Long Island Regional Winners

[Madison]

There was a bug in the code that uploads match results, so I think it only lists into the semifinals.

Congratulations to the winners of the Long Island Regional, Teams 467, 173, and 28!!!!!!! Great job, guys.

The runners up were 195, 224, and 545 - the alliance that beat our alliance

It was a great competition, and things really started to get interesting as time went on. Ball scoring become vital here, as opposed to a lot of what I saw at KSC and VCU. I have no idea what happened at the other two regionals this weekend.

The Regional Chairman's Award was given to team 311 - The Red Jammers, from East Islip, NY. Congratulations!!!

On a personal note, 810 won the highest seeded rookie award!!! Woooohoo. Now that we've got some practice, we're looking forward to another good time at NYC next week.

Again, congratulations everyone!!!

[fast frank]

hey, i'm new to the forum. i'm the driver from team #271. we lost in the semifinals today when an enemy robot sent there graber into our bot and pulled wires out of motors, cut wires for the pneunmatics and some other things that made our robot paralysed, excpet for normal driving funtions on only 3 of our 4 drive motors. we were alied with 157 and 417, and lost to 224, 195, and 545.

we held the high score of 123 for a while. we set it our first match out (match #6 i think) and it was beaten in match # sixty somthing with 129.

please let me know what you think about team 271's robot.

oh yea, how's my driving?

[Kyle Hill]

Originally posted by fast frank
[Bplease let me know what you think about team 271's robot. [/b]

It was pretty good - I liked the way you loaded your robot from the player station, though it seemed to get stuck and not release the balls a couple of times. Hopefully you guys can fix that before the next competition. Having the ability to grab two goals also helped out a lot.

Good luck with the rest of the season, and represent the South Shore.

[WernerNYK]

Hey. hey..... now don't forget the Rookie All-Stars, 871!!

We were doing really well in the beginning until our motor clip broke. It sucks, but whadaya gonna do?? What sucks even more is that when I figure out where we WOULD be if that didnt happen is 8th seed with an Avg QP of 60.67 ... Still trying to figure out why we didnt get picked Any comments on our robot and our team are wanted and gladly welcomed. What was good? bad? We want to know

Ah well... But now that we got in so much experience, and whenever we had a problem we worked so well together, and we were always there when another team needed help (you would see a swarm of blue and gold move around like locusts )... anyway, I really wish now that we were going to more events. I feel like now that we actually know EXACTLY what to do, we would do so much better. But unfortunately, we were seriously underfunded and ran out of money just as we finished up with the actual building. And I'm a senior, so I dont get to come back next year either ::sigh::

[fast frank]

Kyle, too bad one of your motors got fried, i smelt it when we came out in the match after yours.

yea, when the balls didn't drop, we had a leak in our pneumatics, or the threads on the piston got stuck. we filed off the threads and fixed the pneumatics, it works fine now.

871, you robot looked impressive with the mirror like polishing. i didn't get to see it on the field because i was in the pits the whole time, but from what i saw, it looked like a strong robot.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

i'm the arm operator for team 173. Yes the kid with the broken arm. HAHA. Does anyone have pictures of our robot? We need to make a info sheet on our awesome robot(hehe) and i need pics

[Brian C]

Hey Chris!

West Islip did great for a rookie team! You guys have no reason to hang your heads. Based on what I saw I think that your team will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Congratulations on your Rookie All-Star Award!

I don't know why you didn't get picked. I do know that there were still a few good 'bots on the sidelines when the smoke cleared from the alliance picking.

Unfortunately team 311's 'bot was on the sidelines after the 1st round of eliminations after the smoke cleared from one of our motors.....but that's another story.

Oh well, on to Florida. Now where did I put those spare drill motors, hmmmm........

[Ian W.]

congrats to team 173, on an awesome robot. how did the arm work? must have been simple to operate, if you managed with one hand.

also, what was up with 311's bot, and the smoke? i heard all about it, but no straight answers. did you guys like, blow up a drill motor?

[Steve Prairie]

First off, its about time I start posting again, it's no fun to just read CD twice a day...

Secondly, WOW, LI was so much fun. Gotta thank 28 for picking us, I personally think you made a great choice , and 467 made us a strong alliance.

Great job to 195, 224, and 545. You guys made it a competitive finals.

FYI: Our arm is 3x5 aluminum extrusion, driven by the third drill motor (and a large transmission). The wrist is two globe motors.
Joystick up: arm up, Joystick down: arm down, Left: basket down, Right, basket up...real simple.

Can't wait for New Haven...and Nats...

-Steve
The pit crew guy

[Jason Haaga]

Woooohoooooooo! Sorry, still just slightly buzzed about LI.

Thanks a ton to 28 and 467. Hope to get a chance to work again with you in the future. Feel up for a repeat at New Haven, 467?

Also, congrats to 195, 224, and 545. You had half our crew biting their nails a lot (not kidding). Not looking forward to any rematches...

Finally, the thing that suprised me the most about SBPLI was how good some of the rookies were. 810, 870, and 871 particularly in my book were excellent teams. I don't mean purely their robots; the team members themselves seemed like seasoned veterans. They were truly a pleasure to work with (or a challenge to work against).

[WernerNYK]

Hahah... Ok I'm startin to get over that %%%% drill motor clip... But it still hangs over my head

Anyway, over all my "pissed-offness" (ok made up word ) I totally forgot to congratulate the other teams.

Congratulations to:

• 173- Excellent robot guys. We saw you as one of the best out there since the very first day of practice. You guys deserved to win, and if I may say so, almost did it all on your own
• 311- East Islip/West Islip, well we definitely have a long history without FIRST, and now we are "enemies" on the robotic playing field. After attending the competition for the past few years, EI has definitely grown dramatically. We worked this year with the first engineer you guys had from AIL - Chris Foley, who's son is a senior at WI. Anyway, hopefully the two Islips will continue in years to come as both competitors and alliances. Hope you guys remember our tug of war over the goal and recognize us as a strong (literally) rookie team. Congratulations on your Chairmans award, and you guys definitely had one of the best bots out there (we actually had that same exact idea for a bot but decided against it as rookies without a full machine shop or engineering sponsor ) I think everyone (at least we did), viewed you guys as the "Arch-enemy" to destroy and had fun competing with ya. Oh yea.. and thanks for allowing everyone to cheer at the smoke, heh.. I dont know, you must have some serious design flaw for that to keep happening. Oh, and thanks for letting us use your ban saw a few times
• 358- Excellent defender! Although we voted for you for play of the day, it wasnt for your "mousetrap." It was for our first match back after being disabled when you guys kept 224 in check- robot in our zone, but goal with balls into their zone for a score of 36-34, that was awesome!
• 467- Well you guys won too.. I dont think we really had too much interaction with you guys, except that we had the same colored shirts and I kept confusing your team members with ours at a quick glance
• 810- Highest rookie seed, good job!! I think it was definitely a battle between the two of us for that spot And from what I saw, you guys and traction and speed, but not as much torque and power, so we held our ground against you guys in our one match, heh. Good job and congrats on doing well
• 870- Well you guys did so much fundraising and got so many sponsors, and we share the Rookie All Star with you guys for two different aspects of the competition. We had a lot of fun with you guys right next to us in the pits, I'm sure you guys appreciated all our help Although we were kinda angry you got picked over us in the elim rounds, we got over it, and know next year to have our team on the sidelines cheering for us Good luck next year and be seeing you in the pits again.

Again, congratulations to all on a job well done. Now I just hope I go to a college next year that participates in FIRST and comes down to the LI regional

[Brian C]

Ian,

I can confirm that the light fog odiforious aroma wafting over the playing field was that of a drill motor which had met an untimely death in it's efforts.

It didn't really affect the match outcome though as we were already in position and the motor went with about :15 left on the clock.

If we had won and continued it would've been fine as we always keep pre-wired spare motors handy (literally in my pocket) and can change one out in less than 5 minutes if necessary.

Oh well, such is life! Remember that for everyone that wins there are ALWAYS many, many others that made the effort.

If you don't make the effort then you will never know what you can accomplish.

Team #311 is off to Florida to see what we can do. I know that pretty much everyone on our team is still reeling from winning the Chairmans Award so whatever happens at Nats we look forward to the competition.

[Brian C]

Hey Werner NYK!

Some might call the RedJammers smoke screen a "design flaw" (I'll let you say it this time )
Others might call it the weak link in the chain.

Actually what's occurring is that we are (as is everyone else) pushing the design limits of everything on the machine.

Needless to say we are already working on what changes we need to make once we arrive in Florida at the Nat's

You guys are fortunate to have Chris, he is an excellent engineer and mentor!

As far as the tug of war....we remember it too! Remember which 'bot ended up with the goal in the end? hint: I think it had a 311 on the side

Like I said before I think you guys are going to do well in the future. We will let you guys know when team 311 has workshops during the 'off season' this way we can all work together and learn together too!

Oh, and you can use our bandsaw anytime.......

One more thing just to clarify. We actually only have one mechanical engineer working on the robot that is associated with a sponsor. The rest of us are either parents or former students with engineering backgrounds who volunteer their time because we believe strongly in the program. We also insist that the students do at least 80% of the work. As an example, every inch of the welding on this years chassis was done by a group of 3 students.

In my case my son graduated last year and now he competes with team 190 from WPI and Mass Academy. Boy I really hope we end up in the same division at the Nationals and draw each other as alliance partners in at least one qualifying match.

Now THAT would be cool!

[WernerNYK]

Heh, LOL, yea we had to let go of the goal or be DQed, our driver and gripper did the right thing. I dont know if you noticed, but we put some good tears in the carpet over there Otherwise we were pulling (or were we pushing, I dont remember, I think we must've been pushing) you and the goal over

And yea, we had at least 80% student work..at least. It had to be more like 90 though. Unfortunately, we didnt even have a real welder this year (sorta a makeshift tig welder with leaks in the hose). It was really tough to weld, so one teacher did most of the welding, always with at least one student watching/helping/learning. Welds for all prototypes were done by students, however.

And WPI is one of the schools that I am definitely considering (for the simple reason that they compete in FIRST and supposedly have a really good Computer/Electrical engineering program). I would love to participate in FIRST in college and come to the LI Regional against my former West Islip team But then again I need to consider schools like Cornell and Rensselaer that I also got accepted to, but unfortunately I dont think either one participates in FIRST. Ah well, it's a really tough decision.

[Brian C]

If you are seriously considering WPI then let me know and I will connect you to my son. This way if you would like to get some "inside info" it might help you to make a decision. He was also accepted at and considering RPI and RIT but he liked WPI because of their schedule (4 quarters) and because of their FIRST program. Go to the EIRobotics.com web site and link to my E-mail in the contacts area. I'll be more than happy to help you out with any info.

Good Luck!