2013 Las Vegas Regional

[MrForbes]

It's getting exciting here in Vegas!!

[JB987]

Congratulations to the number one alliance and to our friends on 3245, 1717 and 4276 for a well earned regional win! You killed us in auto for sure...We are especially proud of the growth we've seen this past year in 3245's program. In hindsight, maybe our mentorship shouldn't have been so thorough Looking forward to seeing all of you guys in St. Louis. On behalf of our team and our Regional Committee a big thanks to all of the great teams that participated these last few days. Hope to see you back for our 10 year anniversary next year!

[seg9585]

Whew, what an exciting Regional that was!!

Thanks a ton to our alliance members 3245 and 1717 for putting up such epic shooting numbers and your awesome help on and off the field! Those last few rounds really banged our robot up good playing aggressive defense, and our alliance members really helped us bend things back into shape and tighten everything down!

Team 987 -- I was mesmerized by your robot's awesome performance and build quality this entire regional. You really put on a huge show and I was so impressed with the bot's precise mechanisms and disc handling. Also, props to your driver for some incredible moves out on the field.

One more shout out to the mentors of Team 330, who were a huge help resolving our bandwidth and CPU load issues earlier during Quals. I think I've had enough of that Classmate computer!

- Eric G
Team 4276 Engineering Mentor

[Mason987]

Originally Posted by JB987

Congratulations to the number one alliance and to our friends on 3245, 1717 and 4276 for a well earned regional win! You killed us in auto for sure...We are especially proud of the growth we've seen this past year in 3245's program. In hindsight, maybe our mentorship shouldn't have been so thorough Looking forward to seeing all of you guys in St. Louis. On behalf of our team and our Regional Committee a big thanks to all of the great teams that participated these last few days. Hope to see you back for our 10 year anniversary next year!

+1

Congrats to the winning alliance. You guys definitely gave us a tough match, and we enjoyed working with and against you! It's really nice to see 3245 succeed and grow as much as they have since we last saw them!

As for the webcast issues, I'm not exactly sure why we were having so many problems. I think a portion of it had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue. I'm sure we'll get the videos archived somewhere (assuming we haven't already), and we'll try and get web casting set up a bit better next year so we don't have these issues.

Also, thank you to all of the volunteers, judges, refs, etc. Vegas is always my favorite regional (partially because i get to sleep in my own bed at night), and you are the people that allow this event to occur and run smoothly. We are extremely grateful for the time and effort all of you put into this event, and cannot thank you enough.

On a bit of a side note; next year will be the 10th anniversary of the Las Vegas regional! I know the Nevada FIRST board is planning for this event to be a huge blowout, and they're already getting a head start on it! We're hoping for next years Vegas regional to be the one to go to!

Now... lets get geared up for champs.

[MrForbes]

For those who missed the webcast, or had trouble with it, I recorded the finals with my little point and shoot camera. Enjoy! It was a very exciting regional, with lots of plot twists during the weekend. As always, it was a pleasure seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBoC6T7sS_0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g826eckLhLk

Big congrats to the winning alliance, and to Plasma, and especially to the High Rollers for winning Chairmans

[Mark Sheridan]

what a wonderful regional. We had a blast. Having Ice cream, coffee and dipin-dots stands in the center was extremely awesome. Having that break area next to the pits was really nice. Of course Las Vegas would have the most hospital regional I ever been too.

A very special thanks to our alliance partners 341 and 3366. We knew we could build an awesome alliance. 341 you had an awesome bruiser of a robot and 3366 had the awesome autonomous and great defensive capabilities. This was the first time my team was an alliance captain, thank you for making it special. Also how awesome is it that our first pick ever was Miss Daisy?

In case to those who were wondering what happen to our robot. We damaged our robot in two matches. I won't explain what happen in our second match, but in a later match we tried to climb with our dump bucket in the way and fell on our back. We were able to quickly fix most things except our shooter never was the same. We tried to get it calibrated again on the practice field but we kept on shooting low. We still don't know what is wrong. The best guess we have is that the wheel is off axis so the compression varies depending how it rides on the wheel.

Later is semifinal 1, our low frame got caught up on some rolled up tape from the field (maybe 3.5" wheels are too small), broke our bucket and smashed in a limit switch, preventing the climber from moving down. In semifinal 2, we went all in and disabled our safety limits and risked destroying whats left of our climber to try to win. Hey we are in Vegas right?

Congratulations to 3245, 1717 and 4276 on winning. Congratulation to 987 for winning Chairman's.

Our team had a lot of fun. We will try to make it next year for the tenth anniversary of the Las Vegas Regional.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Mason987

I'm sure we'll get the videos archived somewhere (assuming we haven't already), and we'll try and get web casting set up a bit better next year so we don't have these issues.

It seemed like the footage being shot was in HD, it sure looked fantastic on those big screens. If by chance the footage was archived in HD anywhere, there is some I'd definitely like to get my hands on

Thanks all for a great event, best ever for 3309 (everything that Mark said). 987 thanks for helping us out with that Teflon tape that kept our climber working. You're a fantastic group of people and congrats on another Chairman's win.

[JB987]

Originally Posted by dcarr

It seemed like the footage being shot was in HD, it sure looked fantastic on those big screens. If by chance the footage was archived in HD anywhere, there is some I'd definitely like to get my hands on

Thanks all for a great event, best ever for 3309 (everything that Mark said). 987 thanks for helping us out with that Teflon tape that kept our climber working. You're a fantastic group of people and congrats on another Chairman's win.

You are most welcome, Dave. And thanks for the kudos. As far as the HD projector screens you are right, it was fantastic. Problem is the video feed that was relayed to our computer to webcast was sub par and definitely not HD quality

[stens987]

Originally Posted by Mason987

+1

As for the webcast issues, I'm not exactly sure why we were having so many problems. I think a portion of it had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue. I'm sure we'll get the videos archived somewhere (assuming we haven't already), and we'll try and get web casting set up a bit better next year so we don't have these issues.

It DEFINITELY had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue...something which is out of our control. The webmaster tested the upload speed from his phone (with 4G) and it was faster than the LAN line.

As far as setting up the webcast up better for next year goes, we can't fix the upload speeds at the venue, which was the only issue we had...

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by stens987

It DEFINITELY had to do with the internet capabilities of the venue...something which is out of our control. The webmaster tested the upload speed from his phone (with 4G) and it was faster than the LAN line.

As far as setting up the webcast up better for next year goes, we can't fix the upload speeds at the venue, which was the only issue we had...

I run a yearly space-themed conference in Los Angeles every year, and we webcast out our sessions and talks in high def via 4G LTE hotspots (via routers). Companies offer several-day packages for cheap (~$30-40) and the streaming quality through them can be more than sufficient for the purpose you describe. I'm sure North LV has similar hotspot coverage.

I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon/Sprint/AT&T would even be willing to sponsor the webcast bandwidth for us. It's all a matter of asking the right people.

Let me know if you'd like any assistance with this...

[nixiebunny]

The Bit Buckets had an absolutely wonderful time! We'd especially like to thank team 341 for helping us out with a last-minute gearbox change. Every team there was friendly, helpful and great to talk with.

We were especially surprised to find ourselves playing competitively against 987 in the quarterfinals. I guess our robot works after all.

We're going to be putting on a local outreach event at Himmel Park in Tucson this Saturday, so in a way it's OK that we didn't have to bag our robot for St. Louis. We'll see if there are any dogs at the park who might want to chase Frisbees.

Also, thanks to the field folks for the Frisbees and carpet! We hope our help taking down the field was actually helpful.

[Quijas]

Las Vegas Regional was great. Team 597 would like to thank all the volunteers, judges, referees and teams that were there you all made Las Vegas regional a great experience for our team.

Special thanks to Team 2403 and 987 thank you for picking us it was great being part of such a awesome alliance and congratulations to 2403 for winning EI and 987 for winning Chairman's your teams really deserved it.

Congratulations to 3245, 1717 and 4276 we had a great time playing against your alliance.

[SenorZ]

Originally Posted by Quijas

Special thanks to Team 2403 and 987 thank you for picking us it was great being part of such a awesome alliance and congratulations to 2403 for winning EI and 987 for winning Chairman's your teams really deserved it.

The power of good scouting! You guys performed excellent in quals and had consistent shooting. By the way, how's your robot? Ours was quite mangled after playing such aggressive defense in the finals.

[Quijas]

Our robot is great just a couple of scratches, our bumpers took most of the damage.

[James3245]

After 4 years of FRC a first post from Team 3245:

Thanks to all who worked to make the Las Vegas Regional a great event! I know that Team 987, and others, provided many volunteers who put in immense amount of work to organize, set-up, run and breakdown the event. Even the packaged hotel option worked out great for us...we really appreciate all the attention to detail from event organizers.

As a newer team we learned a lot but struggled in our first two seasons as we had ambitious goals but limited experience from which to draw. Last year we reached out to Team 1538 the Holy Cows and they helped us greatly in answering our technical and program development questions. This season we also sought the guidance of Team 987. They generously hosted us at their shop as we tackled pneumatics and a two-speed drivetrain for the first time. I highly recommend that younger teams identify veteran teams they respect and seek guidance. In our experience we have received energetic, friendly and invaluable support with the two veteran teams that have mentored us.

We were especially excited going into the Las Vegas event seeing many powerhouse programs signed up. We saw it as an opportunity to test ourselves and to learn from the best. And we hoped that the top teams would hammer on each other enough that somehow we would sneak up in the seedings with our modest, simple design. Just before qualifications we solved the sliding-frisbee-stack-jammed-shooter problem that plagued us at the Utah Regional. That allowed us to play steady enough over the weekend to take advantage of a favorable schedule of match-ups. When we had problems, others against us also had issues plus our partners saved us, when we had to be good our systems worked, and it helped that in the quals we never had to go up against 987 or 1717, yet we benefited from being allied with them for a couple of matches.

Why did we pick 1717 given that 987 had been so generous to us this season as a mentoring team, and they picked us last year in LV and carried us to the 2012 LV banner? We were in awe of the robots fielded by both 987 and 1717 and knew that our chances with either were great. It came down to wanting to learn from working with a superb program, 1717, that we have looked up to from a distance but not shared a regional with. Also there was a tiny sense of "little brother/big brother" opportunity - to test ourselves against 987, the awesome team we have learned so much from. In the end we were proud to play a role as 987 and 1717 put on an exhibition of incredible play against each other in the eliminations. 1717 were gracious partners as we worked together on pick-list and game strategy and we learned a lot in working with their seasoned crew. And we enjoyed winning with 4276 - a great group of students and mentors to work with. We also had great fun playing against our friends at Team Plasma (who were shooting well and hanging for 30) - the team that chose us last year at Utah. The match video of elims reveals the outstanding defense 597 played - including against us - they earned our respect, that's for sure.

All in all, great fun to play with and against, and learn from, top programs in a very well-run regional. Thanks to all who made it possible!