Lone Star Regional

[LSevcik]

In an effort, to improve the Lone Star Regional the Houston committee would like your feedback. Please let us know what you liked, didn't like and any improvements we could make.

[Tazlikesrobots]

It would be great to show the winning animation while the team gets their trophy.

[pickle]

They did show it right before we walked up there, they just didn't stop the whole event as they showed it...

[jimfortytwo]

I thought the event was very well run overall. The worst thing that happened to us over the weekend was nothing more than trying to get out of the place friday night-- all the parking lot gates were locked!

It seemed to me that the animation mentioned above got cut off by a camera cue in the middle of it, which was a shame.

It would be really cool if they could show pictures of the robots winning awards on the big screen. For nearly every design award i was leaning over to the person next to me and asking, "who were they?" Maybe that could be a team responsibility to provide, just as teams used to bring music cues for their matches.

It might be handy to have a lazer printer on site to run off a couple dozen copies of the elimination round schedule for competing teams. It seemed to me like there was a lot of confusion going in, and the volunteers might have had an easier time if the teams knew when they were up next.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Some of the awards had the robot up next to them. I think getting it for all the robots would require a digi cam onsite dedicated to the task. I suppose it could be done during the inspection when the bot is weighed or something, I'll try to set it up for next year. Also, we tried our best with the Elims, but we weren't able to print out a populated Elim ladder, so it was all taken care of by hand.

[Bruce C.]

Well, I would be hard pressed to think of much to complain about at the LSR. This is only my third year in FIRST, and I have only been to LSR and the Nats last year in Houston, so I don't have a lot to compare to, but I really like the LSR. The refs and officials were fair, the inspectors thorough and gracious, the facility was more than adequate. And I agree with a couple off posters on another thread that LSR is a "friendly" competition. The Judges spent a lot of time with each team, and we enjoyed talking to them.

If I had to note an item for improvement, sometimes the PA was a little hard to hear back in the corner of the pits where we were. We had some difficulty hearing our team number called for queing until the announcer started calling the "CyberWollllllvvvvves" instead of our number. Even I (with my 55 year old Army ears) could hear that!

All in all, I think the LSR was a wonderful experience for our team. Keep up the great work!

[Andrew Schuetze]

I have had nothing to complain about in four years. I really don't know what one can do about the noise in the pits and the PA system. It was extremely loud in the center aisle where we were yet others in the corners couldn't hear...All that concrete creates an acoustical mess. The raffle did seem to drag a bit and I'm not sure it was worth it. I think everyone did enjoy the mascot challenge. You might have mascots register for that event and not do it as what appeared to be an impromtu thing. As I was watching that, I thought that it would be fun to have some sort of skills competition in addition to the mascot shooting challenge. Maybe a driver obstacle course with default robots. Maybe team 57 could bring in some retired 'bots with similar drivetrains....Not sure how to stage it or how fun it would be for the crowd but some sort of programmer challenge is another skill area.... mechanic races to see who can change a tranny and reinstall it into a bot....Sounds like there is enough here to form a seperate regional skills competition

[Catastrophy]

Well my team (704) thought it went real well. The only complaint was the traffic in the pits, we need a little wider walk through by the announcers and projectors. Got very crowded walking, especially with the bot to get to the machine shop after thursdays fiasco of our mast been bent 90 degrees. Other than that it went great, I look forward to seeing you all there next year!

[Atman]

LSR was awesome this year. From our eyes over at the 364 pits everything ran extremely smooth and we even ended up ahead of schedule on all of the days. We had a great time and this, our 5th year at LSR was one of the best. Cant wait for next year, 364.

[Taylor_Ratliff]

They need to invite down the teams that got 2nd and 3rd place, And maybe have the winning robots lined up on the field during the awards.