Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by avanboekel

Okay, somethings wrong here. In the last 4+ hours since championships have been over, there have been 14 posts in the 'congrats 16, 26 and 180' thread. There have been hundreds complaining about the field issues. Whether you like it or not, they are the FIRST World Champions. It isnt their faults that there was a problem with the field. Their achievements are just as important as field issues. I suggest that everyone heads over to the thread to congratulate them.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=106040

I agree. These communications problems are not new. They've persisted through out all levels of competition to this point.

As I've stated elsewhere when Team 11 had issues 3 times in Philly. I didn't feel that it dramatically effected our placement based on what we saw when we competed entirely free of issues at other events. By a turn of events we went to Championships anyway.

Sure there's room to argue the point. However, as long as the people are effected fairly randomly let's not forget that these folks built some really phenominal robots and we all played the same game.

Chance is always an element. Be it a bizarre unexpected balance, a sudden broken part or even a software failure. Sometimes the chance is a spectacular show and sometimes not.

As far as how FIRST handled this? Troubleshooting of this type has been limited to the events. Everything else, like this survey, is generally a collection of anecdotal evidence. I expressed my concerns about field communications before this year's first event (based on our off-season experience at Monty Madness last year...see the topic about alternate control systems) and I expressed my concerns about how the troubleshooting was pushed back generally at all events in the 2 recent years with this radio system in the other topic. I myself was spare parts at the MAR Mount Olive events and we had a few issues with this problem and despite much effort to track the only thing that helped them was driving with the camera off and hence mostly at a disadvantage. The situation was put on this path by FIRST and people close to FIRST. This was the risk at every event and every event had the same problem not just the Championship. I presume that FIRST had figured they had this problem well under control when they started Championship given the pattern of the behavior. Perhaps FIRST just felt it fair not to eliminate the problem now that it had already messed with all the events up to that point...but they did allow some replays which is inconsistent (perhaps the story changed under the hot lights). Things apparently did not work out. I saw the look on everyone's face. They don't need this topic to tell them this can not be allowed to happen again....we need quantifiable evidence not anecotes and we need it when the problems happen not after the fact when things are all apart or it's just speculative no matter who's speculating really. We as teams can't test on their competition fields; both because we don't have access to them all the time and because often the rules prohibit the effort during competition matches.

I'm sure it'll get fixed it's hard to ignore it's a priority under the circumstances.