Robot Rodeo - fixing control problems

[Marc P.]

Best thing I can recommend is have one member of your team volunteer as field crew for a regional. After most regionals, a number of volunteers will stick behind Saturday night and help break down and pack up the field. There's no better way to learn the internal workings of a FIRST field than to help the professionals tear it down. You'll see where every part goes, and how it's plugged in. I believe all the fields are standard to each other, so it shouldn't have mattered that you got the electronics box for another field. I've been to Beantown Blitz and Battlecry@WPI, and everything runs like clockwork once you get used to working with the fields.

If possible, it's also a good idea to set up the fields a full day in advance, because there are quirks that can take some time to iron out. That way, you can run a number of test/dummy matches the night before, and again the morning before to make sure everything's working properly. And if there are problems, you can call someone in the afternoon instead of very early in the morning

<edit> TacOps runs off FreeBSD, not linux. Both are Unix-ish systems, but there are some differences. Personally, I think it's better off that way, running in a minimalistic X environment where not much can be changed. Yes, it's hard to troubleshoot (for the non-unix oriented anyway), but it's also a surefire way to keep people from playing with the system between matches.