AndyMark FIRST Choice Tease

[ehochstein]

AndyMark sent out an email today with the subject "FIRST Choice Tease"

Greetings!

Things are VERY busy here at AndyMark this fall. Staff has traveled to several off-season events in recent weeks - Panther Prowl, SCRIW, CAGE, Houston Robot Remix and are on their way to Cow Town ThrowDown this weekend. We are also receiving parts almost daily for FIRST Choice, so our warehouse seems to be shrinking. We thought we would use this e-mail blast to talk about the growth we are seeing.

FIRST Robotics is growing! The registration for teams is progressing very well. According to FRC team 358 mentor, WFFA winner and stat tracking guru Mark McLeod, here are FRC team registration numbers as of noon today:
2298 Registered FRC teams, compared to 1943 on this date last year
This is a 18.3% growth rate.
FIRST hopes to get as many as 2800 teams for the 2013 season. Here is a snapshot of the number of registered events for FRC teams:
Teams attending 3 Events: 1%
Teams attending 2 Events: 29%
Teams attending 1 Event: 70%
Key dates are coming up soon for FRC teams. FIRST Choice parts will be available to be viewed on the AndyMark site beginning Nov. 12th. Then, teams will be able to order their FIRST Choice parts BEFORE kickoff this year, on Dec. 10th. There were 689 teams who chose an AndyMark PDV instead of the Kit Drive System, and those teams will be able to start using their $450 PDV for AndyMark parts also on Dec. 10th. Check out FIRST's official Blog announcement here.



Look for new products to be released at AndyMark.com in the coming weeks.

Any ideas on what is under those blue tarps or in the boxes?

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

Any ideas on what is under those blue tarps or in the boxes?

Some FIRST Choice stuff

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Some FIRST Choice stuff

No wait I got it... The FIRST Choice items this year are boxes and blue tarps Robots have to build a shelter to protect themselves from rain... Water game!

[Phyrxes]

So someone at HQ reads XKCD and decided to make that comic come true, spiffy!

[Redo91]

The arrows are obviously pointing at the wood pallets.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Redo91

The arrows are obviously pointing at the wood pallets.

You are incorrect, dear sir. The arrows clearly indicate that the concrete floor is a FIRST Choice material. My calculations indicate that the game will involve pouring large areas of concrete and waiting for it to dry. Field reset should be interesting.

[Jeff Pahl]

I'm hoping we can get more than one blue tarp!!

[ehfeinberg]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

You are incorrect, dear sir. The arrows clearly indicate that the concrete floor is a FIRST Choice material. My calculations indicate that the game will involve pouring large areas of concrete and waiting for it to dry. Field reset should be interesting.

You are both wrong!

The arrows are pointing towards the blue tarps. Now, why might there be tarps there, one may ask? To protect what it is covering from water! Therefore, the arrows are pointing to the water droplets on the tarps, thus indicating a water game!

[jeremy callahan]

Originally Posted by Redo91

The arrows are obviously pointing at the wood pallets.

They are point towards a pallet and what do you do to stuff on pallets you stack stuff and so it will be some to do with stacking boxes and when was the last event we did that?

[Saberbot]

We could really use some of CSI's image enhancement software. With that we could isolate the reflection on the concrete and see below the tarps.

[JVN]

[Richard Wallace]

Tarp

(how many permutations can I make?)

Part
Trap
Prat
Rapt

This is fun.

Maybe the 2013 game is called "Tarp Trap"?

[Littleboy]

Maybe we are allowed to use parts to build the robot. That would be new.
But I think the game will involve us building cardboard boats, putting robots in to paddle them, and then race around the pool.

[mickztlin]

I checked andy mark and the new products and they added polycarbonate and I think the game may be have a high and low traction field.

[ksafin]

Any idea of FIRST Choice window shopping opens at midnight?