[moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems

[Wetzel]

I'd like to start by apologizing to any teams that feel slighted by the problems we are having at VCU. I am one of the scorekeepers and have been trying my best to help get and keep the field running.

I'd like to give a bit of explanation. There are three separate systems that come together to control the field. The robot communication parts from IFI, the counting system from National Instruments, and the field control/match generator/ranking/everything else from Hatch Technologies.

The robot communication has been great. Some teams have had issues (and always do) and IFI has helped them to resolve them. The IFI guys are awesome.

The counting system was initially problematic. This was resolved on Thursday by hard work by our FTA and crew. Today we have been getting good counts from the NI system. There were both calibration and physical solutions developed.

The integration system from Hatch had some bugs and idiosyncrasies, but by the end of the day Thursday when we left at 9 I was confident in the system. We had been on the phone with a Hatch rep during the day reporting issues. Friday morning we got a patch to fix most of these. However, we got a bigger problem with the patch which we tried to work around but decided to revert to the previous build that we knew worked. That was the delay around match 9. By about 2, I was confident in the system again. We ran matches straight through lunch, and that got us within 15 minutes of schedule. The field reset crew was AWESOME and we ended on schedule.

As far as the rankings go, during the day, we thought it was wrong, but didn't have time during match play to examine it in depth. So we just didn't show them. When we did, we saw that the system was confused and were able to fix it after a quick call to Hatch. We were able to put the ranking display up before the pits closed and they will be up when teams come in at 8 Saturday morning.

I am confident in the scoring and ranking system right now. Can it be better? Definitely. Will it work as we have it? Yes.


Wetzel
VCU Scorekeeper 2005-2006

PS If I was brisk with you or just brushed you off it was because I was really busy trying to figure out what was going on or just busy running the matches. Come find me after the awards on Saturday and say hi.