[FRCGameSense] Episode 5 with Aaron Bailey!

[barn34]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

It was great to see so many of the Central Illinois Regional teams continue to find success on the field at their second events. Congrats on your Wisconsin win.

Thanks, Aaron! Congrats on your win at Greater Kansas City. That pushes your streak up to 9 consecutive regional victories, correct? Absolutely phenomenal and your team definitely deserves it. I just love watching that green robotic hippo mouth of yours run around and gobble up balls this year.

From the looks of it on video, you guys were impressively hitting an even higher performance gear in week 3. Other than not being in the "snow globe", did you guys make any significant adjustments after CIR or was it a lot of natural progression? I know for us, not being in that frigid dome did wonders when we unbagged in Milwaukee. It was like someone stole the robot we bagged at the end of build season and replaced it with an imposter for week 1. Thankfully, that nightmare has ended.

Looking forward to the podcast tonight and hopefully we'll get to play with each other again in St. Louis. Best of luck to you guys!

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

Aaron, I am excited to hear your insights about the game.

Thanks Norm. It was a pleasure working with your team in Hub City last year. I have a feeling your back to back RCA's is the beginning of a great streak.

Originally Posted by barn34

Thanks, Aaron! Congrats on your win at Greater Kansas City. That pushes your streak up to 9 consecutive regional victories, correct? Absolutely phenomenal and your team definitely deserves it. I just love watching that green robotic hippo mouth of yours run around and gobble up balls this year.

Close. It's only 8 consecutive. 9 of the last 10.
Lots of close matches, last second shots, and great alliance partners in that streak.

[Dave McLaughlin]

We're live! Come join us for some great discussion with out guest this week Aaron Bailey from FRC Team 1986. View the cast live on twitch or youtube.

[Steven Donow]

Great show tonight guys, but we here at 125 already made some drivetrain changes and hope to prove you wrong this weekend. We're using the last of our unbag time right now, and we decided to add a little something to our robot

[Ty Tremblay]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Great show tonight guys, but we here at 125 already made some drivetrain changes and hope to prove you wrong this weekend. We're using the last of our unbag time right now, and we decided to add a little something to our robot

This just made my night. Like I said on air, you have an amazing robot that looks to be the favorite at Northeastern now that you're fixing your #VoltageVacuum.

I can't wait 'till I get a chance to see the bot up close at Pine Tree when I'm there with Team 319!

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Ty Tremblay

This just made my night. Like I said on air, you have an amazing robot that looks to be the favorite at Northeastern now that you're fixing your #VoltageVacuum.

I can't wait 'till I get a chance to see the bot up close at Pine Tree when I'm there with Team 319!

Don't sweat it! We can take a joke :-P

We're feeling pretty good about the tweaks we made, even with only a 4 day turnaround. Bring it on NU!

-Brando

[wesbass23]

I rewatched the semifinal matches from Waterloo that you guys were discussing in this episode. It seems to me that two fouls were called (someone please explain to me if I am wrong) a 50 pt for 1114 "trapping" an opponents ball and a second 20 pt penalty for something I did not see.

Someone mentioned that 1114 had to make a quick decision to either let them score that ball or risk getting a penalty by playing some tough defense. If that ball is scored in the 1 pt goal (the only goal possible in my opinion due to the amount of time left in the match) it would have added either 21 or 31 pts to the blue alliance score depending on if the necessary third robot was the one who scored it. This would result in a red win 156 to either 137 or 147. So where does the other 20 pts come from? Was it just a penalty called earlier that did not appear on screen for a while?

Thanks for any clarification from someone who was there or who knows what happened.

[Alpha Beta]

Really enjoyed the broadcast last night. The GameSense crew is a lot of fun to work with. Relaxed and good natured while maintaining a sense of professionalism that is much appreciated. They put a lot of work in behind the scenes to pull off a fantastic show each week.

Cast Update:
4522 just Ninja-ed their way into the Oklahoma tournament this morning after 4102 apparently dropped off the list. They were a controversial finish away from winning the Arkansas Regional, top contenders in Kansas City, and should make some significant noise this weekend. Needless to say, my Oklahoma predictions on the broadcast last night just took a serious hit.

It will be fun to watch 4522 and 1024 in Queen City to see if either of these late entrants can win their way to champs. Worked out pretty well for 1477 last year. (1625 in 2008 as well).

It does bring up the reminder that while FIRST officially closed registration on December 5th, 2013... Teams are still finding ways in.

[Johnbot]

Great video! (I think FRC Game Sense will take Psych's place as what I spend my Wednesday nights watching.)

And Evan shouldn't feel compelled to apologize to us - we were ecstatic about your prediction that we'd be picked by our good friend 1218.

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by barn34

From the looks of it on video, you guys were impressively hitting an even higher performance gear in week 3. Other than not being in the "snow globe", did you guys make any significant adjustments after CIR or was it a lot of natural progression? I know for us, not being in that frigid dome did wonders when we unbagged in Milwaukee. It was like someone stole the robot we bagged at the end of build season and replaced it with an imposter for week 1. Thankfully, that nightmare has ended.

Not playing in a walk-in freezer definitely helped! Anytime you have the chance to reflect on your mistakes and the nature of the game for couple of weeks, you are likely to adjust and fix things and play at a higher level the next time, that is true for any team. There were definitely some strategic things that we were able to say "that didn't work" for CIR, and some things things that we said "we should do that more" for KC. As for the robot, we made a significant overhaul of the drivetrain, which helped our defensive play. Also a complete re-write of the 2-ball autonomous. It hardly ever hit at CIR, and hardly ever missed at GKC, so that work paid off. We have a couple of other tweaks for Champs.

[barn34]

Originally Posted by jspatz1

Not playing in a walk-in freezer definitely helped! Anytime you have the chance to reflect on your mistakes and the nature of the game for couple of weeks, you are likely to adjust and fix things and play at a higher level the next time, that is true for any team. There were definitely some strategic things that we were able to say "that didn't work" for CIR, and some things things that we said "we should do that more" for KC. As for the robot, we made a significant overhaul of the drivetrain, which helped our defensive play. Also a complete re-write of the 2-ball autonomous. It hardly ever hit at CIR, and hardly ever missed at GKC, so that work paid off. We have a couple of other tweaks for Champs.

I know exactly what you mean! That temperature difference shredded our shot performance to where we didn't find our tension sweet spot to compensate until CIR elims...which was just a bit too late. Even then, our confidence in it was lower because of how quickly that performance would always shift. Frustratingly, that took both our hot goal auto off the table as well as our 2 ball. We tried a 2 ball re-write on the fly at CIR and we actually had it working on the practice field right before elims...too bad we forgot to check the state of the battery we were using when we tuned it before we used it on the field. Massive face palm moment for sure. With that temperature difference no longer in play, our performance was much better at Wisconsin. Our shot performance returned to what we were initially expecting for CIR and that thankfully put both our hot goal and 2 ball autos back in play. It also allowed us to be quicker getting shots up and far more elusive and unpredictable on the field.

We also took a lot of time to analyze what we saw in our matches in week 1 as well as watch things other teams have tried in competitions to see what we could adjust for Wisconsin. We're going through the same process to prepare for championships, as well. Natural progression through experience and always striving to improve based off what you've learned. Similarly, we also made an adjustment to our drive train from week 1. We geared things down slightly to improve our acceleration and up our pushing power to help with defense - both playing it and negating it. We also added in some control functions to give our drivers a few more options to work with in utilizing the swerve drive. We've got a couple more ideas we hope to implement for St. Louis, as well. Just continue to add to that toy box.

Best of luck to you guys at championships and with any luck we'll be able to hook up on that field again in St. Louis!