2015 Between-Match Delays

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Jared

The laptop will say "FMS Connected, correct station", and our robot will show up as connected with the battery voltage and everything, but the field people cannot see that our laptop is connected. We must disable/enable the network adapter, restart the driver station software, and sometimes even restart the robot.

This typically happens when teams are plugged in before the field has completed prestart (and is usually worse on practice day, when we're making substitutions. From being fieldside at two events now, I've found that restarting the driver station or changing the team number almost always solves the problem (when the field monitor shows a ethernet link and nothing else, or everything but roborio). If not, restarting the NI mDNS responder service does the rest. I'm seeing this at Chesapeake, and it's consistent with what I saw at NYC.

I think the faster turnaround time from the refs as they hit their groove (so the field can complete prestart before the next round of teams plugs in) is the biggest factor in these delays not being seen later in the competition.

Originally Posted by ayeckley

Anyone know which field is at Windsor?

I believe the Windsor field was previously at Montreal and North Bay.

Originally Posted by EricH

(Though, I think Gold field is #6, at least it uses radio set #6.)

The radio set and truck number are two different things. Truck #2 (lime green cases) has radio set #4.

[Shrub]

Matches got behind schedule at Northern Lights from 20 minutes to ~40 and back down to <20; (ie a team supposed to be on the field at 12:00 didn't play until anywhere from 12:20 to 12:40), delays were sometimes really long. (Noodle throwing contest anyone?)

North Star, we've stayed about 20 minutes behind. Some matches take as little as resetting the field and the like, some took 10 minutes or more.

I'd say allowing an entire match cycle at 8 minutes as noted before is good timing.

[orangemoore]

At Midwest we have an aggressive 7 minute pace for match times. We were actually on schedule for most of the day and I think at one point we were ahead of schedule.

(I was actually surprised that each team was only given 10 matches. Usually it seems that Midwest pushes the schedule to the max.)

Maybe it helps that there are no rookie teams?

[GaryVoshol]

At the Michigan events I've volunteered at, the time consumers are, in order (from least to most time):

1. Finalizing and announcing scores
2. Field Reset
3. Robots on and off the field
4. Getting robots connected

Yesterday afternoon we stressed that moving robots was more important than moving totes. This improved the timing of getting the robots onto the field, so they could begin getting out of transport config faster.

When things run well, you can keep to a 7-minute cycle, with occasional 6's or 8's. But then you have a big delay where some robot just will not connect, and the FTA's and Orange Hats are working feverishly. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 dance songs before you're ready to go, and this year there's no way to make up that time.

I didn't count, but in a normal 80-match qualification in FiM, there's probably 2 or 3 times that the green light goes on before the announcer is done introducing the teams. There's maybe 5 or 6 matches where we're waiting for last minute adjustments to the robot after the light is green, and that only for a few seconds. The rest of the time everything is ready to go except the electronics.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Jared

I've experienced three or four delays on the field from our team so far, all of which were caused by issues with mDNS.

The laptop will say "FMS Connected, correct station", and our robot will show up as connected with the battery voltage and everything, but the field people cannot see that our laptop is connected. We must disable/enable the network adapter, restart the driver station software, and sometimes even restart the robot.

I've also noticed similar things happening to our alliance partners, where their laptops don't connect to the field, and they have to restart things or try connecting and disconnecting again and again to connect to the field.

The field seems to always connect to the robots in the end, but this year, it seems to take longer on average for all teams to get full communications.

We have had this problem as well, but to a greater degree. So far we have only been fully connected to the field without issues for one match (and during that match our alliance partner ran into our driver station wall and our robot somehow disconnected again...). We had a practice robot which ran with very minimal problems for 20+ hours. The transfer of parts over was smooth and yet somehow we have stacked 1 tote in 7 matches because our robot has been rapidly disconnecting and reconnecting. With 20+ hours of driver experience I was sure hoping for a better showing than that. For reference we had 5 CSA's in our pit for over an hour on Thursday night and the problem was never resolved. I'm a little frustrated but hope my team can turn it around for our final 3 matches today so all of our hard work wasn't for almost nothing for no competiton results. I'll most likely do a long writeup about my experience with Recycle Rush after today.

[MrForbes]

Some of the four regionals that I've attended that didn't have Kate as FTA seemed to have many long delays between matches. Here at AZ West, she's keeping things on time and running smooth.

It's an interesting phenomenon.

[epylko]

Originally Posted by EricH

Don't rely on the road case number: 11 is the ref case, 19 is spare FMS console, 07 is field supplies IIRC. The small tags might or might not have anything regarding which field.

You want the case COLOR. All the cases in one field match in color--and one or more of them are generally kept right next to the field. Example: Gold field is currently in SVR, after trekking to Inland Empire, CVR, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Ventura. (Though, I think Gold field is #6, at least it uses radio set #6.)

I wasn't able to see any case numbers. Like you said, I was able to see the different numbers on the crate. I _think_ they were red crates, but now I'm not really sure. Doh!

[Anthony Galea]

Originally Posted by epylko

I wasn't able to see any case numbers. Like you said, I was able to see the different numbers on the crate. I _think_ they were red crates, but now I'm not really sure. Doh!

It was red cases, and if the number really matters the one I saw said 07.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by 3175student17

It was red cases, and if the number really matters the one I saw said 07.

Every field has a set of cases numbered the same, but with different colors to differentiate them. Case 7 contains the scoring table electronics.

[MrForbes]

The "red case" field was working pretty well for us at AZ West.

[Qbot2640]

So back to my original concern...do you think I will be safe planning for 8 minute turnaround...as long as we can keep field reset, and robot-transport configuration-transition within reasonable times as well? I feel comfortable predicting physical setups...just have no idea what to expect with the networking resets.

I am assuming that by October, more of these quirky connection issues will be figured out and solved. I want to figure out how "big" of an event we can plan without running too long or sacrificing number of games played per team.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

I am assuming that by October, more of these quirky connection issues will be figured out and solved.

There is one systemic problem that can cause one category of connection issues. It is known, understood, and fixable -- but the fix involves releasing a new version of the Driver Station application and modifying to the default Dashboard project. Working around that problem is simple enough that it's probably not going to get fixed in this season's code.

The true "quirks" are most likely due to background tasks running on a team's Driver Station computer. FIRST can't do anything about that. It's up to the teams to clean up their computers' configuration, turning off antivirus scanners and firewalls and software updaters and streaming music clients and Skype and everything that isn't part of the FRC software.

[VioletElizabeth]

SVR was actually ahead of schedule a lot of the time. (I know because it really messed with our practice field slots.) The theory I heard for this was because the announcers were announcing teams during field reset. However, there were sometimes the aforementioned connectivity issues. Whenever I noticed a delay, that was the problem. Of course, I saw maybe 25 of the 95 matches because I was in the pits, so sample size is not perfect.

[Jeremy.F]

In Indiana at the state championship tournament, the field was running nearly a match ahead of schedule (8 min ahead). This can be counted towards in a district it was everyone's 3rd event and it was the same field crew at most events. Teams were complaining to the point that we had to do delay songs/dances when there was no problem at all.

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

So back to my original concern...do you think I will be safe planning for 8 minute turnaround...as long as we can keep field reset, and robot-transport configuration-transition within reasonable times as well? I feel comfortable predicting physical setups...just have no idea what to expect with the networking resets.

I am assuming that by October, more of these quirky connection issues will be figured out and solved. I want to figure out how "big" of an event we can plan without running too long or sacrificing number of games played per team.

I was the FTAA at the Colorado Regional a couple of weeks ago. We scheduled 7 minute turns for our matches. We ran behind Friday morning as we spent time getting all of the times to configure their driver stations correctly. However, once we got all of that figured out with the teams we were able to keep to our 7 minute schedule for the rest of the weekend.

As far as team experience (first event vs second/third event), I don't have the exact numbers handy at the moment but I believe that roughly 1/3-1/2 of the teams had already attended an event before coming to ours.

8 minute turns is definitely doable and should allow for a slightly more relaxed atmosphere and give you some more wiggle room.