2012 Washington DC Regional

[Grim Tuesday]

639 had a great time at our first DC regional!

First off, a thanks to our two fantastic alliance partners, 888 and 346. When we were making selections, we took quite a few factors into consideration: Robot orientation, teleop scoring, and hybrid scoring. Every list we made, you guys came out on top. I have no idea how neither of you were already chosen. Honestly, I was expecting 888 to be chosen by the first seed, considering they had the second highest OPR, second only to 1218. I was ecstatic when we got the second robot on our list too! We had a list of 24 teams and only had to go two down. It's unfortunate that we couldn't pull off the triple on the field that we had practiced successfully three times . Also, we had one of if not the highest hybrid score at the event. Regardless, it was one of the best alliances, and I think we honestly could have won the event if we had gotten past the 620 alliance.

As such, I think that there are congratulations in order for the 620, 3123, and 1731 alliance. Our first semifinal was, with combined scores, the second highest scoring match at the event, only second to finals match 2. There was no funny business in our matchup at all. All of our alliance worked, as did yours. There were no uncalled for fouls. It was a win well deserved, and especially to 620, your creativity award was well judged. The combination of dumper/shooter was a really cool and creative mechanism that performed perfectly in eliminations.

Congratulations to the winning alliance, 2914, 467, and 357. To quote one of the members of my team, "467's robot is made of pure 3/16 aluminium sex". 357's Jester drive was also very very neat, I would love to learn more about it. It was great the entire regional, and the gameplay was great in elminations, once again, simply outplaying the opposing alliance.

Speaking of the opposing alliance, we wish 1218 the best of luck at the MAR district championships! We would love to see you guys again in St. Louis.

Finally, congratulations to 461, the RCA winners and 1885 the EI's! We hope to see both of you at the Championships in St. Louis! Every time I hear the judges read off the reasoning behind a Chairmans or EI team, and wonder why we didn't win it, I think to myself "Because these teams are just so $@#$@#$@#$@# awesome". And they are.

Also, a special shoutout to team 174, our friends from the fingerlakes that beat the first seed in the first semifinals match. Once again, fantastic play. There were no broken robots, and no funny business. (Though, in the second semifinals match, the luck you guys encountered was almost comically atrocious: First 174's shooter jammed, then 116 got stuck on the fender, then 1418 tipped over, leaving the entire alliance incapacitated.)

888 mentioned that they were interested in attending the Finger lakes Regional next year, and we would love to see them in attendance!


We do have a few criticisms of the event. I was trying to decide whether or not to post them, but I'll preface this with the fact that my goal is to be constructive rather than insulting:

• Not having internet at the arena was a huge issue for our team, as our entire scouting system relies on internet access to get to our database. Tethering phones is not a good enough solution. I understand that it is a convention center, but at the Fingerlakes regional, the planning committee provides the teams with a temproray login to the RIT network. I feel like a similar thing could be planned for, with a team login to to the convention center net. In the future, we will be checking at regionals for those that have internet, and not attending those that don't.
• On the same subject, the lack of power in the stands was an inconvenience, but definitely understandable, because there really was no way to provide power to them.
• The refs missed or made the wrong call a more than a few times. There was an incident where, during a double balance, one of the robots fell off and was touching the barrier. Instead of counting the bots as none balanced, the team got 10 points for the one robot fully supported. We also noticed quite a few instances of robots possessing 4 balls that were not penalized. That said, the crew was great and overall did a fantastic job all weekend.

In the neutral category, does anyone know why there were three field faults called over the course of the event? They replayed two qualification matches and a semifinal, even though it seemed to me that all robots were functional in that semifinal. Also, we noticed 1218 intermittently losing connection during the last final match. I wonder why a fault wasn't called on that one when there was such a history of them being called before?

And a couple fantastic things that we loved about the planning of the event:

• The pit layout was positively fantastic. Instead of simple rows of teams, the aisles made moving through the pits an absolute dream. This is even more essential at the 60+ team events like DC, and it was absolutely nailed.
• The advent of that "teams inspected" projector was one of the best ideas I have ever seen. It's only only useful to see where your team is in the inspection process, but it was also incredibly useful for us to see that during our first match of the day on Friday, we were partnered with an uninspected robot, and though we tried to get them inspected as quickly as possible (They didn't have a set of red bumpers, so we taped some blue cloth red), we didn't make it in time. So we knew to tell them to send a player to the field, but not to interact with anything, and no DQ's were given.
• All the teams in DC were great, and it was really fun to help and compete with you guys. In particular, we enjoyed helping 4067 with their rookie machine, they were really having some bum luck. Also, our pit kinda became a hotspot for other teams programmers, which was really fun, and made our programming team feel really good.

Onwards to St. Louis! We hope to see everyone who qualified in DC in a few weeks!

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

639 had a great time at our first DC regional!

*snip*

We do have a few criticisms of the event. I was trying to decide whether or not to post them, but I'll preface this with the fact that my goal is to be constructive rather than insulting:

• Not having internet at the arena was a huge issue for our team, as our entire scouting system relies on internet access to get to our database. Tethering phones is not a good enough solution. I understand that it is a convention center, but at the Fingerlakes regional, the planning committee provides the teams with a temproray login to the RIT network. I feel like a similar thing could be planned for, with a team login to to the convention center net. In the future, we will be checking at regionals for those that have internet, and not attending those that don't.
• On the same subject, the lack of power in the stands was an inconvenience, but definitely understandable, because there really was no way to provide power to them.
• The refs missed or made the wrong call a more than a few times. There was an incident where, during a double balance, one of the robots fell off and was touching the barrier. Instead of counting the bots as none balanced, the team got 10 points for the one robot fully supported. We also noticed quite a few instances of robots possessing 4 balls that were not penalized. That said, the crew was great and overall did a fantastic job all weekend.

*snip*

In the neutral category, does anyone know why there were three field faults called over the course of the event? They replayed two qualification matches and a semifinal, even though it seemed to me that all robots were functional in that semifinal. Also, we noticed 1218 intermittently losing connection during the last final match. I wonder why a fault wasn't called on that one when there was such a history of them being called before?


Onwards to St. Louis! We hope to see everyone who qualified in DC in a few weeks!

RE: missing calls. I was volunteering at the event and noticed a few botched calls. As I was behind the player's station, I mostly noticed the ones happening back there. There were a few times when balls simply sat in the corral for 10-15 seconds and even a few instances of teams having more than one inbounder. I know it's hard for the refs to keep an eye on the stuff going on back there, but that was slightly concerning.

As for the field faults...a robot having intermittent connection with the field is not cause for replaying a match unless the issue is on the FMS side. The FTAs are the ones who handle this. I am guessing this is why those two qualification matches were replayed--robots had connectivity issues that were the FMS's fault and not theirs. In the semifinals, the match was restarted because the red alliance clogged up their goal and shots that would have gone in were bouncing out. This also happened at times in 2006 when the field would be unable to keep up with the shots pouring into the higher goal. This was not the fault of the teams involved as the field crew is responsible for clearing the nets should balls get caught. The inability to do this in a timely fashion caused the teams from losing out on points, again, by no error of their own.

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

...and even a few instances of teams having more than one inbounder.

Could you please elaborate on the issue here?
-Duke

[nahstobor]

Team 612 would like to send out a special thank you to teams 1646 and 1747. Although our partnership in the playoffs was brief, it was still a lot of fun working with all of you. We gave the #1 seed everything we had, but that triple balance isn't easy . Good luck to your teams in the future, and I hope our teams cross paths again.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Duke461

Could you please elaborate on the issue here?
-Duke

Section 2.2.3 of the game manual:

The Players
Each FRC team may provide up to four Players for each Match: two Drivers, one Inbounder, and one Coach. The Drivers must be pre-college student team members and are responsible for operating and controlling the Robot. The Inbounders must be pre-college student team members and are responsible for entering Basketballs onto the Court. The Coach may be a student or adult team member. The Coach must wear the designated “Coach” pin or button during the Match.

And <G31>

Only Inbounders may contact Basketballs; each Inbounder may hold a maximum of two Basketballs. During Teleop, Inbounders must remove Basketballs from the Corral immediately upon arrival. All Basketballs in the Alliance Station must be held by Inbounders once removed from the Corral.
Violation: Foul

Edit: you guys had a pretty awesome inbounder, by the way (not to mention overall a great team and robot). I saw him hit quite a few shots throughout the event.

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

Section 2.2.3 of the game manual:


And <G31>


Edit: you guys had a pretty awesome inbounder, by the way (not to mention overall a great team and robot). I saw him hit quite a few shots throughout the event.

I was the human player
I also had a lot of shots that just clanked off the front rim

Oh, so you're saying multiple members of one team acted as Inbounders? At first i thought you meant you couldn't have the three human players inbounding basketballs. Interesting, i never noticed that, but i didn't get to watch a ton of matches.
-Duke

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Duke461

I was the human player
I also had a lot of shots that just clanked off the front rim

Nice! I was working behind the red alliance player station. You were one of the better ones out there this weekend that I saw!

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Duke461

Oh, so you're saying multiple members of one team acted as Inbounders? At first i thought you meant you couldn't have the three human players inbounding basketballs. Interesting, i never noticed that, but i didn't get to watch a ton of matches.
-Duke

This actually is not surprising as I have seen many teams playing it fast and loose with rules at several events. I actually caught a guy with a media pass go right up to a drive team during a match and start barking orders to them. I told him to go back and sit down. Looking back I should have just taken the pass from him and had him removed from the field.
Most of the teams that do this are lower end teams who obviously do not bother to read the rules so do things like bring whole entourages to the field (one team at Montreal to combat my stopping them bringing too many people onto the field due to a lack of driver button gave four extra driver buttons from a previous regional to other member so they could bring eight people onto the field) to having the wrong buttons (or even outright losing them) to having too many people handling the balls.
All these antics due is cause more work for already stressed out volunteers and it's neither funny or endearing. It's just stupid and unnecessary.

[Tetraman]

174 had a wonderful time at DC. It was a great change of pace for us than always going to Buckeye or Boston and we again continued our best season in the 15 years we've existed. 8-1 in Qualification, and reaching the semifinals. The students of 174 have never been so excited on our list of successes.

We want to thank team 116 for choosing us. It was an incredible experience for us to be a part of your legendary team and we won't forget this alliance. And to 1418, you were a great partner as well, and we would love to work with you again if we ever meet once more. That Semifinal match we won was probably the best match played during the entire event. It's a shame we had so many bugs in the second matches - I'm sure we could have gone all the way.

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

(Though, in the second semifinals match, the luck you guys encountered was almost comically atrocious: First 174's shooter jammed, then 116 got stuck on the fender, then 1418 tipped over, leaving the entire alliance incapacitated.)

We call this "174 Luck". We also lost in the semifinals at FLR to the #1 seed as the #5 seed. It was supposed to happen. I'm sorry 116 and 1418, we sorta ruined the alliance from the get-go.

And I want to shoutout to you, 639. It was nice to see another FLR team around so we didn't feel like we were in completely strange territory. While I was watching the webcast, I was rooting for you guys to pull off that triple balance again. Can't wait to see you at FLR next year. (you know, we are only an hour and a half drive away - our teams should do something together sometime.)

Congrats to 461 on their well deserved Chairmans award. I remember seeing them at Buckeye back when I was a student and they were such an inspiring team. Good luck to you in the future!

We choose our second event on impulse, but DC was really good to us so I'm sure 174 will be back if not next year, soon. Thank you to all of the teams we played with and against for being inviting and all of 174 wishes you luck in your next events or next year!

174 ended their year 26-8-0, an absolute record year for us - even without a finals appearance, you can't imagine how much this trumps the three FLR wins in a row and the other victories we've had. I think it's time to convince the rest of the 174 mentors about IRI.

[Wetzel]

In regards to the internet, the cost from the venue is astronomical. If you connected to the buildings internet, you could see they wanted something like $17 an HOUR for internet access for one IP address. You can imagine what the cost would be to provide internet access for everyone over the course of the event.

In the two Friday replays, every robot on the field experienced around a 3-5 second lag and/or "stuttering" communications. There was a guess as to why, but only a guess was that the field might have run out of bandwidth due to all 6 teams using camera feeds with relatively low compression.

I did see some missed calls, but that happens all the time in all sports, even with professional referees. There were 5 referees, 6 robots, and 24 human participants in every match, you can't see everything all the time. I think they did a pretty good job over all. Full disclosure: the head ref is my brother.

2914 had an awesome time at the event, and is excited to keep playing and represent DC in St Louis!

Wetzel

[Ryan Dognaux]

This was my first time attending the Washington D.C. regional and I was very impressed by how smoothly the event ran. The venue had a ton of space and there were funnel cakes right on the other side of the pit curtain! It doesn't get better than that.

357's experience at this competition was fantastic. Everyone was welcoming and friendly. A big shout out to all of the Purdue FIRST teams - 461, 1646 & 1747. These teams cheered for us and we cheered for them. 1747 collaborated with us on scouting and provided data when we needed it, which helped us out immensely during the competition. Also congratulations to 461 for winning the Chairman's Award!

To 1218, 836 & 141 - our final matches were great. I knew that all things being even, these were going to be two very close, competitive matches. The 30 point autonomous routines you were putting up prior to our matches had me nervous. Good luck in any other events this season.

To 467 - your scouts had a great strategy in mind and correctly assessed that 2914 would be a great 3rd robot in our alliance. Your robot's 2 point shots were many times just what we needed to have an edge in our matches. Your ability to quickly balance on the ramp with 2914 were great as well. Thanks again!

To 2914 - our team began referring to your robot as 'bubble bot' - and wow were you guys good with that bridge manipulator. The few balls you passed to our end stopped our alliance from running dry towards the end of our matches. Give your drivers a huge compliment for their defensive abilities and for fixing your robot under pressure (can we get a picture of the bent drive axle?)

All in all, DC was a great experience and I hope that we'll be back next year.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

and there were funnel cakes right on the other side of the pit curtain!

Oh, that's what those things were. I thought they were the DC version of crepes.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Oh, that's what those things were. I thought they were the DC version of crepes.

They had those too! The food options at this event were pretty awesome. I don't mind paying the venue prices when there's some variety, and there were plenty of other options within a couple of blocks of walking. Good job planning committee!

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

All of 3929 wants to give a huge shout out and congratulations to 357 for winning and 1218 for being finalists. Great work guys!

Thanks! Congrats on your regional win as well. Quite the weekend for some Philly area teams.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

They had those too! The food options at this event were pretty awesome. I don't mind paying the venue prices when there's some variety, and there were plenty of other options within a couple of blocks of walking. Good job planning committee!

I haven't bought venue food since I became a volunteer. Si I never check what a venue has to offer.
The people who feed the volunteers do such an awesome job.

[tim-tim]

First off, I would like to congratulate FIRST Team 461 on earning the Chairman's Award.

Second, congratulations to FIRST Team 1885 on winning the Engineering Inspiration Award for the 3rd year in a row. We knew we would be up against some stiff competition. Well deserved!

Thanks to FIRST Teams 1218 and 141 for an amazing ride through the elimination rounds. It is too bad we all started to fall apart at the same time. Good Luck to you guys at the FiM and MAR Championships. You guys were awesome to work with!

Congratulations to FIRST Teams 467, 357, and 2914 on the Regional win. You guys played a great set of matches, which were very competitive. Can't wait to see you all in St. Louis!