[BB] 14/10/11 More from my inbox

[Nick Lawrence]

From Bills blog today:

Good Morning Teams,

As of this morning we have 1579 FRC teams registered for FRC competition events and 793 teams registered to attend a local kickoff.

If you haven’t chosen a local kickoff, what are you waiting for? Participating in a local kickoff gives your team an opportunity to connect with other teams in your area and saves your team the cost of shipping the KOP directly to your worksite. Your Team Main or Alternate Contact must register in TIMS if you want to attend a local kickoff.

If you haven’t signed up for your first event yet, you should do so soon. Registration for second events opens to all teams (including MAR & FiM) on Oct 27th. Have you made plans for a second play?

How will you transport your robot? We’ve received requests for Bag & Tag Exemptions from teams who face significant hardships in transporting their robot to the closest FRC competition. As your team chooses your second event which will, in all likelihood, be even further from home, remember, teams may request a bag & tag exemption. Be sure to read the Bag & Tag FAQ as you plan for the 2012 season.

If you have your sights set on the FIRST Championship in St. Louis April 26-28, be prepared, CMP will NOT be Bag & Tag. You need a shipping crate to get your robot to CMP.

Did you watch Dean’s video about the Kinect? He included a shout out to NI for the new 4-slot cRIO FRCII that I would like to clarify. Rookie teams will receive the 4-slot cRIO in the 2012 Kit of Parts. Veteran teams may either use their existing 8-slot cRIO or purchase a new 4-slot cRIO as described in my Aug 23rd blog

The following Beta Test Teams have received the new Kinect to beta test over the next few months. You can follow their progress (and ask them questions) on the FRC 2012 Beta Test section of the FIRST forums. Additional teams will be chosen from the Beta pool to test additional new hardware in the very near future.

Java
Team 341 Miss Daisy Philadelphia, PA
Team 694 Stuypulse Forest Hills, NY
Team 2477 Rascal Robotics Ewa Beach, HI
Team 2967 Iron Devils Columbus, GA

LabVIEW
Team 33 Killer Bees Bloomfield Hills, MI
Team 1764 Liberty Robotics Liberty, MO
Team 1912 Team Combustion Slidell, LA
Team 2169 KING TeC Prior Lake, MN

C/C++
Team 166 Chop Shop Merrimack, NH
Team 294 Beach Cities Robotics Redondo Beach, CA
Team 2809 Kbotics Kingston, Ontario
Team 2903 NeoBots Arlington, WA

On October 29th, the teams attending River Rage Fifteen at Memorial High School in Manchester will help us out as we test the Kinect, the newest control system and possibly some radio prototypes for 2013 under competition conditions.

If you intend to join us in Manchester on Jan 7th for the Live Broadcast and need a hotel room, you should keep an eye on the political news. With Nevada and Iowa’s recent announcements of their intention to reschedule their caucuses, New Hampshire expects to reschedule its first in the nation primary. The primary date hasn’t been set yet, however hotels in the area have responded to the uncertainty by blacking out blocks of rooms for the weekends before the most likely dates. Unfortunately, this currently includes the weekend of the FRC kickoff which makes it very difficult to find a hotel room in Manchester for kickoff at the moment. When the primary date is announced, hotels will make the rooms available, if the primary and kickoff overlap, you’re going to have to book your room right away.

GDC will be in town this Saturday. I’ll let you know how that goes.

85 days until Kickoff
See you then!