Canada FIRST a whole different competition

[jwalsh]

Recently I saw an article on CANADA First, it is a whole different game and has been in place since 1994. Their website is www.canadafirst.com. No mention of Dean - but they do have the same Motto - For Inspiration etc.

Has anyone else heard of this??

[jwalsh]

Also check out http://www.tfcrobotics.org for one of the teams websites.

[Brett W]

We are currently a canadian rookie team in the FIRST competition. the past two years we were entered in the Canada FIRST competition which is a spin off from FIRST and was created by Bruce Macmillan in 1994. We switched over to FIRST this year. many of the new canadian teams were entered in canada FIRST for the past few years so are experienced in this type of robot building. We left canada First because:

1. It was a profiitable organization unlike FIRST which is non-profit.

2.The control systems were very primative. the circuit boards weren't designed to handle the amount of current being used on the robot. Most of the circuit boards burt out last year and had to be replaced many times which really hindered the competition. This year they switched over to innovation First Products so maybe they won't have those problems again.

3.The challenge last year was to navigate over 2 3inch steps and back down the otherside. our robot was designed to go over these with no problem but other robots drew to much current when trying to go over thes steps so they burnt out there circuit boards. Due to this the changed them to 2 1.5inch steps two days before the competition which allowed all the other robots that were good at the rest of the components of the comp to go over the steps without a problem. Since our bot was one of the only ones that could climb the large steps we could have won without this change but instead we placed 14th.

there were many other small problems mostly due to poor organization. this year we were invited to join FIRST from team 188's former mentor Mark Brednor(spelling?) and organizer of the canadian regional.

hopefully this cleared up the rip off canada FIRST questions.

[Ian Mackenzie]

I have competed in one Canada FIRST event, watched a couple of others, and competed for four years in FIRST. There is no comparison between the two competitions. FIRST has over 600 teams; Canada FIRST has maybe 20. FIRST has something like 18 competitions; Canada FIRST has 1. Canada FIRST has poor organization and unreliable control systems (one year they had to give up midway through the competition and switch to tether). FIRST is simply on a much, much higher level than Canada FIRST.

-Ian Mackenzie
Team 188
Woburn Robotics

P.S. It is actually spelled Mark Breadner .