SBPLI Regional Discussion

[ollien]

Originally Posted by robotics2

At the long Island SBPLI regional there were poor robot playing conditions, the field had bundles of wires running beneath it and the one side had large wrinkles.

Do you know which side of the field? If it was the blue courtyard it might explain this for us!

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by Vale

Yeah, definitely. If I remember correctly, on Saturday, by the time of the last quals, even with a field fault happening, we were still ahead of schedule by a few minutes.

2 minutes ahead to be exact. At least according to the FMS.......

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Overall I think it was a well run event. Still probably not enough to make it our home regional next year but, Ill gladly run the livestream again.

Sam

Thanks for running the livestream. It was excellent! We do hope to see the Regal Eagles at SBPLI again soon.

[dougwilliams]

Originally Posted by ollien

Do you know which side of the field? If it was the blue courtyard it might explain this for us!

I believe cables were run under the neutral zone (if memory is correct - there was a lump running the width of the field you could feel as you walked across.

I also saw a field carpet repair occurring where they were taping the carpet back down, I think that was on the red courtyard side (left side looking at the field).

I didn't see this occur, but my team noticed someone (robot) pulled up the carpet about a foot off the floor.

[Mark McLeod]

No cables ran under the field.
The lump was caused by the venue's own protective carpet underneath the FIRST playing carpet. This is to prevent damage to the basketball court as robot tires burn through the FIRST carpet and robots smash onto the field surface.
Unfortunately, the venue requires their protective carpet to overlap at the periodic joints which sometimes produces a small ridge straight across the field.

P.S.
Sam, that was an 8G clip Solomon preserved as a special request, so no other footage.

PPS
I'll make inquires of Solomon in case other footage happens to have been preserved.

[dougwilliams]

With the livestream not archived - does anyone know of anyone with the match videos from their own or team recordings? We'd be happy to help copy, upload to youtube, and document match numbers / team numbers / etc.

Congratulations to 1156 - Under Control for the win with 287 and 263! We played with them in Virginia last year and were happy to see them win this year. They have a great drive team and are great to work with.

Our (my) personal favorite match (maybe ever as coach the last few years) was against 1156 in this regional. We knew it would be tough, we weren't predicted to win - and one of our alliance robots only had one drive motor working on one side of their tank. We re-strategized our approach in a scramble before the match and in the final 30 seconds realized we were only behind by 7 points. We had rebuilt our climber between matches to go higher (LI said it wasn't high enough to count, at Pitt we had ~10 successful awarded climbs), and knew a 15 point climb would win the match by 7. So we abandoned our last shot and started our climb. We usually tune out cheers from the crowd, but we heard the "climb climb climb" chant. We latched at the top and the drivers put down the controllers.

And then the hollow thud as the robot fell and crashed into the batter; followed by the loudest "ooooo" from the crowd I had ever heard.

We had bent our hooks at a new angle to accommodate the higher lift, and the un-bent when hanging. The robot was fine though We have robot gopro video and you can see the drive team's reactions across the field through the glass at the climb and then the fall. We had a disappointing end to the regional with our laptop completely locking up during our second to last match, and another robot breaching our frame perimeter with a hard hit, tangling us, and ultimately hitting our power switch, disabling us from our last match.

[Brian C]

Doug, It was great seeing your team at the event. Your team and your machine reflects the effort put in by all of you.

[dougwilliams]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

No cables ran under the field.
The lump was caused by the venue's own protective carpet underneath the FIRST playing carpet. This is to prevent damage to the basketball court as robot tires burn through the FIRST carpet and robots smash onto the field surface.
Unfortunately, the venue requires their protective carpet to overlap at the periodic joints which sometimes produces a small ridge straight across the field.

Ahhh - I'm not sure if someone told us it was cables, or we assumed that - but there were was something going on there. I don't think that in particular caused any issues for our drive system, I'm unsure of other robots. I wasn't a fan of the lumps at the driver's station - those really are a trip hazard as the teams run around coordinating with other teams and have an active HP running.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by dougwilliams

With the livestream not archived - does anyone know of anyone with the match videos from their own or team recordings? We'd be happy to help copy, upload to youtube, and document match numbers / team numbers / etc.

Congratulations to 1156 - Under Control for the win with 287 and 263! We played with them in Virginia last year and were happy to see them win this year. They have a great drive team and are great to work with.

Our (my) personal favorite match (maybe ever as coach the last few years) was against 1156 in this regional. We knew it would be tough, we weren't predicted to win - and one of our alliance robots only had one drive motor working on one side of their tank. We re-strategized our approach in a scramble before the match and in the final 30 seconds realized we were only behind by 7 points. We had rebuilt our climber between matches to go higher (LI said it wasn't high enough to count, at Pitt we had ~10 successful awarded climbs), and knew a 15 point climb would win the match by 7. So we abandoned our last shot and started our climb. We usually tune out cheers from the crowd, but we heard the "climb climb climb" chant. We latched at the top and the drivers put down the controllers.

And then the hollow thud as the robot fell and crashed into the batter; followed by the loudest "ooooo" from the crowd I had ever heard.

We had bent our hooks at a new angle to accommodate the higher lift, and the un-bent when hanging. The robot was fine though We have robot gopro video and you can see the drive team's reactions across the field through the glass at the climb and then the fall. We had a disappointing end to the regional with our laptop completely locking up during our second to last match, and another robot breaching our frame perimeter with a hard hit, tangling us, and ultimately hitting our power switch, disabling us from our last match.

To clarify I do have all of the elimination matches we except for qf-1 archived and all of it will be posted tonight. I was little late as the files were on the robotics computer and not on my external hdd.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by dougwilliams

I wasn't a fan of the lumps at the driver's station - those really are a trip hazard as the teams run around coordinating with other teams and have an active HP running.

The ridges in the driver station are caused by robots hitting the field ends with force and stretching the playing field carpet. The stretching causes the carpet beyond the end panels to bunch up more and more as matches go on.
This happens to varying extents at every event in slightly different locations. There's not an easy way to get rid of them, but the field crew tries to stretch and retape the driver carpet periodically.

[Ken5736]

We really enjoyed being at the competition.
Thank you to every one who made it possible.
Very fun and interesting game this year.
So many excellent machines!!!

[Ken5736]

Congrats
263, 287, 1156 for going up against and defeating the formidable alliance of
870, 329, 2875

We were in a strange position seeding 1st as a defense breaching hanging bot.
We built what we thought would a great pick for a two shooter alliance.
Picking first was not easy.
In hind sight it may have been sensible to go down the list picking all the great seeded shooters first hoping to be declined their by splitting up most of the two stellar shooter alliances.
Not sure that that would have worked, but it may have leveled the field for us and our great partners 1796, 4567!!
Thank you guys for working with us!!
Thoughts??

[ghesla]

First of all we would like to say thanks to everyone in Long Island that receives us so well. Then a special thanks to 329 that hosted our students in their homes for the competition days, was an amazing experience that our team will never forget.

Thanks 287 and 263 for joining us on that hard battle! Was great to work with you, the sinergy of our alliance made our victory possible. Congratulations to 870, 329 and 2875 for making to the finals and for the amazing 3 finals matches. We are happy that 2 of the finalist alliance will be in St. Louis representing Long Island as well. Congratulations 1796 on the Chairman's award.

We had an amazing weekend as always we had in Long Island! Thanks all the staff and people that make things happen, and thanks to Sam for the streaming, for our parents and members in Brazil it means a lot.

Originally Posted by Ken5736

Congrats
263, 287, 1156 for going up against and defeating the formidable alliance of
870, 329, 2875

We were in a strange position seeding 1st as a defense breaching hanging bot.
We built what we thought would a great pick for a two shooter alliance.
Picking first was not easy.
In hind sight it may have been sensible to go down the list picking all the great seeded shooters first hoping to be declined their by splitting up most of the two stellar shooter alliances.
Not sure that that would have worked, but it may have leveled the field for us and our great partners 1796, 4567!!
Thank you guys for working with us!!
Thoughts??

When we saw the final ranking, we predicted that the top 4 teams according to our scouting will be splitted in different alliances, but the fact of 1796 ended in 9º changed the scenario, so 2 of the 4 top (on our own ranking) could be together, and probably unbeatable.



That was the most unpredictable alliance selection that I participated. Again, thanks to our partners 287 and 263 for working so coordinated to defeat that amazing alliance.

Now it's time to fundraise like crazy to come back to St. Louis!
Thanks Long Island!!

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by Ken5736

In hind sight it may have been sensible to go down the list picking all the great seeded shooters first hoping to be declined their by splitting up most of the two stellar shooter alliances.
Not sure that that would have worked, but it may have leveled the field for us
Thoughts??

That is definitely a viable strategy. We saw it happen in NYC. The #1 seed picked the #3, #4, #5 & #6 teams.....and got turned down (which they were fairly sure would happen). So they then had effectively locked those teams into creating their own alliances.

Maybe I've just noticed it more but this year in particular the strategy of selecting your alliance partners, while blocking others has become a key and often overlooked detail.

[prismiko]

Originally Posted by dougwilliams

With the livestream not archived - does anyone know of anyone with the match videos from their own or team recordings? We'd be happy to help copy, upload to youtube, and document match numbers / team numbers / etc.

Hi Doug -

Sorry for the delay. I finally got the laptop with some of our qualification match recordings from school today. Please PM me if you have some particular matches you want to see first otherwise I can just start uploading them.