2012 Virginia Regionl

[Levin571]

Would anyone be able to provide a me with a ride to the regional on Saturday morning. I am a DC resident, and I am supposed to shadow the VC for the regional to prep for the DC competition.

If so, e-mail me at dcregionalvc@first.org

[PayneTrain]

Match Schedule is up.

Good luck.

[ToddF]

Did everyone enjoy our smoke display in the last practice match? And you thought that last year's stalled minibots were fun...

So, it turns out that our turret is so quick it keeps right on going when it hits the limit switches. Those limit switches are supposed to prevent the spinning wheel from contacting the turret chain sprocket shielding. When the turret drives the side of the spinning wheel into a lexan shield, the shooter slows way down, motor current goes way up (driven by PID velocity control on the shooter wheel shaft encoder), and much smoke is released. Happily, we were very prepared for such a possibility. Swapping out the shooter drive module for our spare was quick and easy.

Our practice match also showed that the pneumatic cylinders actuating the bridge arm were too small. We started out with 1.5" diameter cylinders, and downsized to .75" for weight reasons. Since shortening the tower, we have the weight to use, so we swapped back to the original cylinders. No more wimpy bridge actuation.

Good luck to all in the quals tomorrow.

[wilsonmw04]

Todd,

We've all been there. If you need anything to get up and running tomorrow, you know where we are.

The match schedule threw me a real treat. I get to play a match with my first FIRST team!

[DRH2o]

Team 1598 had a fun day today. It looks like we have some fun matches tomorrow. Hopefully we can keep going where we were good and get better where we need to. We wish everyone the best of luck and look forward to a great day at a great regional. Thanks pit admin and the inspectors for getting everyone off to a great start today

[PayneTrain]

If anything breaks for anyone, our shop is a few blocks away and we have tons of motors and things we have never used before. Stop by and let us know if we can help!

[PayneTrain]

I want to give a quick shout-out to our superstar sophomore Zachary Allen, who decided that even though we were tipped over in essentially a 1v3 match, he wouldn't settle for a loss. Cross-court shot tied it up 8-8 and gave us the .500 we wanted in what I think is the toughest seeding schedule we have ever been given.

Even though we have had some disappointments in working with some teams on the white bridge, we look forward to getting on and balancing it in at least one match tomorrow.

Good luck to everyone!

[FRC4ME]

And of course the field works perfectly all day Thursday, then falls apart first thing Friday morning and takes 45 minutes to fix.

After that, though, it's been a blast so far. See everyone tomorrow!

[PayneTrain]

I'll get to thank you's and all of that later,but I heard 1262 may not be able to make it to Championships because of the budget. If you're reading this and you're 1262 or someone who can reach the STAGS, talk to the regional committee to see what they can do to help ASAP.

I'd love to see you guys again after we take North Carolina ;D

[tim-tim]

Congratulations to 1885 for earning the Virginia Regional Chairman's Award. It is well deserved for such a great team.

Congratulations to 384 on earning the Engineering Inspiration Award; you are a true inspiration.

And, congrats to the winning alliance 384, 435, and 1262

[tim-tim]

Here is the link to the "March Madness" Video shown this weekend: http://youtu.be/1tW7-lzDdpY

[ToddF]

What a wild ride. Thanks to 1885 for choosing us for their alliance. Also thanks to team 1418 for the pneumatic cylinder for our bridge actuator. You saved me a 2 1/2 hour round trip drive, Thursday night, to retrieve a spare from our shop.

Let me be the first to link to some video. Here you can find a playlist of the video I shot to aid in troubleshooting between matches. It's all closeup of our side of the field, so may be of limited interest to others except for our match partners. More video will be forthcoming.

[fnsnet]

I'd like to thank everyone for making a fantastic Regional this weekend. Special thanks go out to my field staff (family!) that work hard and play hard to make the event a success; you're the best!

Much love, and I'll see you at the next event.
Matt

[Alex Cormier]

We sold RoboTowels to 3 teams in attendance of the Virgina Regional. Does anyone have some good photos of them being used by any of the teams?

Thanks!

[JesseK]

2363 figured out something no other team could do -- use their camera for active target tracking from the key. The jumbo screen and lit advertisements behind the backboards prevented the possibility until Triple Helix figured out a workaround. They fixed it between Friday and Saturday and hit a hot streak. Being 3rd seed, I was worried 1st or 2nd seed noticed. We basically summarized and shortened our Friday lists, then started re-capturing data from scratch Saturday morning. About halfway through Saturday matches, we knew we wanted them and didn't look back. All of us were very glad we were fortunate to partner with you for a second year in a row. Teams in NC should watch out

Thanks to 1793 for coming through in the clutch for a heart-stopping last second double balance. We were slow to get to the bridge due to a spring-assisted lowering arm that was off its chain and messing with our drive train in QF3. They also had a working autonomous while proving to be incredible defenders.

Thanks to you both for being amazing partners! We were so incredibly close to surviving the shootouts in our 3 QF matches.

Some interesting notes --
- We asked the powers that be to turn off the jumbo tron screen or the lights in the advertisements with no success. To combat this, 2363 found that a brighter camera light combined with an offset scoring position that put the advertisements just barely out of the camera's FOV provided the right conditions for NI's libraries to find the shapes.
- The balls in Quals all had varying levels of ball squishiness ranging from really squishy to WTF squishy. Ironically the first 2 balls we were handed in Elims were as almost as hard as actual basketballs.
- We brought an extra hoop, backboard, pole, and base to calibrate our distances with. Doing this helped quite a bit, and we hope the teams who took advantage of it found it useful. Hopefully other Regional/District events will be forgiving enough to allow the 20'x10' space needed for such a setup in lieu of a full practice field.
- Inspections this year were the smoothest ever. It turned out to be a really great idea to put 2 inspectors in each aisle.

As for the RCA win:
Here's to all of the current students, ILITE alumni, current and former mentors who put in the thousands of hours required to make such an expansive program. You should be proud; it wouldn't have been possible without you!