FIRST Choice is Profoundly Flawed

[zzzag]

Put in my two cents or avoid beating the dead horse... putting in my two cents wins.

Originally Posted by Doug G

I don't think it is that flawed.. What is flawed is many folks understanding of what FIRST Choice really is... I so much enjoy a kickoff without the crate of stuff we won't use. I know this is an issue for more veteran teams, but I still have buckets of old drill motors (and cases), FP transmissions, etc... I am glad that I don't receive this anymore and that stuff like it end up on FC for another team to use.

I did appreciate the FC items we picked up this year... the new right angle drill, multimeter, extra C-Rio, compressor, etc... I thought it worked pretty well. Anyone want to exchange 14 plastic FP transmissions for ... well... anything?

First off, maybe I missed the posts about it, but the first I heard that our pneumatic components would have to come from FC was kickoff. Had I known back in December, we might have ordered differently.

Second, as a student team member who has witnessed the growth of FC, I think this year's use of the system is against the spirit of FIRST. Until this year, FC struck me as a nice way to add a few minor parts/tools (the 2011 system was easy to understand and functional). But this year, it became a race to see who could win big and who would end up with the leftover couplings. The teams who won big see no problem with the system that's given them 9 Talons (each of Clarkson's teams) or 2 Classmates or a new cRIO or compressor (or some combination of the lot). And indeed, even if I got one of those items out of FC, I wouldn't be so disillusioned by the system.

FIRST is supposed to be for the student team members. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. How many threads have we seen complaining about robots that were clearly built by the mentors? The students should be the ones designing, building, and testing a robot (IMHO), and this includes selecting parts to go into a robot/team. And yet here we have a system that forces the mentors to do the selection and ordering of parts in a crazy race-for-the-computer during the day while many of them are working (for the first round, at least). By the time our school day ended and we were able to gather the team's student leadership to complete the order with our mentor, a mere three hours after FC opened, all of the parts we desired most were gone - compressor, battery, cRIO, classmate, even the multimeter (if I remember correctly). We ended up with a decent haul including a few window motors, some tools we've put to good use this build season, and a battery mount we won't use in this year's design, but the fact remains that we're still using a compressor, cRIO, and Classmate that have been with the team at least as long as I have (pretty sure the first year of the Classmate was my first year also) and running on three working batteries.
It's not that we can't work around this (our cRIO still works fine, even after a few coatings of sawdust from our old digs, our programmer brings his laptop for us to work off, and we could in theory order more batteries), it would just be better to know that these items were going to the teams that needed them the most or at least in a more even distribution.

And for the second cycle of FIRST Choice, the entirety of my team's leadership was on a bus headed home from kickoff. Even less useful stuff was available by the time we were able to get to a computer, which led to us ordering useless items to use up our credits as we'd be paying for the shipping anyway.

I'm in favor of the draft system, and I know a few programmers who might be up for writing it. There needs to be some way to bring more balance to FIRST Choice.

[Nirvash]

I would agree that there are may things that I would prefer to see in the KOP, at least for rookies. There is a noticeable lack of pneumatics in the rookie KOP, which if your team didn't realize you need early in the season, you have to buy everything to get that subsystem working yourself.

[Anupam Goli]

Is FIRST Choice perfect? No. Is FIRST Choice flawed? potentially. What are we accomplishing by sitting here arguing over it? I'm sure AndyMark and FIRST would LOVE to hear feedback on the system, specifically suggestions on how to improve it! We can have constructive discussion here, but let's not turn this into a thread bashing the neat concept that is FIRST Choice.

[Wildcats1378]

I think it's flawed a bit. The idea is nice, but for example, replacing motor controllers with electrical tape in the KOP because the motor controllers are now avaliable in First Choice is just silly. We logged in one day late, and all the motor controllers, batterys, cRIO's etc were all gone.
First choice should really be limited in how many items a team can stock up, as well as more of an addition to the kit rather then a main part of it. it isn't fun to rush and overload servers and hope you ordered something in time...

[F22Rapture]

I think an awful lot of issues would be solved by imposing per-item quantity limits and/or fixing the credit prices. There's no reason a $200 camera and $400 laptop combined should cost less credits than 2 $30 joysticks, nor should a $5 coupling cost the same as aforementioned $200 camera.

I happen to prefer the second solution because it solves both problems in one go.

[kevin.li.rit]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

I think an awful lot of issues would be solved by imposing per-item quantity limits and/or fixing the credit prices. There's no reason a $200 camera and $400 laptop combined should cost less credits than 2 $30 joysticks, nor should a $5 coupling cost the same as aforementioned $200 camera.

I happen to prefer the second solution because it solves both problems in one go.

Exactly, and for items with low quantities they might look to try a lottery system where everyone can have a window to put in points for it if they want that particular item.

[2544HCRC]

I want to go on the record as voicing my disappointment with FIRST Choice. I was on soon after it opened and everything we could use was gone. We were looking at Talons, a CRIO, and sensors. By the time I was able to get on (within hours) everything was gone. Nothing else was really worth the shipping to us. This is the second year that I have left ALL of the FIRST Choice points intact. I am thinking that more teams need to just leave the points instead of ordering useless stuff to burn up the points. I think if FRC sees many teams leaving all 100 points it might trigger some discussion that the system isn't working for quite a few teams.

My thought is that there should be a first round where teams get 1 or 2 of things that would be reasonably expected to be needed by all teams. After that initial round teams could have a free for all over what is left.

I agree that there were many items in the kit that were not needed. However, the pendulum seems to be swung the other way. The kit of parts was pretty bare this year. I realize that we are collectively renting many large spaces in urban areas for regionals but the cost is getting a bit much for what you get. Especially knowing that the same $5k would support almost 7 lego teams or several FTC teams. Yes I am aware that the cost has not gone up in many years. Add on to that the several thousand you know you are going to need because the kit is so lean. My understanding was that the KoP was supposed to provide a team a reasonably competitive robot. I was beaten up on this very forum for suggesting otherwise and regaled with stories of teams winning regionals on nothing more than the KoP and a good hammer. I don't think you could put a robot on the field this year out of the kit. In our case, as a team that is now in our 5th season, we needed to replace the camera (ours quite working), the classmate is about worthless, and we are on the old CRio that could use replacing. A well thought out and better FIRST Choice would go a long way toward solving some of the problems. If nothing else, maybe an auction of some type for the FIRST Choice major parts?

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by zzzag

FIRST is supposed to be for the student team members. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. How many threads have we seen complaining about robots that were clearly built by the mentors? The students should be the ones designing, building, and testing a robot (IMHO), and this includes selecting parts to go into a robot/team. And yet here we have a system that forces the mentors to do the selection and ordering of parts in a crazy race-for-the-computer during the day while many of them are working (for the first round, at least). By the time our school day ended and we were able to gather the team's student leadership to complete the order with our mentor, a mere three hours after FC opened, all of the parts we desired most were gone - compressor, battery, cRIO, classmate, even the multimeter (if I remember correctly). We ended up with a decent haul including a few window motors, some tools we've put to good use this build season, and a battery mount we won't use in this year's design, but the fact remains that we're still using a compressor, cRIO, and Classmate that have been with the team at least as long as I have (pretty sure the first year of the Classmate was my first year also) and running on three working batteries.

I see your point and I wholeheartedly agree that the robots should be student built and student designed. After all, what is the point of FIRST if we are taking the mentors who presumably already know what they are doing and let them have free reign with everything. That being said, there really is not a way that I can think of to change the system and I believe that it should stay the way that it is, the spirit of FIRST is not winning, it is learning.

Secondly, our team has the same problems as yours but to solve it we show the FC page to all student subteam leaders before the order day. Then with their subteams they pick out items that they might want and put them in a spreadsheet. We review eachother's choices to make sure that multiple teams are not requesting the same item, and if they are we place it higher on the list. Then the finalized list is given to the head mentor who places the order basically as soon as FC opens.

It is by no means perfect, but I think that we do a good job of maximizing student involvement while not sacrificing too much from FC. I agree that the points pricing needs reconsideration and there should be a limit on the maximum quantity of items (like talons). No offense to 4124 and 229, I applaud your use of the system and how well you work together.


Please check out ANY of our team's robots, you will quickly see that they are student built. You could hear the gears of last years shooter over the CMP webcast

[JosephC]

Let's please not turn a thread about FIRST Choice into a debate about Student Built/Mentor Built robots. We already have multiple discussions about that elsewhere.

FIRST Choice is not a perfect system. The best way to improve the system would probably be to adjust the points system. We can all agree that FIRST Choice needs to be balanced, to be more "fair"; however arguing with one another about just how "fair" it is right now is not the way to fix it. Instead of arguing; how about we remember that the people behind the screens are in fact people, with feelings, trying to do what they believe is best for the program. Instead of fighting with one another; let's try to come up with an agreeable fix to the system, and send it to FIRST HQ or AndyMark.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

I see your point and I wholeheartedly agree that the robots should be student built and student designed. After all, what is the point of FIRST if we are taking the mentors who presumably already know what they are doing and let them have free reign with everything. That being said, there really is not a way that I can think of to change the system and I believe that it should stay the way that it is, the spirit of FIRST is not winning, it is learning.

FIRST has specifically stated that robots built by mentors, or more specifically with mentor involvement, are OK. Also, FIRST is about Inspiration and Recognition. The vehicle they use is a robot competition--FIRST is NOT a robot competition.

@zzzag: I point you to the mission statement at http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/vision and ask you to show me one piece of FIRST literature, web-based or in print, that says that FIRST is all about the students.

I could go off into a rant about what I see as the real motive behind the "mentor-built robots" threads, but that would serve no purpose. Instead, I am going to suggest that a mod split off the posts and portions of posts beating the glue-that-was-a-horse for separate discussion, and return to discussion of how to make FC better.



If I was to make FC better, I'd start by seeing if I could get more of high-value items. Higher supply means more teams can get more of those items. Second, I'd see what didn't distribute well the previous year--that stuff would go down to really cheap, really quickly.

Then I'd start tackling the real problems. Price point, computer bugs, large orders, small credits. I'd actually start out by not changing the limits on quantity able to be bought, but credits available per round and number of rounds. Instead of having 100 points per round and 2 rounds, I'd make it so that only 25 new points were available each round, and have 8 rounds, of short duration (3 days to a week, 6 before build and 2 after, or something like that). But, if you didn't use all your points in a given round, they'd carry over into the next round. Between rounds, update quantities and possibly do some new items (say, if I had Talons one round, I might have remaining Talons and some 888s available in the next round). The last round is open until CMP.

I'd also look at some resemblance of points to dollars as the baseline, followed by how many teams are likely to use something for a "fudge factor" to move the cost up or down. Talons go up a credit or so, snowblower motors down a credit, game pieces go way down but with a cap based on the number of FRC teams and the number of items (ideally, each team gets the same number if they want them).

[sabruce01]

It is hard to inspire a student when they take THEIR creation and get stomped and embarrassed at a regional by a bot designed and built by mentors. It's sad to see students sitting on their bottoms in the pits while the "grown ups" work on the robot. I'm pretty sure that is not the intent of FIRST.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by sabruce01

It is hard to inspire a student when they take THEIR creation and get stomped and embarrassed at a regional by a bot designed and built by mentors. It's sad to see students sitting on their bottoms in the pits while the "grown ups" work on the robot. I'm pretty sure that is not the intent of FIRST.

Ugh... I swore I wouldn't get dragged into this.


You're wrong. Straight up wrong.

From Dave Lavery during the kickoff of the 2008 game.

DEAN MENTIONED ALREADY IF YOU THINK THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT ROBOTS YOU'RE MISSING PART OF THE MESSAGE.
THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE, AND I KNOW I'LL HEAR BACK FROM THEM ABOUT THIS, THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE WHO ARE BUILT SOLELY OF STUDENTS AS A STUDENT-BUILT, STUDENT-RUN, STUDENT-ORGANIZED TEAM FROM END TO END TO THE PROCESS.
I CONGRATULATE THEM WHAT THEY'RE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH AND DO.
THEY'RE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE WITH NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
DO THE TASK WE'RE SETTING OUT FOR THEM.
IF YOU THINK THE TASK IS ABOUT BUILDING A ROBOT.
MY CHALLENGE TO THE TEAMS IS, PART OF WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS GET YOU EXPOSED TO REAL WORLD TECHNOLOGIES PRACTICES, PEOPLE WHO ARE PROFESSIONALS.
IF YOU'RE DOING THIS WITH YOUR TEAM YOU'RE ABLE TO BUILD THE ROBOT AND ABLE TO COMPETE AND BE ABLE TO BE A PARTICIPANT IN THE PROGRAM BUT I THINK YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN ENGINEERING ON YOUR TEAM OR TWO OR THREE OR FOUR BECAUSE YOU AREN'T TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPOSE YOUR TEAM AND YOUR STUDENTS TO REAL WORLD ENGINEERING PRACTICES TO LEARN TO BE INSPIRED BY THE PROFESSIONALS TO WHICH YOU HAVE ACCESS.
SO IS THIS A HARD PROBLEM?
YES.
IT'S SUPPOSED HARD.
WE'RE MAKING IT HARD BECAUSE WE WANT YOU TO BE ENCOURAGED TO GO OUT AND GET PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING HELP FOR YOUR TEAMS TO HELP SOLVE THIS STUFF.
THAT'S HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET THE MOST BENEFIT OUT OF THE ENTIRE PROGRAM.

(source http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/...transcript.php)

[Nirvash]

There is a pretty recent thread on mentors and involment, that would be a great place to discuss mentors.

Lets keep this on First Choice.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Ugh... I swore I wouldn't get dragged into this.

Then don't. ignore the trolls, they will always exist. If someone wants to see this discussion, they can use the search function or pm others. No dead horses allowed!

I personally think that FC does need to be modified. I would've loved to get a few motor controllers out of FC, instead of laying out $550 on enough motor controllers for our practice and competition bot. (plus our Demo bot. That's robots worth of controllers!). I'm in agreement with either a system to limit how many parts each team can get, or scaling point value with actual market cost.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by sabruce01

It is hard to inspire a student when they take THEIR creation and get stomped and embarrassed at a regional by a bot designed and built by mentors. It's sad to see students sitting on their bottoms in the pits while the "grown ups" work on the robot. I'm pretty sure that is not the intent of FIRST.

I'm pretty sure you're 100% wrong. Instead of being jealous of successful teams, develop and foster your own personal progress. I can't stand people that complain about "mentor built robots" that have NO CLUE about how successful teams operate. Want to be a top tier team? Work all year long. Develop a team that strives for perfection and settles for nothing but their personal best. If you do this, you have a chance at true inspiration. I encourage you to engage these so called "mentor built robot" teams, because you have no idea how they operate and accusing successful teams of not engaging students is terrible. Learn from the best and better your own team.