Five Person Drive team in 2017

[Irwin772]

If you haven't seen Frank's latest blog post you can find it here,

http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...pack-3-buttons

In the post there is a picture of the new drive team buttons for 2017, if you look closely you will notice that there are 4 drive team buttons and another for the drive coach. Could this be one of the hints for this year's game, will there be an additional drive team member on the field.

This is something that could open up some cool possibilities with the game, as long as it doesn't end up with human players scoring more than robots do, ala Lunacy in 2009.

[Rick]

I noticed this as well. I think the last time 5 people/team were behind the glass was 2001 when teams were allowed 2 drive coaches.

[Lireal]

I think it is likely that there will be two human players this year. It wouldn't really make sense to change the amount of drivers, because it will just crowd the space behind the glass.

[Justin Montois]

Somebody has to be the Drone Pilot

[TheBoulderite]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Somebody has to be the Drone Pilot

Yay! Someone else thinks drones are involved in this game!

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Somebody has to be the Drone Pilot

Something similar to this perhaps?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Something similar to this perhaps?

Or maybe a variation on this!

[SenorZ]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Or maybe a variation on this!

We've been discussing the possibility of a flying drone as low, UNLESS it is attached to some sort of large inflatable that slows its movement, and makes it easy to spot...

[jaunvie]

Everyone's 4th drive team member sits on a Dunk tank ledge. At the end of the match the loosing team gets dunked. WATER GAME!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by jaunvie

Everyone's 4th drive team member sits on a Dunk tank ledge. At the end of the match the loosing team gets dunked. WATER GAME!

I think everybody'd be down for that--except the MVF* who drew Dunk Tank duty...



*Most Valuable Freshman. May also be a non-freshman pre-college student, who is depromoted to Freshman simply for the, er, privilege of having a chance at being dunked.

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

We've been discussing the possibility of a flying drone as low, UNLESS it is attached to some sort of large inflatable that slows its movement, and makes it easy to spot...

We get to control blimps! Wooo

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Jpatterson1710

Yeah, the "Christmas Tree" is primarily why FIRST has updated the radio. The old D-Link radios failed to implement proper WiFi protocols, nor could they enforce bandwidth caps. Basically, WiFi protocol says that when packets are being dropped, the rate at which those packets are sent must be reduced, and the rate at which they are backed off must be random. The issue with the D-Link was that the rate at which they backed off was hard-coded as a set number. Therefore when the network got crowded and packets were dropped, all the radios on the field backed off and then tried to re-send packets at the same time. If you can imagine, that is exactly why the rate should be random, and thats why we saw the "Christmas Tree". Among other things, one of the major improvements with our new radio is that it does in fact back off at a random rate, following proper WiFi protocol. That said, the "Christmas Tree" is not impossible with the new radios, but it would be a very surprising. I personally don't know of a single occurrence it last year, and adding six feeds really shouldn't have much effect on the likely hood of a "Christmas Tree" type of occurrence.

Had we not updated radios, I would totally agree with you. Six additional feeds with the D-Link would absolutely increase the occurrence of the "Christmas Tree" among other things.

If anyone has more questions about what the "Christmas Tree" is(symptoms, causes, fixes) or if you'd like to hear why the recent changes are fixing this issue, feel free to PM me or quote/reply. I'd be happy to answer your questions!

At one of my events I scorekept at this year (I'd like to say warren district but my memory is shot) we did get a christmas tree due to Wifi interference (other networks on the same 5G channel), which was fixed by swapping WiFi channels.

That said, the new radios, from a field management point of view, were really awesome indeed. I'll take one christmas tree over an entire year over the mess the year before was. Especially during my stint on Hopper Field in 2015, where we suffered more christmas trees than the holiday section at Walmart.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Another possibility I thought up. What if the 4th drive team member is an optional button if you use a student as your "coach". So only 4 people on drive teams but you can either have 4 students or 3 students and one adult "coach". That way it would encourage* student coaches who could manipulate game pieces, touch controls, etc. And only adult coaches wearing the special button wouldn't be allowed to interact with game pieces, etc.

*I'm not saying it's something that should be encouraged but I can see the argument for it.

[Caleb Sykes]

The extra button could also just be a spare, but that's far less interesting than other possibilities, so let's keep speculating.

[Irwin772]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

The extra button could also just be a spare, but that's far less interesting than other possibilities, so let's keep speculating.

I've been on drive teams since 2007 and have yet to be given a spare button, even if it would have come in handy sometimes when drivers disappear into the stands