pic: Canadian Carnage

[Koko Ed]

loading photo ...

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The remains of the particiapants after a hard fought match. This competition was tough on the robots (as most small off-season are. Teams don't have any time to cool down much less make repairs). By the end of the day two robots were basically bases driving around and 771 had to pull out after it's first quarterfinal match and 188 was barely function. And everybody knows what happened to 1114. FIRST robots have to be robust but this competition was really hard on the "atheletes".

And the field was littered with robot parts ...

There may be a few people who don't know what happened to 1114. Based on the Medic! picture and on Jonathan's post in another thread it's clear that they smoked -- but why? Can someone provide details?

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Richard

And the field was littered with robot parts ...

There may be a few people who don't know what happened to 1114. Based on Jonathan's post in another thread it's clear that they smoked -- but why? Can someone provide details?

I would like to know as well. In one of the photos, the medic photo, I think, everyone looks very serious and concerned.
Jane

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Jane

I would like to know as well. In one of the photos, the medic photo, I think, everyone looks very serious and concerned.

Yup, this was definitely one of the scariest moments I've ever seen at competition. About halfway into autonomous mode there was a burst of flames (yup, flames) and a huge amount smoke from the 1114 robot. I was the first one to see it, so I called out to the head ref and scorers table to kill the match. Field Supervisor Bill Leeder carefully entered the field along with myself and Mike Diramio who was our "IFI guy" for the weekend. Team 1680 mentor Brad Ziegler who also happens to be a fire fighter was on the scene as well. Our main concern was making sure we could extinguish this blaze before it got to the battery. Thankfully once power was killed, the smoke died down.

Thanks to all the volunteers who helped ensure that there was a safe resolution to this dangerous situation.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Yup, this was definitely one of the scariest moments I've ever seen at competition. About halfway into autonomous mode there was a burst of flames (yup, flames) and a huge amount smoke from the 1114 robot. I was the first one to see it, so I called out to the head ref and scorers table to kill the match. Field Supervisor Bill Leeder carefully entered the field along with myself and Mike Diramio who was our "IFI guy" for the weekend. Team 1680 mentor Brad Ziegler who also happens to be a fire fighter was on the scene as well. Our main concern was making sure we could extinguish this blaze before it got to the battery. Thankfully once power was killed, the smoke died down.

Thanks to all the volunteers who helped ensure that there was a safe resolution to this dangerous situation.

Will the robot still be competition worthy or is the damage too severe (it wasn't moving too well in match 2).

[Derek Bessette]

Originally Posted by Richard

And the field was littered with robot parts ...

There may be a few people who don't know what happened to 1114. Based on the Medic! picture and on Jonathan's post in another thread it's clear that they smoked -- but why? Can someone provide details?

We didn't spend a lot of time trying to diagnose the problem as we had a match to get to. However, based on our quick assessment, it looks as though a bundle of PWM cables shorted the leads to one of our speed controllers, burning the insulation on the PWM cables and creating the large cloud of smoke. We decided to rip out all of the PWM cables and re-wire our drive motors before the second match. The other alliance graciously called a time-out to give us a little more time. We were almost able to get the elevator and launchers running again, but ran out of time. We played the last match as a very ineffective dumper. We were also having drive train problems as one of our shifter pins broke before the finals. The zip tie we jammed in the shifter to keep the robot locked in low gear helped us to keep things moving.

Congratulation to 1503, 610, and 1547. They did a wonderful job all the way through the wonderland event. It was great to face 1503 for the first time all season. It's too bad we weren't at our best, they would have been some great matches.

[Steve W]

When I arrived and the smoke started to clear there was 1 PWM cable pins between the 2 screws on the speed controller. From there you can see what happened. It was too bad as 1114 was dominant all day. They even won a 3 on 1 by a score of 50 - 7 or something. In that match 1114 played great defence as well as scoring in both auton and offence modes while playing great defence the rest of the match.

[Jonathan Norris]

I totally agree that this competition was really tough on the robots, looking back on it I feel lucky that we didn't have any major problems. I really think that was one of the reasons that our alliance won, the only robot that really had problems was 1547 had some small problems with chain which was easily repairable. Looking back, 771 could not tame their chain problems all day, 188 had problems all day with their drive, some robots took their shooters off (as seen in the pic), and the most obvious is what happened to 1114 in the finals. It was a tough day of competition with the Canadian bots showing how we can really play defense.