Einstein 2012

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

For those of you that were there, did the non-moving robots suck the energy out of the competition?

Oh, yeah. It was back a little bit by the finals, but the reactions during and after the semifinals were some of the most muted I've ever heard, a lot quieter than the divisional finals. I even heard some boos after... the replay of SF 2-1, I think?

[Racer26]

I will be floored if HQ doesnt post an update on Tuesday directly addressing the shenanigans on Einstein.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Oh, yeah. It was back a little bit by the finals, but the reactions during and after the semifinals were some of the most muted I've ever heard, a lot quieter than the divisional finals. I even heard some boos after... the replay of SF 2-1, I think?

From what it seemed, one of the loudest cheers of the evening came when it was after they announced that the bad weather had passed and we were allowed to leave the venue. That says something.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by stevend1994

From what it seemed, one of the loudest cheers of the evening came when it was after they announced that the bad weather had passed and we were allowed to leave the venue. That says something.

The loudest cheer of all was when they announced that they were going to replay the first two matches. The second-loudest cheer was during the replay of SF 2-1 (I think) when all 3 red robots were moving... for about ten seconds.

[Donovan0217]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

For those of you that were there, did the non-moving robots suck the energy out of the competition?

It did, the matches had the potential to be the best of all this year, but fell short of expectations because of the non-moving bots.

[Botwoon]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Oh, yeah. It was back a little bit by the finals, but the reactions during and after the semifinals were some of the most muted I've ever heard, a lot quieter than the divisional finals. I even heard some boos after... the replay of SF 2-1, I think?

I definitely heard them. They were entirely justified in my opinion, and that isn't the way it should be.

[Racer26]

Something tells me the 4 Einstein teams who weren't at IRI last year will get their invites.

[Botwoon]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Something tells me the 4 Einstein teams who weren't at IRI last year will get their invites.

I can confirm the validity of this statement.

[Chexposito]

That entire sequence of events that occurred on Einstein was hard to watch as a FIRST alumnus. I know myself and several other alumni were very disappoint.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Chexposito

That entire sequence of events that occurred on Einstein was hard to watch as a FIRST alumnus. I know myself and several other alumni were very disappoint.

As was I, watching my first ever Einstein

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Botwoon

I can confirm the validity of this statement.

Sounds like they already have .

[Chexposito]

Originally Posted by Gregor01

As was I, watching my first ever Einstein

We were going to leave early because of the literal injustice we were watching unfold consistently infront of us (and was blatantly ignored). Of course this was the time the dome was quietly going on lock down due to the weather (we were forced to stay by event security).

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by bduddy

The loudest cheer of all was when they announced that they were going to replay the first two matches. The second-loudest cheer was during the replay of SF 2-1 (I think) when all 3 red robots were moving... for about ten seconds.

What about when the paper airplanes made it clear across the field?

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by efoote868

What about when the paper airplanes made it clear across the field?

That too...as well as the "waves of varying speed"

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by DominickC

@EricH - As it stands, the IFI system is perfect for running nearly any robotics project that you might want to do. Granted the serial interface is a pain, it's still a fully functional and robust microprocessor. While it won't do what we ask of our cRIO's today, it's earned my respect.

What about the use of an Arduino or similar type microprocessor?

Arduinos are great for what they are: a tool to teach people about electronics, instrument some sensors, make lights blink, and multitudes of other cool things but they are severely limited in both speed and memory to perform advanced tasks. I don't have the datasheets in front of me but I doubt that an Arduino is as powerful as the old IFI system.

That said there are multitudes of microcontrollers (and similar devices) out there that are plenty powerful (ARM, PIC, ATMEL/AVR, Freescale, pick an architecture!). What they don't get you is the "plug and play" features that we get with the cRio and associated tool chains that effectively help level the playing field. Instead of figuring out the low level implementation of say vision processing, we get tool chains that "work" out of the box. Sure there is a lot of fine tuning involved to perfect these out of the box utilities but the implementation is there for any team rookie to veteran to use. That is a huge advantage of the current system.

Where I think we are running in to problems as someone mentioned earlier is that no one understands the system top to bottom, controller to FMS and all the components between like they did in the IFI days. Sure, individual subsystems are well understood and characterized but do they all play nicely together? Is the cRio IP stack (implementation) implementing something that isn't compatible with the D-Link? The D-Link to the cRio? The D-Link to the FMS access point? This is the area that seems a bit grey to me and may be contributing to the unexplained issues. 95%+ of issues are easily explained (loose power connector, bad wiring, loose connection etc.), it is the others that are puzzling and I'm not sure have a known root cause. I'm not saying anything unexplained caused the issues on Einstein, just that there appears to be an underlying issue somewhere that can't be pinned down.