2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

The introduction of new COTS items by suppliers seemed to really level field for a lot of teams. VEXpro, AM, and CTRE all are allowing the mid tier teams to play at the same level as that the powerhouse teams have been at for a long time.

Remove "AM" from that statement, and I agree completely.

We (4464) had some bad experiences with AndyMark hardware this year...

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Remove "AM" from that statement, and I agree completely.

We (4464) had some bad experiences with AndyMark hardware this year...

Some people had issues with Talons and BAG motors, or Digital Sidecars and Banebox planetaries. On the whole, FRC Suppliers provide good, cheap materials to most teams, and that's why we welcome them all back on an organizational and personal level every year.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Some people had issues with Talons and BAG motors, or Digital Sidecars and Banebox planetaries. On the whole, FRC Suppliers provide good, cheap materials to most teams, and that's why we welcome them all back on an organizational and personal level every year.

My main complaint is with the Toughbox Mini, whose quality was far too unreliable to warrant being included as the KOP gearbox. Something like half of the units we purchased over the season were defective, usually due to gear spacing or angle being off.

Perhaps FRC can include VexPro gearboxes in the kit next year?

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Perhaps FRC can include VexPro gearboxes in the kit next year?

Oh, the one with the driveshaft that kept falling out?

As a longtime customer of both AndyMark and VEX, I understand that a single product does not a company make. I also understand that the vast majority of issues from both companies came from manufacturer error - this year, they seemed compounded for both parties. I thought both the Hoosiers and Texans handled these problems with grace, humility, and outstanding customer service.
I understand that no amount of testing will simulate the rigor provided by tens of thousands of high schoolers bashing and beating their products, and especially when compared to products available to us as recent as five years ago, the COTS products are remarkably robust.

[dlavery]

If my counts are correct, during the official matches 141,077 points were scored, and a minimum of 28,746 frisbees were successfully shot into goals (the actual number was undoubtedly higher, as this minimum was calculated assuming all Frisbees were shot into the top goal). All without a single decapitation, severed limb, or even one porpoise becoming accidentally entangled in the nets. All in all, that makes for one pretty successful event!

-dave


.

[Nuttyman54]

-Great game, very diverse array of competitive robots

-Great game piece. It was non-standard but they stood up very well to competition and testing, remained mostly consistent, and there were only minor supply hiccups. It also presented a completely unique manipulation challenge to floor pickup and in-robot storage.

-Vastly improved bumper rules

-Wildcards were fantastic. Still room for improvement, but overall a resounded YES in my book.

-Prelim match schedules at champs were nice. My opinion may have been different if they ended up getting changed at the last minute, but they did not. It was great to be able to notify people back home of when the team would be playing matches early.

-Practice matches on Einstein I'm sure were a great help to the team, and were really fun to watch. In a strictly no-defense format, it was really fun to watch all the teams run at their full capacity. It was almost like a showcase match.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Oh, the one with the driveshaft that kept falling out?

As a longtime customer of both AndyMark and VEX, I understand that a single product does not a company make. I also understand that the vast majority of issues from both companies came from manufacturer error - this year, they seemed compounded for both parties. I thought both the Hoosiers and Texans handled these problems with grace, humility, and outstanding customer service.
I understand that no amount of testing will simulate the rigor provided by tens of thousands of high schoolers bashing and beating their products, and especially when compared to products available to us as recent as five years ago, the COTS products are remarkably robust.

I understand your point, and I do appreciate the value of COTS parts and do not wish to insult the work that people put into increasing their quality, but unfortunately the experience my team had with AndyMark parts this year (not limited to the gearboxes, mind you) was not acceptable. That said, I suspect this thread is not the place for this discussion so I'll give it a rest.

[Libby K]

-Frank Merrick as (Acting?) FRC Director has been nothing short of fantastic. Communicative, open to new ideas, and really cares about this community. If the 'acting' part still exists in his title, it should be dropped. FRC definitely needs him to stick around to keep things in a positive direction.
-Wildcard system, as already stated, has been really great.
-Ultimate Ascent is my favorite game in a long time. Diverse options for teams.
-Volunteers have (mostly) been really friendly and engaging at events.
-Suppliers and vendors like VEXpro and AndyMark gave teams so many options to work with.

I'm really happy with how this season has gone, for the most part.
2013's been good.

[Anupam Goli]

The length of this compared to the negatives thread doesn't dictate how much FIRST has done right this year. FIRST has gone above and beyond previous years to ensure we have a great experience.

• Obviously Wild cards are one of the most well received things FIRST has ever done. Seeing championships and the competition level was just amazing
• The game. FIRST has knocked one out of the park again. It's exciting. It's engaging. It requires strategies and tradeoffs in design, and most of all, it's spectator friendly. Thank you GDC, for making this game so enjoyable
• Frank's blog and his openness has gotten rid of the black box image of HQ. Thank you for listening and showing us why hard decisions are made.
• The resources that FIRST has provided has allowed teams to go custom for much cheaper. Thank you again for all of these COTS vouchers.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Libby K

-Ultimate Ascent is my favorite game in a long time. Diverse options for teams.

Out of curiosity, what would be THE favorite game, of all time, then?

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Out of curiosity, what would be THE favorite game, of all time, then?

Alot of people pick 2004 as THE favorite game of all time for many of the same reasons is people like this years game. These 2 games all required major strategy decisions, and everything bots were next to impossible.

[JesseK]

I hope it's not 9 more years before we see another game like this one

[Oblarg]

My favorite game, hands-down, was Overdrive. Line violations notwithstanding, of course. Those sucked. But the game was awesome.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

My main complaint is with the Toughbox Mini, whose quality was far too unreliable to warrant being included as the KOP gearbox. Something like half of the units we purchased over the season were defective, usually due to gear spacing or angle being off.

Huh. We used eight of them between our robot and practice robot, and had no issues whatsoever.

[RyanJK]

From a FRC Alum/Team Head Mentor Perspective:

-AWESOME game. There were a lot of different approaches, the game was exciting almost every match, and you could build a defensive robot and be a top-tier competitor
-The KOP was really good this year. I liked the switch to belts for the stock frame, and the sheer amount of documentation and support made available by AndyMark, NI, and more was awesome
-The game element wasn't a ball! The FRC game element has been a generic ball for several years now, and it was great that FIRST mixed it up and made teams think differently this year. By the time Rebound Rumble rolled around, everyone knew how to pick up and manipulate a ball well - this forced teams to throw out all that knowledge and start from scratch
-Einstein was handled very well. A mistake was made, but it was caught and made right.
-Team's responses to the Einstein mixup were good. I was terrified that people would blow the mistake out of proportion and make it a much bigger deal than it was, but everyone is showing their gracious professionalism and realizing that we all make mistakes, and it doesn't really matter as long as they are caught and made right.

From a Volunteer Perspective
-Adding the ability to log to the Driver's Station was AMAZING. I was a Control Systems Advisor at a few regionals and at Worlds, and having those logs made it so easy to help teams. The logs helped show teams that 99.9% of problems are not related to the FMS and are, in fact, issues with the robot, and also made it super easy to diagnose whether or not the issue was software or hardware related. Troubleshooting was a breeze due to the logging!
-FIRST did a really good job making sure that all of the volunteers had the resources and training they needed to do well.