Show-me Showdown

[Woolly]

It's a wonderful event, put on by great people, in a location perfect for putting FIRST in the public eye. And this year, despite only having 12 teams, it was stacked with great robots, many of which were in St. Louis about 4 months ago, and two of which being field finalists at Worlds.

Also, huge thanks to team 4809 for being the alliance partner we needed to win the competition, you guys were fun to be around and play alongside, despite scaring us with that C-RIO power issue.

Congratulations to all the award winners, all the students, mentors, volunteers, and spectators that think spending one of your dwindling days of summer at a robotics competition is a great use of it.

Also, teams that were having radio troubles might want to get their robot and driver-station upgraded to be compatible with 5GHz WiFi before next year. The D-Link routers from the kit are already compatible, but you probably will need a $40 USB dongle for your laptop to be compatible with it. 2.4GHz only has 11 channels that all have overlap with other channels such that robots running on adjacent WiFi channels will interfere with each-other. 5GHz has 21 available channels (as long as there's no interference with weather radars) which don't overlap and interfere with each-other.
If you're interested in a more in-depth explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels