2012 Mid-Atlantic Robotics FRC Region Championship

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I'm sorry, you are correct. Had them and 75 mixed up in my head for a moment (as the two Chairman's winners of MAR districts I didn't attend). I, too, am unsure of why they are being "skipped" in the crowdsourced data.

Sorry, my fault, I swapped 75 and 11 in my mind, shouldn't post to CD just after waking up...

In the event any of 1218, 1676, 2180, 2016, or 486 passing on their spot, it would go 357 (already passed), 11, 56, 1279, etc, etc.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by dodar

They aren't. The FIRST website doesnt have them registered for Champs yet.

I wasn't aware that our team was planning on going to that at this time either.

I'm unclear if anyone clarified what the 'skipped' means.

Any ideas?

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Went 3 for 3 on Rookie All-Star awards, the kids really impressed the judges and other teams, we've made a strong reputation for ourselves as a team to watch for, got a visit from a PA congressman, and qualified for World Championships. Not too bad of a weekend but still disappointed in robot performance and missing elims, being a long bot stinks .

Thanks for the kind words and emails from various teams.

A huge round of applause to 341's alliance for the most exciting eliminations matches I've had the chance to see. I am really hoping to see you guys in the same division as us at Champs.

Congrats to 11 as well for a great season so far, hopefully it is not over for you yet. I was sad to not see you walk away with the Chairman's award.

One more thing: It was a little ridiculous to still see teams losing comms and stop moving at this event. It seemed to even happen in eliminations, aside from the issues 1676 already mentioned with their robot. Were the lost comms for other teams determined to be field related or robot related?

Where was this field from? Was it NYC/CT? Internal MAR field? Rutgers field?

I think Team 11 did wonderfully despite the communications issues that effected them and other teams.

It's my understanding that the field teams worked quite hard with Team 11 to diagnose the underlying issues and my deepest thanks to everyone that helped everyone to deal with it.

It seems the communication issues are a mix of problems many of them pointing back to things that adversly effect the power to the D-Link APs.

Some teams report replacing the PDB adddressed it, for Team 11 it seems to be the DC-DC converter.

I'm not convinced that there isn't a field related aspect to what's going on, but I haven't seen anything offical and I can't dig further till I can get my hands on that DC-DC converter.

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

One more thing: It was a little ridiculous to still see teams losing comms and stop moving at this event. It seemed to even happen in eliminations, aside from the issues 1676 already mentioned with their robot. Were the lost comms for other teams determined to be field related or robot related?

Where was this field from? Was it NYC/CT? Internal MAR field? Rutgers field?

I was quite shocked to see the comms issues after seeing so few at Hatboro-Horsham, Chestnut Hill, and Lenape. They appeared to be pretty random throughout the event and didn't seem to plague any one team (1676 aside). 1712 had one issue where our driver station laptop wouldn't link up with the robot (FTA's classmate fixed that) but I'm 99% certain that it was on our side with the laptop. As I never spent any time troubleshooting an issue I'd be interested to hear from other teams that had issues and if they repeated or if it was just a one time occurrence.

I'm pretty sure that this was not the MAR field and was one of FIRST's. What other events the field was used at I do not know.

Also wanted to thank 869 for webcasting the event and recording it as well. It isn't broken up into easily digestible chunks yet, but if you missed any of the MAR Champs action it is available at http://www.twitch.tv/powercord869/vi...ast_broadcasts

[Lil' Lavery]

It was the FIRST field with sea green colored crates. Unsure of which events it was at previously.

[nlknauss]

My expectations for a District championship event have certainly been made after this event. Thank you to all of the teams who made the inaugural MAR Region Championship event one to remember. A huge thanks needs to be sent to the championship volunteers! You all are the best in supporting our teams and the event

Congrats to teams 433 and 75 on your Chairman's Award win. I am sure you all will represent the MAR region well in STL as you look to become the 4th team in our region to join the FIRST HoF.

Best of luck to team 3142 for the Engineering Excellence, 3929 for the Rookie All-star Award, and all of the other qualifying teams moving on to World Championships. Compete like crazy and have fun!

To Don R from 1676 and all of the Dean's List Finalists, thank you for being the role models to our students and mentors. You all certainly those we should be looking up to as leaders within the FIRST community.

Our championship volunteers of the year, Ed Petrillo and Frank Larkin, you both sincerely rock! Your dedication to the teams in our region and leadership in kicking off the District model was huge. THANK YOU

On behalf of the Storm Robotics Team, thank you to all teams for your support and enthusiasm. Our students and mentors greatly appreciate being a part of this FIRST community and look forward to everything the future brings in our region.

[No, I /animate/]

I have to say, I've never been to a more INTENSE regional. Between all the close matches, the triple balances, and the last minute scoring, I was on the edge of/out of my seat the entire time.

Mad props to the human player from 75 who won a qualifier by one point by throwing a basket from the feeder station.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Siri

(2016 as a 2nd pick!? Only at MAR)

Indeed.

Originally Posted by Jared341

Now that the first season of Mid-Atlantic Robotics is in the books I can come out and say it - from Week 1 at Hatboro-Horsham through Week 7 at the Region Championship, my expectations have been consistently surpassed.

Re-quoted for truth

Originally Posted by scottandme

In the event any of 1218, 1676, 2180, 2016, or 486 passing on their spot, it would go 357 (already passed), 11, 56, 1279, etc, etc.

1676 is definitely going.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by mechinn

Just wanted to let everyone know I will be posting all the matches from the MAR regional championship webcast on a youtube album located here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFC81AAE68B04E34B

All the matches from the first day are already posted.

Any idea when the matches beyond 41 will be posted?

Thanks for putting everything up.

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

One more thing: It was a little ridiculous to still see teams losing comms and stop moving at this event. It seemed to even happen in eliminations, aside from the issues 1676 already mentioned with their robot. Were the lost comms for other teams determined to be field related or robot related?

Where was this field from? Was it NYC/CT? Internal MAR field? Rutgers field?

The field was not the "MAR Field" and I believe the same one as Rutgers (Chestnut Hill had the MAR field that week).

From what I heard from some of the Field Crew, at least 2 of the Elim issues were bad batteries, and at least 1 was watchdog. Remember to have several batteries fully charged before Elims, because the matches come fast.

Since Fridays are a slow day for RI, I usually try to watch for robot control issues (not limited to "dead bots", including mechanism malfunctions) and provide in pit advice. Most of what I saw was cut and dry cRIO and Radio reboots. Reminder: secure those radio power cables with tape or ties, it was not rated for going over the bump

[galewind]

We blew a jag, which caused our system to go batty...

My HYPOTHESIS is that since it was on our CAN network, it caused our 2CAN to go haywire, which caused it to stop responding. This caused (or something else caused) the cRio to max out its CPU cycles and stopped responding.

In the meantime, our turret (which is on a separate victor) started turning, and the system wasn't watching our potentiometer voltage go beyond its desired limit. Thus, we sheared our turret belt and the potentiometer coupling (just a piece of surgical tubing).

When 1089 goes down, it's often in a blaze of glory. We always have an issue in eliminations when it matters most. It's been affectionately referred to as "The 1089 Curse"

I do, though, want to give a huge thanks to 357 and 816 for being such awesome and understanding alliance partners. It would've been awesome to pull that triple balance off in the match.

[ks_mumupsi]

I have been following this thread with regards to the penalties or no penalties, I believe the refs made the best calls they could given the circumstances. I don't think any members of our alliance would disagree with that.

I would like to congratulate 341 again, they have built a world class robot this year. Their partners 25 and 1640 were no slouches in their respective rights, each deserving the championship they earned. Each of them brought a great set of strengths. Congrats on the first MAR championship.

I would like to thank 1218 for picking us, our whole team turned around to see who was shouting our number because we thought it was our kids for a second. We really were very surprised, when we didnt get picked in the first round but I think we as a team know and understand why, the robot really did not perform to the levels its expected to in quals, fortunately we got that fixed in elims I think. I dont think we could have asked for better partners than 1218 and 2180 to put us in the finals. The three robots really gave us a huge advantage of having 3 really solid scorers.

I would like to make a special mention to team 3929 for putting together a great team and they are definitely no rookies to be passed up as such, I was extremely happy to see them qualify for nationals with RAS.

Congrats to all the other award winners and point qualifiers, I look forward to seeing many of the teams in St.Louis.

See you all in another week.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Cory

Any idea when the matches beyond 41 will be posted?

Thanks for putting everything up.

http://www.twitch.tv/powercord869/b/314953823
This video is all of Saturday, including the awards ceremony. Videos at the bottom of the page include the rest of the matches, although post match 41 are not split up.

In regards to connection issues(we lost comm a couple times during our matches, sometimes it was mysterious, one time it was a motor on fire ), one thing an NI rep suggested to us as a potential problem was that our cRIO was running at 100% CPU usage the entire time. This even went on at the Rutgers and Lenape districts, only we never had a problem (except for one loss of comm at Rutgers). Upon doing some things to fix this, we were running much better,, but many connection problems I saw this weekend were just plain mysterious.

But on a much, much more positive note, thanks to everyone for the Dean's List congratulations, it's a truly amazing honor, and I'll be writing up a larger "thank you/congratualtions" post (hopefully) sometime tomorrow.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by stevend1994

one time it was a motor on fire

You guys really do that that "Extreme Heat" thing seriously, dontcha?

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by galewind

We blew a jag, which caused our system to go batty...

My HYPOTHESIS is that since it was on our CAN network, it caused our 2CAN to go haywire, which caused it to stop responding. This caused (or something else caused) the cRio to max out its CPU cycles and stopped responding.

In the meantime, our turret (which is on a separate victor) started turning, and the system wasn't watching our potentiometer voltage go beyond its desired limit. Thus, we sheared our turret belt and the potentiometer coupling (just a piece of surgical tubing).

When you attempt to use CAN to communicate to a blown Jag it blocks the thread until it timeout (default is 0.02sec which is 1 normal teleop cycle). I recommend running all CAN Network communications in separate threads for each mechanism and out of your main DS communication thread (so that it doesnt delay other functions waiting for a response). In Labview, this usually means placing these commands in separate loops in the Periodic Taks VI.