900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

You can see, we didn't take inspection of this lightly - not with 4 LRI's participating and looking at it!

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the inspectors we worked with over the weekend. On Wednesday we approached Ed Sparks, the Curie LRI, to show him what we had been working on. We wanted to get the inspectors involved in this process as early as possible, so we could get feedback on them to make sure this "Frog and Lily" setup met all robot and safety rules. Later Ed got Al involved, and both were extremely professional and helpful. On Saturday, Frank Merrick came by our pit to give us the final approval on the concept, especially in regards to safety. Once we picked 900 and started integrating into their robot, we had an army of division LRIs who worked with us on the inspection process. Overall I blown away by their level of excellence and focus on the job. I want to thank all of them for creating a "team first" atmosphere. This is what FRC is all about. In the past I've been very vocal about my frustration with processes that are not team friendly, but these folks were the exact opposite of that.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the inspectors we worked with over the weekend. On Wednesday we approached Ed Sparks, the Curie LRI, to show him what we had been working on. We wanted to get the inspectors involved in this process as early as possible, so we could get feedback on them to make sure this "Frog and Lily" setup met all robot and safety rules. Later Ed got Al involved, and both were extremely professional and helpful. On Saturday, Frank Merrick came by our pit to give us the final approval on the concept, especially in regards to safety. Once we picked 900 and started integrating into their robot, we had an army of division LRIs who worked with us on the inspection process. Overall I blown away by their level of excellence and focus on the job. I want to thank all of them for creating a "team first" atmosphere. This is what FRC is all about. In the past I've been very vocal about my frustration with processes that are not team friendly, but these folks were the exact opposite of that.

I can only reiterate exactly what Karthik has said. It was simultaneously one of the toughest and easily the best inspections that I've ever been through. You were all the epitome of gracious professionalism.

At one point, one of you pointed to "1114" written in sharpie on one of the aluminum poles and asked if it was a model number. At the time the joke went over my head but I was thinking back on that on the bus ride home and just cracked up.

And don't worry, next time the mentor who wrote up the BOM in Notepad will have Excel installed. He has been properly admonished for not having a locally installed spreadsheet app. Man cannot survive on Google Docs alone.

Seriously, thank you to all of the inspectors. You were all amazing. Also, a massive thank you to the lady from NI who happened to have the updated driver station software on a flash drive. You are amazing!

[kellyerin91]

Originally Posted by marshall

Seriously, thank you to all of the inspectors. You were all amazing. Also, a massive thank you to the lady from NI who happened to have the updated driver station software on a flash drive. You are amazing!

I'm the lady from NI! I was so glad to be able to help your team out. Pro-tip: All of the CSA's (orange hats) have flash drives with the software on them. And if they don't, spare parts sometimes has them as well!

[marshall]

Originally Posted by kellyerin91

I'm the lady from NI! I was so glad to be able to help your team out. Pro-tip: All of the CSA's (orange hats) have flash drives with the software on them. And if they don't, spare parts sometimes has them as well!

Thank you again! 900 has had a busy year with NI and everyone there has been great to work with. I hope we can keep up the collaboration and can help with future beta testing if we ever need to.

[OccamzRazor]

I personally thought this was a brilliant albeit risky strategy based on the situation. I really liked how jokingly one of the students on 1114 told me it was a T-Shirt cannon they were building in that pit despite how obvious it was that they were building a high speed can burglar with tools going at warp speed

I am happy to see North Carolina teams compete on Einstein since it is such a rare occurrence. I have never seen such a crazy tactic in 13 years of FRC. NC sent a record 9 teams to Championships this year so I am ecstatic that one of them was team 900! This is a classic example of thinking outside of the box and using real engineering tools to complete a challenge like many of us practicing engineers on this forum find every day at work. Just like 900, you come up with a solution nobody knew existed or that nobody would dare try. Crazy ideas really do make the best solutions.

Thanks to team 900, our own team 3506 YETI had an amazing season because they shared a strategy with us that worked again and again.

Congratulations to ALL of the division winners 148, 1114, 1923, and 900!

-Robbie