2006 Official Game Hint Discussion

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

yes, but they didn't choose the loading station colors with the intention of having the cameras see it, though some teams may have attempted that...

Well, maybe they changed their mind after they found out it didn't work.

In the kickoff video, when they were introducing the vision system, they said that teams could use the camera to go after the vision tetras, the little yellow triangles, and the auto-loading zones. Also, the CMUCam utility did have red and blue calibration buttons, and they did specidy the exact paint they were using on the auto-loaders. When I was down in St. Louis, I helped to calibrate the cameras, and they had me get numbers for the red and blue zones too.

But, like I said, I think (hope!) they have learned at this point that the blue (and possibly red and yellow) doesn't work

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Eldarion

But, like I said, I think (hope!) they have learned at this point that the blue (and possibly red and yellow) doesn't work

dunno about red, but yellow is pretty finnicky. We could recognize the yellow pads ONLY when we were playing for the Red Alliance. The amount that the color values changed for the different sides affected it that much. Green worked fine all the time (thank goodness)

[Ryan Foley]

Hey guys, not to be rude, but could we stay a bit more on topic?

Not that the CMU cam isn't cool, but there are other threads for discussing it, besides, last years hint thread had 586 replies, we have a ways to go, and more decoding to do in order to fill up the remaining 163 posts!


Thanks

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Ryan Foley

Hey guys, could we stay a bit more on topic?

Not that the CMU cam isn't cool, but there are other threads for discussing it, besides, last years hint thread had 586 replies, we have a ways to go, and more decoding to do in order to fill up the remaining 163 posts!


Thanks

Shall we resort to guess how many posts there'll be in this thread? I say we hit ~701 posts. Still more than a week to go....

Oh yea, the topic at hand... Sorry...

[Rickertsen2]

I think that the camera target will be elevated

[EddieMcD]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Silly Adam!

You can't have negative robots!



...Or can you...

No, but you can have imaginary robots.

Originally Posted by Karthik

There's been some talk about how "prime" is a common way to denote a derivative. Well, if we go back to our introductory calculus course, we remember that the derivative of a constant function is precisely equal to zero. 5 is a constant.

Hence,

5' = 0

Therefore,

five' bots tangling with pasta
= zero bots tangling with pasta

... Just something to think about

Which means that entire line could literally be a red herring... It wouldn't suprise me to see Dave do that either.

[Mike Schroeder]

Ryan has a point i remember Dave telling me somthing at capitol clash, i wont say what, but its rather interesting now that i look at the hint...

[buss]

Oh please do say! Its not like he told you something in confidence...

[Rickertsen2]

I don't know if this is any hint to the game, but when i took the RC apart, i noticed some room for expansion. On the PCB, there is space for 3 more LEDs on the RC. I have not yet taken apart an OI. There is also a space for a 13 pin header on the PCB. I need to investigate where the traces are connected.

Also, as mentioned before the team color LEDs have the capability to be green. Right now this is reserved for an error status, but all it would take is a firmware update to make this usable as a team color. By turning multiple colors on at one time or varying their brightness through pwm it might be possible to acheive a full spectrum of team colors.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Also, as mentioned before the team color LEDs have the capability to be green. Right now this is reserved for an error status, but all it would take is a firmware update to make this usable as a team color. By turning multiple colors on at one time or varying their brightness through pwm it might be possible to acheive a full spectrum of team colors.

For ease of refereeing and spectating, they'd probably stick with just individual LED colors (no mix-and-match, and no brightness variation). However, adding in more colors isn't that big of a deal. If they can flash green, who says they couldn't add yellow or something else

[Zach Purser]

Has anyone talked about the significance of the order of the clue parts? I think it's interesting that they listed the possible autonomous mode "seeing Montana's green heights" last. Could it be possible that the autonomous mode is at the end of the rounds this year? That would make for some interesting strategy. The robot would either have to autonomously determine where it was and adjust, or the driver would have to make sure the robot was at a know location in a known orientation at the end of the driver period. Now there's a scary thought for the programmers!

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

For ease of refereeing and spectating, they'd probably stick with just individual LED colors (no mix-and-match, and no brightness variation). However, adding in more colors isn't that big of a deal. If they can flash green, who says they couldn't add yellow or something else

You know, if they wanted to they could replace the team light modules with a module containing a tri-color LED or LEDs. That would be capable of 16 million colors!

[Zach Purser]

The word 'bots in the first line troubles me. The fact that it was shortened from robots either means that the number of syllables has some significance, or that the missing letters "ro" have some significance.

In the second line, if we assume the "shovel's show" is what the shovel on the Montana state flag points to, we find the letters "ORO", or more precisely the shovel points to "RO".

Now before anyone suggests "ro ro ro your bot", I looked up the acronym RORO and found this:

"Ro/Ro"

A shortening of the term, "Roll On/Roll Off." A method of ocean cargo service using a vessel with ramps which allows wheeled vehicles to be loaded and discharged without cranes.

So, could there be some sort of ferry that we have to use to achieve a goal, or might we have to ferry something (like another robot) to a goal?

[Zach Purser]

Thoughts on the number of syllables:
So the alternative explanation to my earlier post about the significance of " 'bots " is that the number of syllables are significant. So what could 7-10-8 translate to?
New robot dimensions this year?
70cm x 100cm x 80cm = 28.58in x 39.37in x 31.5in
(last years dimensions 28in x 60in x 38in)
One dimension is pretty close, but the other two are on the small side.

Could they be dimensions of something on the field? Goal heights?

Could they be a breakdown of the times for autonomous and driver modes or some other event that is time dependent?

Possibly a breakdown of scoring? 70 pts for pasta, 100 for the shovel's show, and 80 for Montana's green heights?

My best guess would be goal heights, but it would be neat if the robot dimensions would change. It would be a lot easier to take a 40 inch tall robot to a fundraiser than the standard 5 foot tall one.

[sanddrag]

Look at one of Dave's recent posts here in this thread.

The 11th track of that album is called "Spaghetti (Twist and Twirl)" (the tangling with pasta in the clue) and the 12th track is called "Home" (perhaps returning to starting position at autonomously at the end of the match.)

I'm definitely betting on auto mode at the end, and spaghetti type objects will definitelty be the "pasta."

Here's the rest of the tracks on that album link