2006 Season - The Negative

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by ahirsch2589

first could have a little more security in atlanta... face it, that city is scary

When I went a year ago, I felt safer in Atlanta than I did in Syracuse, in fact our whole team did. It could be just us...

As for scholarships in other fields, I will have to agree fully. I want to get into the Arts, and I know that painting and drawing are half way around the world when it comes to what FIRST stands for, but for being a partisipant in the area of leadership and team spirit being so close to my chosen profrssion (Teaching Art). It's just harder for an Art student to be recognized for being in a technologly-filled activity and to recieve money that is usually designed to be given to Tech students.

[Nimmy]

it was a problem with the radio (don't know the specifics), and the IFI guy told me that the only was I couldve gotten a re-match was right after the game contacting the referee, which I did, but at that time IFI didn't know wether the problem was with us or them, only after the IFI rep came to our pit and we checked it out they said the problem was with them and not us, and then he told me that he is sorry but the only way I couldve gotten a re-match was talking to the head ref after the match

catch 21?

I'd say

[Alan Anderson]

I can think of only three issues that I'd count as real negatives:

• The overlapping timing of the Woodie Flowers Award ceremony with other events needs to be addressed.
• The placement of the confetti balloons during the closing ceremony blocked some people's view of parts of the field.
• The reserved seating for the Einstein finals teams was badly handled.

I also didn't see any reason for the large entranceway at the most convenient corner of the pit to be blocked off with a guard posted.


I do have one other minor personal peeve. In my opinion, escalators shouldn't be used as rest stops. They become major bottlenecks when people stop walking and just stand on them. If everyone would just keep moving, about twice as many people could get through in a given time.

[Ed Sparks]

Originally Posted by Nimmy

the other issue I think that needs to be adressed is the rematches. our robot didn't work for an entire game, a game that was an easy win (to say the least)

IFI agreed with us that the problem was with THEM and not US, and yet we didn't get neither a rematch nor qualifying points, or any compinsation for that matter...

Nimmy,

I understand the frustration your team experienced concerning the damage to your robot and I commend you guys for dealing with the extra work and competing on time. I was the guy in the jungle hat that was helping your team (at your request) with your perceived controller problems. I was volunteering (at IFI's request) as an IFI troubleshooter. I don't remember ever stating that the problem you were experiencing was definitely with the IFI hardware and not with your hardware. In fact, I believe we resolved the issue when I accompanied your team to one of your matches and discovered you guys were not using your back up battery. There were many things that happened to many teams that appeared to be communications related but were in fact other things (breakers tripping, bad code, bad wiring, low battery voltage, etc.).

The bottom line is: There will never be any "compensation" given to teams for matches that don't go well for them. There just isn't time to deal with an appeal process. Sometimes things go better than they should (like a missed penalty flag at your expense) and sometimes you get a bad break (like a mysterious no start). It all evens out in the end and all the teams have to deal with these issues equally.

[Madison]

Okay, everything that was once in this thread is again in this thread. Sorry for the mix up. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I do have one other minor personal peeve. In my opinion, escalators shouldn't be used as rest stops. They become major bottlenecks when people stop walking and just stand on them. If everyone would just keep moving, about twice as many people could get through in a given time.

I'm glad that you're in good physical shape, and can climb stairs and escalators without trouble. May you remain healthy all your life, and never have joint, respiratory, or other problems that would keep you from using stairs! Not everyone has these advantages.

If you didn't like the wait, there was was at least one place in the GWCC where you could have used stairs instead. Then you wouldn't have had to wait for those of us who have less than perfect health, or who were almost too tired to stand up.

By the way, escalators were designed for standing on, not walking on. The height of the steps, and the change in step height at each end of the escalator, create safety challenges for many people. Please do not expect everyone to compromise their safety to satisfy your impatience.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I do have one other minor personal peeve. In my opinion, escalators shouldn't be used as rest stops. They become major bottlenecks when people stop walking and just stand on them. If everyone would just keep moving, about twice as many people could get through in a given time.

Originally Posted by KarenH

By the way, escalators were designed for standing on, not walking on. The height of the steps, and the change in step height at each end of the escalator, create safety challenges for many people. Please do not expect everyone to compromise their safety to satisfy your impatience.

I agree with both of you. Alan, there's nothing more frustrating that being in a rush on an escalator and being caught behind standers. Karen, I agree sometimes you just need a rest. Compromise: most escalators are two people wide. "Walk left, Stand right". They actually pump this out over the PA system on the Toronto subways. We could have used some of those announcements in Atlanta.

[MikeDubreuil]

I think this year has marked a low point in FIRST history. The year where FIRST showed that they truly do not care about their primary customer: the teams. FIRST demonstrated incredible negligence with the field scoring system and ranking software.

First week regionals should not have major software issues. Every regional should consistently be good. It is not appropriate for teams to pay their money and get a worse experience simply because software was poorly tested. It is not acceptable to “shake out the bugs” at early regionals. Shame on FIRST for allowing this to happen. In the business world, the real world, this amount of negligence would not be acceptable.

It is quite ironic that this years game is called Aim High when FIRST obviously does not set the same standard for themselves. It should be no wonder to FIRST why the team retention rate is dropping with each passing year. They have isolated teams by not embracing us as customers.

Although this post may seem quite negative I do think there is one positive to the year. We still inspired high school students. FIRST may have alienated mentors the most this year out of any other but this mentor will be back next year. I just hope FIRST will “get it” next year.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

...FIRST demonstrated incredible negligence with the field scoring system and ranking software...

I expect there are many people even within FIRST who share that opinion. Try not to worry about it too much, and just hope that the people with the power to correct the problem listen to the people who know that it's a problem.

[JamesBrown]

Alright, I thought about this a bit and am ready to post, as a disclaimer I loved ever thing about this year, both regionals we went to were fabulous and Championships were also alot of fun.

Scoring system- I refuse to bash FIRST on this topic, yes it was flawed, yes it could be confusing but overall it was far better than last years scoring system. I was at a week 1 regional and must say I had more good experiences with it than bad ones. Give them time, FIRST will have automatic scoring figured out by next year.

Foot traffic in Atlanta- I don't think it was FIRST making these calls but rather the GWCC, it was a little bit more difficult than necessary to get to the dome from the pits and Vice Versa.

IFI- Can't say anything negative about the people, the IFI reps in Boston and Manchester were fabulous. One thing they could improve would be in the event of another problem like the 8.2v bug have Regional Staff call a meeting for the programmers, the drivers many times don't know what they are talking about when it comes to programming. I heard about the fix when my driver told me "they said some thing about putting a word in the code to fix the battery problem", Luckily the IFI guys were a little more helpful.

Spare Parts- IF possible when regional organizers assign volunteer positions try to have the spare parts person be some one knowledgeable about the control systems, many times when you go to ask for or about something they don't know what you mean. This isn't necessary but would be a bonus.

Radio Control - at regionals, especially those in larger venues it would be great if they could set up an area to run the robot without the tether, at Manchester we had problems with our controls that the IFI rep had never seen, I couldn't isolate the problem because it only happened under radio control (ie in practice matches) Eventually the machine shop guys gave us space and power to try to run every thing under radio control this allowed us to isolate the problem and to fix it.

This is all I can think of now, as far as I am concerned FIRST has not even approached Failing us and I am a bit disgusted when people suggest they have, sure there is room for improvement and please try to keep the criticism constructive. FIRST in no way deserves to be bashed they give us way more than we pay for in materials alone, the experience is a bonus, don't bash them , offer advice and then take things as they come. FIRST improves every year and this year was no exception.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

I think this year has marked a low point in FIRST history. The year where FIRST showed that they truly do not care about their primary customer: the teams. FIRST demonstrated incredible negligence with the field scoring system and ranking software.

First week regionals should not have major software issues. Every regional should consistently be good. It is not appropriate for teams to pay their money and get a worse experience simply because software was poorly tested. It is not acceptable to “shake out the bugs” at early regionals. Shame on FIRST for allowing this to happen. In the business world, the real world, this amount of negligence would not be acceptable.

It is quite ironic that this years game is called Aim High when FIRST obviously does not set the same standard for themselves. It should be no wonder to FIRST why the team retention rate is dropping with each passing year. They have isolated teams by not embracing us as customers.

Although this post may seem quite negative I do think there is one positive to the year. We still inspired high school students. FIRST may have alienated mentors the most this year out of any other but this mentor will be back next year. I just hope FIRST will “get it” next year.

I think you need to differentiate between FIRST and Hatch. Hatch was responsible for the scoring software.

Now you can definitely hold FIRST responsible for keeping Hatch onboard, after their piss-poor performance last year. If they aren't fired for their incompetence this year, something is seriously wrong.

I don't think we'll have to worry about them for next year, though. Numerous FIRST representatives have expressed their disgust at the shortcomings of the scoring system, earlier in the season on ChiefDelphi.

[ebarker]

We didn't have autonomous mode working for the first few matchs because we determined that when in that mode, pwm10 came out on the pwm09 pin, but then acted normally in the non-auto mode.

Yes, of course we should have determined that before the match, but ...

This years controller wasn't impressive.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by ebarker

We didn't have autonomous mode working for the first few matchs because we determined that when in that mode, pwm10 came out on the pwm09 pin, but then acted normally in the non-auto mode.

Yes, of course we should have determined that before the match, but ...

This years controller wasn't impressive.

I was rather impressed with the extra memory available this year. And the controller was/is flexible enough to do a lot of neat things. Our team used one of the digital ins to measure an encoder firing at 50kHz. Or we would have if the mechanical team hadn't broken the high resolution encoder. We didn't have any problems aside from the 8.2V bug.

At any rate, assuming your code is correct, that would be a very serious error in the master controller program. I'm having some difficulty believing an error like that could show up, but if it's there, you could do the entire FIRST community much good by posting it to IFI's forum so they can fix the problem

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Cory

I think you need to differentiate between FIRST and Hatch. Hatch was responsible for the scoring software.

Now you can definitely hold FIRST responsible for keeping Hatch onboard, after their piss-poor performance last year. If they aren't fired for their incompetence this year, something is seriously wrong.

You can hold FIRST accountable for all the problems I spoke of because of their lack of system integration testing. They should have held their own tests where they run 50 matches and make sure everything works from a ball sensor to the final ranking. FIRST should do the system testing themselves on their own time. Not on my time during the first week of regionals.

If FIRST had done system integration testing…

• They would have realized the center goal could only hold too few balls before clogging. Specifically, balls bouncing out and other balls in the goal not moving down the chute and scoring. This was not “part of the challenge” it was a lack of testing.
• They would have realized the numerous issues with the corner goal scoring software. Specifically the issue where the software would inaccurately count the number of balls if the corner goal was filled with balls.
• They would have realized the ranking software wasn’t ranking teams properly. Specifically, the challenge of manually changing match results in order to affect rank.

The game and all of its related systems were never properly system tested. Teams attending early regionals were forced to endure the pain of that.

[Starke]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

They would have realized the center goal could only hold too few balls before clogging. Specifically, balls bouncing out and other balls in the goal not moving down the chute and scoring. This was not “part of the challenge” it was a lack of testing.

we saw the balls bouncing back out of the center goal as part of the challenge. we realized that we needed to make the robot able to shoot off center of the goal. this allows the balls to hit the back of the goal at an angle and stay in the goal. that kind of the problem is just part of the challenge of the game, not poor planning/testing by FIRST.