Hot Goal Timing Issues

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

I also felt that matches were ending about 1 second before the match timer expired and the buzzer sounded.

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

We also noticed robots being disabled 1-2 seconds before the lights going out.

I'm glad you guys noticed this as well. I thought I was going crazy. It definitely seemed like robots were being disabled before the buzzer. I just assumed it was something to do with they way the audio was being fed to the A/V system. But now that you mention the match timer and lights, it appears to be a larger issue.

[M. Lillis]

I linked this in another thread, but I will put it here
This was a Semi-Final match at GSD a week ago.

If you look at the goals, the second "hot" goal turns on with a fraction of a second left. This happened on both sides of the field (look to the far left of the video and watch it a few times). Whatever is wrong with the hot goal timing this year, it does not seem to be an isolated incident. Also, I think Dean Kamen points it out to one of the field personnel, so it did not go unnoticed.

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

We also noticed robots being disabled 1-2 seconds before the lights going out.

I noticed something with the timing this year as well, usually when the timer hits zero on the field (before the buzzer sounds) you can step forward and the control the robot almost immediately. But this year there is a noticeable 1-2 second delay between the end of auto (timer hits 0) and the start of teleop. It was bothering me a lot at GSD, because in 2012 and 2013 you could immediately take control after auto, this year seems different.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by M. Lillis

I noticed something with the timing this year as well, usually when the timer hits zero on the field (before the buzzer sounds) you can step forward and the control the robot almost immediately. But this year there is a noticeable 1-2 second delay between the end of auto (timer hits 0) and the start of teleop. It was bothering me a lot at GSD, because in 2012 and 2013 you could immediately take control after auto, this year seems different.

Look at your Driver Station logs. You'll see a consistent one-second pause between the end of autonomous and the enabling of teleoperated mode. It's always been possible, and this year it's definitely being controlled that way.

[Gigakaiser]

We experienced both the hot goal delay and the early match endings at San Diego.

Originally Posted by Karthik

We definitely noticed it being an issue at GTRE, and had to add in one second delay to make sure both our shots were fired on the correct goal.

We had to implement the same solution. Losing an entire second in autonomous is pretty detrimental.

[fr05ty27355]

Good News! The people in charge of the FMS are aware of this issue and are trying to fix it in time for week 3 events.

[AlexD744]

Originally Posted by fr05ty27355

Good News! The people in charge of the FMS are aware of this issue and are trying to fix it in time for week 3 events.

source?

[fr05ty27355]

I volunteer as a scorekeeper and I get weekly updates, so my source is literally the guys who are in charge of updating the FMS.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by fr05ty27355

I volunteer as a scorekeeper and I get weekly updates, so my source is literally the guys who are in charge of updating the FMS.

Can confirm, this week's Scorekeeper update mentioned they're aware of the issue and working on a fix to be pushed out before week 3 events

[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

This weekend at the Central Valley Regional we noticed an issue with the synchronization of timing between the field management system enabling robots and the triggering of the hot goal lights and targets.

We found that robots were being enabled up to a second before the lights and vision targets indicating the hot goal turned on. This seemed to be a simple time shift as robots would stop moving before the lights turned off and the second hot goal lights would activate exactly 5 seconds after the first hot goal lights turned on. This creates 2 issues:

1) Given humans score the hot goal by way of the field lights and not the field timer, teams had approximately 6 seconds to score in the first hot goal and 4 seconds to score in the second hot goal.
2) Teams had to wait 1 second in auto mode to sense the hot goal. With multiple moving robots and shot being fired, the challenge becomes much different than initially expected.

Over the course of an entire match one second would probably not be a huge deal but given the 5 second scoring window for the hot goal, this bug equates to a 15-20% decrease in available scoring time. Many teams have designed their robot to score balls in the hot goal over a 5 second period. In some matches they are being given less than 4 seconds.

Here are some illustrated examples of this happening. These videos have a timer that starts in the first frame that I can see robot motion, which is the best indicator I have of robots being enabled. There could be more time of "enabled" on top of this as robots may not start moving at exactly t=0.

CVR Qualification Match 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgI_PkgsuXA
In this match, the second hot goal is only active for 3.9 seconds. The first hot goal is not indicated until 1.1 seconds after robots are enabled. The second hot goal is activated at 6.1 seconds. Robots are disabled when the overlay timer shows 10.0 (you can see a ball in 254's robot start to move towards the shooter then fall as the single acting solenoid outputs are disabled.)

CVR Qualification Match 83: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKHpcc6ZOE
In this match, there is a .7 second delay from robots starting to move until the hot goals activate

CVR Qualification Match 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rycIqPJpbz4
In this match, there is a .6 second delay from robots starting to move until the hot goals activate

CVR Qualification Match 32: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3KVlqbwvc
Since the robots are not visible in this video, I have synced the overlay timer to read 1.0 when the match timer on the field changes from 10 to 9. There seems to be about 1.2 seconds of delay from robots on to hot goal on, and a 3.8 second long second hot goal.

As an additional data point, we observed that the scorekeeper seemed to be enabling robots from the PC interface, not the blue hardware control box.

Of the issues listed above, it seems point 2 has a very simple fix. In 2008, drivers were not allowed to touch their controls once the “ball randomizer” had determined ball position and field crews could place them. The first hot goal could work in a similar fashion and be lit before the match starts.

Has anyone else seen issues like this? It would be nice to have these issues fixed for future events!


Thank you,
Team 254 Mentors and Students

We too have noticed hot goal timing issues at the Groton District event this passed weekend. It was such a problem that towards eliminations we dedicated our media student to filming the actuation of the hot targets so we could study them later.

There was a noticable 1 second delay between match start and goal actuation that was noticable with the naked eye. It was also appearant that one side was more affected then the other when looking at blue vs red.

Thank you for posting your videos they are very helpful. We too can post the videos we took at Groton if that will help the community.

What system are you using to detect hot targets? It also appeared that the last link "Qual Match 32" your alliance started with 4 balls in auto. How did the refs let you pull that off?

Regards,
Kevin

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by NotInControl

It also appeared that the last link "Qual Match 32" your alliance started with 4 balls in auto. How did the refs let you pull that off?

That was a practice match that I incorrectly labelled. Nice catch.

[Pat Fairbank]

Can anyone at an event this week verify that this has been fixed?

From the one brief look I took at the Sacramento Regional webcast, there doesn't appear to be any difference from last week.

[GaryVoshol]

I have not noticed any hot goal discrepancies at Escanaba today. If someone has seen one, please correct me as we want it to be done right.

I did confirm that the robots shut off as the timer hits 0, but the buzzer sounds a second or so later.

[magnets]

It's not as big of an issue in the matches I've seen, but fast robots will always fully cross the line before the goal lights up. I guess we'll just have to rewrite our auto code. I have yet to see the lights come on before a robot moves.

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

I did confirm that the robots shut off as the timer hits 0, but the buzzer sounds a second or so later.

I'll preface this post with the fact that I was the scorekeeper at the Week-1 Alamo Regional. This problem (sounds out of sync with game timer) is separate from the other (field action out of sync with game timer), but possibly could be related. The monolithic FMS application controls the robots, but the Audience Display app controls the game sounds and what gets seen on the "big screen" when the A/V crew allows it to be seen. At Alamo I noticed almost two seconds between when the game timer hit zero and the sounds played; I messaged FIRST and asked what was up with that, and they told me to restart the Audience Display since the game sounds are triggered by the audience display (I assume the audience display is polling the FMS timer to determine what to do - that's just my assumption though, from years of experience writing these kinds of apps, it's in no way confirmed by FIRST). On restart, the game sounds and timer sync'd up just fine. I did notice, however, that over the course of 40 or so matches the game sounds and field timer drifted once again. During a break in the elims, I restarted the display app to re-sync the game sounds, but by the Finals the game sounds were again out of sync. I also noticed this at the Arkansas Regional.

-Danny

[Jared]

It seems to be a lot more consistent that week two, which, at Groton, ranged from really accurate to not changing at all.

I picked four matches from the Howell District competition (Q 35, 42, 36??) to watch, and it still seems to be a little bit unbalanced.

The average time before the goal lights in these four matches was 1.24 seconds, the average time on the first goal was 4.95, and the average time on the second goal was 3.8 seconds. I assumed the end of autonomous was exactly 10 seconds after the first frame where a robot moved.

It may just be coincidence, but it seems that the earlier matches from today were much better.