us to recognize Team 250, who shares the early history of Team 20, as an Original and Sustaining team also. Welcome aboard, Dynamos, and thanks for your long-term participation!

Frank

Here's a link to a picture of the 5 Pillars of FIRST that Frank was talking about: http://i.imgur.com/zjEZOvA.jpg

[Brian Maher]

I was mere seconds away from posting this myself. As per usual, you beat me to it

Congrats to Team 250! It's nice to see that the longevity of their program is being recognized and that another team will represent upstate New York at Champs.

[ATannahill]

I was excited when I saw the color table put up on FUN. I think that is a wonderful quirky aspect of FIRST that they included.

[Jon Stratis]

It's a little disappointing they didn't make a black patch available for teams to get for "attending" week-0 scrimmages. Or maybe gold and silver ones for some teams (division elims and Einstein teams maybe?) That would have really made it special!

[Koko Ed]

Very happy for FRC 250. One of the classiest teams I have come across in my years in FIRST!

[Alan Anderson]

IT'S THE RESISTOR COLOR CODE!!

I noticed the red, orange, and yellow progression at the weeks 2, 3, and 4 events in Indiana. Until I saw that week 1 was brown, I wasn't certain that it was indeed the resistor color code.


I use it for things all the time. Our multiple-bank battery charger connectors are labeled with the same color scheme, and I have toyed with the idea of putting color-coded graduation year indicators on team student ID badges.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I noticed the red, orange, and yellow progression at the weeks 2, 3, and 4 events in Indiana. Until I saw that week 1 was brown, I wasn't certain that it was indeed the resistor color code.


I use it for things all the time. Our multiple-bank battery charger connectors are labeled with the same color scheme, and I have toyed with the idea of putting color-coded graduation year indicators on team student ID badges.

Don't forget to paint your students you can tolerate 5% of the time gold.

[bdaroz]

From your neighbors over in 5881, congrats to 250!

[ahartnet]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Don't forget to paint your students you can tolerate 5% of the time gold.

Then the students I tolerate the least could join a successful group in Las Vegas, Orlando, Boston, Chicago, New York City or Berlin or maybe go on to be on a TV show with Michael Cera. It's a win-win for everyone.

[timytamy]

It may have gone under the radar for a lot of people, as the many don't get the opportunity to see more than 2-3 patches closely enough to tell what week they are. The portion that see multiple at the same time, correlated to any sequence, would be even smaller.

I only got to see orange and white up close and didn't think much of it, but as soon as I opened this thread and saw the table (before reading), I knew it was resistors...

[jlindquist74]

Next time:

We Ride Big Yellow Vans Because Old Guys Break Stuff.

[scca229]

Originally Posted by jlindquist74

Next time:

We Ride Big Yellow Vans Because Old Guys Break Stuff.

Ah, that brought back some memories. Did you use a manual or one of those new-fangled powered wire-wrap tools?