Week Zero Discussion/Impressions/Discoveries/Fun Facts

[JamesCH95]

In-bounding was a huge time-suck. A lot of teams were chasing balls around, or waiting for them to stop bouncing, before they could get a cycle started. As were bumbled balls after auto. Same with missed high-goal shots.

Defense will be very important, but being able to switch from offense to defense and/or counter-defense will be even more important.

When the bearings in your WCP colson hub explode... you're gunna have a bad time

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Was the field staff aware of the inflation guide? Were they over inflated as per the guide?

They were, I even saw that procedure with my very own eyes.

[DampRobot]

Shooting too hard can hurt you. We were shooting so hard at Teh Chezy Pofs field we were bending their field spec goals. Having such a fast, flat trajectory seemed to make it more difficult to line up. Back at our field, we switched to weaker springs and had a much easier time making shots.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Shooting too hard can hurt you. We were shooting so hard at Teh Chezy Pofs field we were bending their field spec goals. Having such a fast, flat trajectory seemed to make it more difficult to line up. Back at our field, we switched to weaker springs and had a much easier time making shots.

The one thing we noticed with robots with low trajectory flat fast shots:
As they try to shoot on the fly while moving towards a goal, the shot really dives and many misses were below the goal.
I think some teams that prototyped designs didnt factor making shots other than if the robot is stationary. Unless of course they have a variable shooter.

[cglrcng]

We did not attend a scrimmage this "Zero week" as we are hours away from our nearest held, but last Thursday the comp bot was disassembled down to the drivetrain again, parts and pcs went across town for the powdercoating (actually our entire team took off Friday completely for V-Day)...Too tired to even go to dinner, we were at home. Rest was needed.

Saturday AM the powdercoating took place, and then all pitched in & re-assembled and tested, then dropped off the competition bot, tools, charger and bat's at our practice field a few blocks away from the shop. Sunday AM we had the programmer busy on the Auto coding and fine adjustments & (within an hr. that was set and corrected and perfect (as long as the bot was pre-charged w/ air properly of course), and it was hitting 100% high goal nothing but air), then we had a 10 hr. very complete shakedown session, and that compressor surprisingly is still working just fine.

I think throughout the 10 hr. shakedown, at least 80% of the student team members showed up & drove sometime today (our field is in a vacated elem. school library area...Thank you Mr. Jacks!), w/ empty bookshelves lining 90% of the walls). Carpeted floor, one high goal half, one low goal, and a half field real alum. truss like the actual FIRST field uses, and plenty of other open space to chase that big rolling ball. (Two quite tender knots on my head right now tell me that the students (and adults), on the field this year, would be better to either not wear a stupid hat like I did...Or at least make it a certified hard hat this year!) That truss is hard!

Many of those that drove today had never in their lives ever driven the bot, and many never a wheel and a stick at once (sometimes it showed, but each became better very quickly, and some were instant matches right off the bat and had practiced/played together in the past).

They beat those shelves (and the bot), up pretty good practicing everything they could from inbounding into the bot (rolling into it from the shelf, tossing into it, throwing into it), chasing down & ball pickups from every angle possible and against everything in that room imaginable (I actually think when they have solid flat walls on a real field it will be that much easier, but that constant interaction w/ field and room elements, was much like facing opposing & defending bots all day & night). High goal shooting 90%+ all day, low goal delivery pretty much perfected now also, passing, pushing, and running on a 2.5 min. clock, then switching out drivers. Lots of practice was had by all.

The most amazing thing was (no matter how much I grimaced all day, whenever they slammed it into something hard, most often w/ the ball pickup out and chasing hard, and sometimes w/ the ball tucked up tightly & neatly held inside the frame perimeter and at full speed...Because, of course, I personally want to see that well built, working & colorful thing go into the bag "undamaged on Tuesday night", be fully ready to just be inspected and pass right off the bat, and hit the Field for a full Thursday practice session at the first Regional we attend in over a month),....It needed a good hard shakedown...and it certainly received it today!

Happy to say....No breakdowns all day (though I was looking for another compressor in the shop tonight just in case we wore that 1 out...I found it! Let's order another also please, OK?)

Just a whole bunch of compressor cooldowns and regular battery changes...A bit of code adjustments, some out of the box "let's see what this will do" testing....And a heat gun aided "tusk angle" adjustment to get that within the 20" extension maximum safely, and a wee bit better mouse tra....err, "ball trap".

Usually, the hardest thing is getting the "good auto" programming & then the on field timed reality of it, down pat and repeatable. That was actually the easy part this year w/this very robust / and very repeatable design.

Then to top all.....they went off this evening...(I'm looking at only 48 hrs. to go.....and maybe 10 real hrs. of real working shop time left or so)...And they start the not so easy...."Over the Truss tosses by hand" & attempting to catch, some not so well aimed & some pretty hard landings of the ball into, on, in, & off of the bot...about 20 or so good hard tosses....I'm really grimacing now, as you can possibly imagine right?.....YES....errr, Nooooo! (George...Our industry mentor, is cool as a cucumber...saying, hey, I'd rather it break now then later). Me...I'm freaking out and looking for the door!

But, they actually got it down pretty good catching a few early, & 4 of the last 5 pretty hard throws, and no damage at all to the toy. (We needed to find out what was best..."tusks" open or closed, or..."when to close actually" for best catch timing, to keep that ball from bouncing in & then out again). Or better yet if we even feel comfortable in attempting the catch later on...I now say...Go for it! (But, pick and choose based on ball height please! Stay away from those rocket shots to the moon.) That test gave me a headache....Or was that the 2 good truss hits to the head I took a little earlier?

Overall, it was as "very" intense a shakedown, as I personally have seen us do before bagging, so far. And everyone around here now seems pretty relaxed after today and extremely proud of this years build.

Still lots to do...More work to accomplish (and a ton of practice time left w/ the "not as pretty bot" but, functionally the same, left to go in the next month!) A new A/M P.U. gearbox is on the way for the practice bot, and we are practicing for another month w/ a near duplicate. Oh, and a shop or 2 to clean up. BIGTIME!

We appreciate those vids & tips on the game (and the elements & game strategies listed that you perceived & witnessed), from those that attended scrimages this "zero week" weekend, and we will be reviewing & discussing many of them tomorrow and in the days to come. Thank you!

For those that have early Regionals...Good Luck to all....And we'll see you in PHX. & L.V. & hopefully St. Louis!

[JamesCH95]

Here are some match videos from the Merrimack Week 0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfxBE2ocTXc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vojAM_yHwI

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qN95IMu-0o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uuvB6S376Y

[sirlancerbots]

We attended a week 0 event that used the FMS Lite to facilitate the event. We(but no other teams) had issues with the FMS. The FMS was able to ping both the robot and the drivers station and the drivers station showed it was completely connected, however during every match the robot refused to move. We could take it off the field, tether and it worked great. We redid the d-link and connected to it wirelessly and it worked then also.

This same issue happened to us in 2012 and the FTA told us it was our problem, however we couldn't replicate it to figure out what the issue was.

We are worried that this is going to happen at the regional, where we are unable to compete, anyone know a solution to this? Will it happen or is it just an issue with the FMS Lite?

[Canon reeves]

We didn't attend a scrimmage, but I did watch a ton of film and from what I gathered, defense will be huge, especially right after autonomous if the other alliance misses any shots than they need to be heavily guarded. One great defender can really cause some damage time wise! If drivers are smart they can go from being a box on wheels to a viable alliance partner!

[MrBydlon]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Teams need to realize that if they can't score in auto or within ~5sec after auto ends they shouldn't start with a ball on the field, it just slows the game down. It is not advantageous to have a ball on the field that can't be scored fast (for the bonus auto points) or collect assist/truss/catch points.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS


^ This.

[MarcD79]

In regards to over-inflation at Suffield Shakedown. I pulled the worst of the over-inflated. Some were OK. These were inflated according to the FTA & his directions were followed. I checked a couple & the fill valve ended up off to the side of the zipper. At this point it would have been very difficult to slightly deflate them. The real world isn't perfect & neither are we. We purchased those balls & I decided to leave them as they were. We did not have any punctured balls.
The second issue was penalties by the "REF". We only had one ref & I advised him to use his judgement to only make a call for serious violations. Since we had only a dozen or so robots, I wanted them to get as much practice time as we could offer. We did advise 1 team of outside the envelope issue & told them they would be illegal at their 1st event.
I'm tired of hearing all these students & mentors put the blame on the field, & the refs & FIRST. My suggestion it to make adjustments to accommodate variations to the balls, the field, other teams, atmospheric conditions, etc. In other words, lighten up! Have fun, learn something new every day.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by cglrcng

We did not attend a scrimmage this "Zero week" as we are hours away from our nearest held

We're 200+ miles away too...we fortunately got our robot together and working in time, and made the long drive to Arcadia High. First time we've had a real field trip to the Duel, it was fun! Sorry you couldn't make it, but thanks for the detailed report on things you learned with your robot this weekend.

[kjohnson]

Originally Posted by sirlancerbots

We are worried that this is going to happen at the regional, where we are unable to compete, anyone know a solution to this? Will it happen or is it just an issue with the FMS Lite?

This happened to us in 2012 as well, a new radio fixed us right up. Be sure to bring an extra radio to your first event and plan to make it to your practice matches to test the original radio on an official field. If it fails, swap for a new radio and try again.

[EvanVT]

Our robot was able to pick-up off the ground and catch either over the truss or on an inbounding toss from the human player very effectively. This really helped our cycle times. Most matches we caught tosses from the human player and would then feed the ball to one of our alliance partners to toss over the truss (we would then try to catch), or for scoring into the high goal directly. Unfortunately in our last qualification match a bearing in one of our wheels exploded so we only had two wheels on one side (only one of which was powered). Additionally, in our last qualification match our alliance partner, Team 58, had their shooting mechanism broken off of their robot and was tipped over. Despite being the second seed, we lost in the first round of elimination matches.

[DampRobot]

Anyone get an impression of what the average winning/losing scores will be?

[toddhans]

In St. Peter, MN, we were able to usually get 2 on 2 games going in the afternoon. We had a lot of our 2 on 2 matches ignore defense as it was hard enough for robots running around for the first time to do much else than concentrate on the task at hand. 3018, our team, was able to get the second assist without much difficulty due to this, and we even had a catch one time. It seems that the closer you are to changing possession, the easier it will be. It will also be difficult to keep some parts of the robot in the playing area when the 20 inch projections are near. It will be imperative for the drive team to really pay attention to this.

Our robot did pretty well compared to the other 8 or so robots that participated, but ours was also the most complete. We also had a practice bot going to help determine our drive team, doing as much as possible in the little time we had. Catching will be difficult if there is any defense on the bot, and other robots running 'accidentally' into your ball looks like it could be frequent with 3 bots on the field. It was good to see what could happen out on the field, and it was nice to read about what other issues were seen at more complete regionals. Thanks for sharing!

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by sirlancerbots

This same issue happened to us in 2012 and the FTA told us it was our problem, however we couldn't replicate it to figure out what the issue was.

We are worried that this is going to happen at the regional, where we are unable to compete, anyone know a solution to this? Will it happen or is it just an issue with the FMS Lite?

Get out to the field on Thursday during your practice matches whether or not your robot is fully operational. That way you can identify any potential issues and work to resolve them while there is still plenty of time and not much stress.

You have two key volunteers at competitions to help you with these types of issues:

• The FTA will do everything he can on the field to try to get your robot moving on Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, they will be less lenient because they need to get through matches.
• The CSA can spend more time with you off the field to get your robot configured properly. If trying to get your robot working on the field is taking too long, the FTA will likely send you to the CSA.

Between those two, your robot will be moving. You just need to make sure that you test early and that they are aware of any potential problems as soon as possible.