2015 Lessons Learned: The Positive

[John Retkowski]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

All the positive threads and the negative threads, Not 1 mention of the most pervasive change this year ---- The new roborio and control system.

Would you be willing to give your opinion or the context of your statement as to what (going off your post) you feel the negatives are involving the new roborio and control system?

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by AutodeskGeek

I just feel like some teams didn't think they could stretch the rules very much, and were at a possible disadvantage because of it.

That's literally how it works.

[Gdeaver]

Originally Posted by John Retkowski

Would you be willing to give your opinion or the context of your statement as to what (going off your post) you feel the negatives are involving the new roborio and control system?

The only negative I could put to the new system is we have at times had problems deploying. I believe this is a problem with our team. Other teams we talked to do not have the problem. I do not like the wire connectors on the pneumatic module. Do not have a suggestion for something better.

Other than these 2 thing I am amazed that a joint effort with several different entities pulled these monumental changes off with out any blow ups.

It just works! Cudo's to all involved in the control system change.

[wireties]

Loved Linux, roboRio, Talon SRX and the engineering challenge required to excel in the game!

[Oblarg]

The new control system rocks. I cannot stress this enough. This was the first time in my 8 years of FRC that my team has fielded a robot without a single major controls problem during competition. The new motor controllers are absolutely fantastic; we didn't have a single problem with our Talon SRX's, and the integrated signal wires are a godsend (even using them in PWM mode, being able to easily daisy-chain motor controllers on the same side of the drive train saved us a lot of wiring effort and mess). Just about everything is a huge upgrade from what it was before.

[Jared Russell]

Ditto the new control system. A huge improvement over cRIO, and I'm sure it will only get better (nits were delays in establishing DS<->Robot communications, and some minutiae in the new Java WPIlib).

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

All the positive threads and the negative threads, Not 1 mention of the most pervasive change this year ---- The new roborio and control system.

I REALLY wish the beta program was different. We had quite a few issues with the new control system this year. There were just some small things that would have really helped out had we had access to the control system with the rest of the beta teams. Unfortunately, it seemed most of the beta team presentations seemed like variations on the same presentation. Not much real debugging seemed to happen, just a "this is how you use the system and here's what it can do". There didn't seem to be much sharing on the little differences that have to be done between the RoboRio and cRio. I'm not a programming guy, so I can't really point any one thing out at the moment.

[lynca]

Really liked that FIRST is attempting to emulate the FIRST in Michigan championship video format.

For reference of FiM videos, the FiM 2014 video is a fantastic FRC video production !

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I REALLY wish the beta program was different. We had quite a few issues with the new control system this year. There were just some small things that would have really helped out had we had access to the control system with the rest of the beta teams. Unfortunately, it seemed most of the beta team presentations seemed like variations on the same presentation. Not much real debugging seemed to happen, just a "this is how you use the system and here's what it can do". There didn't seem to be much sharing on the little differences that have to be done between the RoboRio and cRio. I'm not a programming guy, so I can't really point any one thing out at the moment.

Can I ask how you'd like to see it improved? We were part of the beta and if there is something specific you'd like to see then I can try to take the idea forward with the folks we still have contact with. They asked for feedback on how to improve the beta program and we're trying to give them some.

I thought that the different beta teams, there were about 100 of them, did a good job of covering the different aspects of the beta testing in the dozen or so presentations that I saw. Let me know, would love to pass the feedback forward.

[AquaMorph]

I think for me the biggest thing I liked about 2015 was that the finals at events was always the best two alliances. In the past, there have been several events I have been to where the semifinal was the real final. Since, alliances played against each other based upon ranking it happened fairly often the two best alliances would play each other before the finals. I liked thanks to the average the two best alliance played in the final.

The new control system was excellent. I'm so glad to be done with those awful WAGO connectors. All the new connectors are snappy and much easier to use. The smaller size of all the electronics in general was a huge step up. The roboRIO having USB connections was very useful in having an easy way to deploy code without dealing with networking.

Having eight alliance for Einstein with two fields was a wonderful idea. It made the transition time much better between matches. In the past there was a lot more dead time and having two fields fixed that. Also Einstein being a full elimination event made it more intense and interesting. I very much hope that stays.

I really enjoyed the less strict rules about robot size and parameter. It led to some really neat ideas that were fun to watch. Not having the hassle of changing bumpers was also nice. It might

I appreciate that FIRST decided to create an API for third parties like the Blue Alliance to get data from. When it worked it seems like updates were pushed faster than with the past system of web scrapping. I would like to see FIRST in future work more with these type of third party projects. I think the API being down so often shows an area where this can be even further improved. If FIRST could reach out to people who make these type of things and have them make some official stuff for FIRST I think it would be better for everyone. FIRST biggest asset is the people who love it enough to poor time into great third party resources.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by lynca

Really liked that FIRST is attempting to emulate the FIRST in Michigan championship video format.

For reference of FiM videos, the FiM 2014 video is a fantastic FRC video production !

That FiM video is incredible! And maybe a statement about last year's game versus this year's. The game is very entertaining to watch and much more "sports like", as opposed to this year's "Red alliance is stacking totes! Not to be outdone, blue alliance is also stacking totes!"

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by marshall

Can I ask how you'd like to see it improved? We were part of the beta and if there is something specific you'd like to see then I can try to take the idea forward with the folks we still have contact with. They asked for feedback on how to improve the beta program and we're trying to give them some.

I thought that the different beta teams, there were about 100 of them, did a good job of covering the different aspects of the beta testing in the dozen or so presentations that I saw. Let me know, would love to pass the feedback forward.

There is quite the difference in seeing a presentation on how a control system is nominally used and actually getting your hands on the hardware. You learn more about the small idiosyncrasies than would be demonstrated in an hour long presentation. A very specific example is being able to use an odd number of bits per word in SPI (as documented here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=133046) If we were able to get a hold of the beta system, we would have been able to figure it out before the season even started instead of getting an answer more than halfway through the season. I find it difficult to believe that this wasn't seen by any of the beta testing teams (and should have been shared).

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I find it difficult to believe that this wasn't seen by any of the beta testing teams (and should have been shared).

Are you of the opinion that information was intentionally withheld to provide a competitive advantage, or is there another complaint?

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Are you of the opinion that information was intentionally withheld to provide a competitive advantage, or is there another complaint?

I honestly don't know. Given how prevalent gracious professionalism is in FIRST, I would like to think that is the case, but you can never tell. All I know for sure is that we would have been able to figure it out (or would have known it to be an issue) prior to it becoming a problem.

[alopex_rex]

As a programmer, I loved the new control system. Our team this year had essentially no electrical-related issues at competitions this year, whereas in the past we always had many. I'm sure our electrical team would like me to attribute this to them having improved, but I think the new components helped too.

This game really managed to cut down on the complexity of the rules. With regards to design, this freed up our options and allowed us to explore more creative options. We didn't do anything crazy with tethers, but our robot certainly wouldn't have been possible if we had to follow strict bumper rules and size limits. Gameplay-wise, in past seasons avoiding penalties has been an important part of the drivers' job, but this year the only way our robot could get a penalty would be if we were trying to.

My belief, starting from as soon as I saw the game video, was that FIRST never intended for non-interactive, non-win/loss gameplay to be permanent. I think it was a combination of 1) doing something really different to throw teams for a loop and 2) creating a (relatively) safe testing ground for more streamlined rules. The challenge for them now is to return to more interactive games without returning to the old level of rules complexity and penalty frequency.