2007 Israel GM/Technion Regional

[Tottanka]

So, as a week 5 regional we, the Israeli teams can see most of the regionals and learn from it, though most drivers wont have much experience, and it will be just like a week 1 regional (even though its 5) in all the programming experience etc.. as this is the only regional that all Israeli team attend.

36 Teams gonna be here...

So, dear Israeli teams, post your babies pics/videos over here so the American guys can learn how to make an Einsteinybrainilikemachine =]

P.S: We really need to work on it and find a way to transmit our regional to the webby as last year, is there anything planned ahead?

[Bomberofdoom]

How do you actually transmit online?

[Tottanka]

Team 1577 the steampunk are taking care of that...

just 18 hours to the first match =]

[Bomberofdoom]

I've spoke to the FIRST Israel managers and they said they weren't able to get it ready.

Anyway, I'd like to tell how it went for our team this day:

We came early in the morning with all our equipment, we were between the first to get inside, probably the first to be set to work with our robot.
We wnet straight after our personal inspection(unoffical to FIRST), we went to the practice area to see that all the systems work.
Well, they all did, until we reached our robot lifting. For some reason, one of the Jack motors didn't work at all while raising the robot. We've tried to get some time to fix it, but untill then, we were called to play our first practice match which we didn't want to miss.
We forogt to go over our inspection list and to remember to connect the backup battery and therfore we didn't do anything in the autonomous time. Not that we had a fully functional autonomous code, but we knew the robot would atleast move to it's position if the backup battery would've been connected.
We were able to put 2 tubes on the rack, in on of the rounds making a row of 3 with our fellow practice alliance teams. Because we had problems with the lifting, we didn't want to try it on the alliance robots at that time for saftey reasons. We tried going on the other robot's ramps, but we figured our robot doesn't fit the ramp's size, so we don't have the abilty to drive up thier ramp.
We had a good practice after all. After the match, we went staright to our pit to get the lifting working. The whole process took us the rest of the day and the other 4 matches that we were supposed to practice. In the end, we finished with the problem with the jack unsolved and one of the jacks, after accidently pulling some PWM cables and putting them back, went way too far from it's limit and we broke the "nut"(Is that the right word?). All the small marbles or jooles droped and we broke on of the jacks.
To assist the major failure, we recieved a no go from our sponsor, our school, to bring out a project we had planned in order to really knock down the judges and receive the Rookie All Star. We've ended up funding the broken jack and the project by ourselves.

The project and the jacks will come by tommorow. We didn't have time this day to work on the autonomous, but we're hoping that untill our new jack arrives, we'll be able atleast to have our autonomous code working properlly.

I'll be summerizing each day of the competition from our team's side.
I hope it will interest you and we hope that mabye issues that might come up could be solved with your help.

Good luck to all the competing teams this week!

[Bomberofdoom]

Well, apperantly, I was wrong, and there is a live webcast of Israel's regional! Go watch!

So, this is day two of the first time of Team #2230, Zcharia's Angels, with their robot, Geflitebot, in a FIRST Israel Regional Competition.

We started up with a good feeling that this day will be okay. We decided that we would be playing all the qualifications matches, no matter what, so we made sure that all the fixes we would do that day would be in such a way that we could either quickly do the job or leave it and go to the match.
We went to our first match with our heads up and our spirit high. We decided that since our replacment part for our Jacks system wouldn't come till the 2nd match there would be no lifting from our side till the 3rd game atleast. First match went was ok. Our team scored 2 tubes out of 4 of our alliance and we received 16 point like the other alliance.
We thought we might come out with a tie, but we had a little mistake that we forgot that the human player must not touch a tube before the teleoperated time starts. We lost 20 points.
First loss. No big deal, because we knew our robot can do really great with tubes.
I'm not sure about the 2nd and 3rd match, but in one of them, our Gefiltebot scored 4 tubes when our alliance tubes delpeted(were mostly on the ground waiting for the other robots to pick them up). It was ok that the rest of our alliance hasn't scored allot, but we got a row of 6, 64 points, and we made sure that the other aliiance robots will be blocked.
End of the game, we're all joy! First win!
Well, apperantly our fine blockers forgot to leave the opponent's alliance zone after the end game. Both of them. 50 points penalty. You make the math.
So, it went very well, but the penalties were our rival in this day.
in our 4th match we were lucky to block the other alliance and make sure that our robot will score enough tubes on the rack and we won by one tube. Yay for us! First offical win!
By the 5th or 6th match, we had our jacks back up and operating more or less. We tried to quickly raise or alliance robots before the match, but didn't have time. We went to the match and tried to convince the alliance to score at the begining, one to block all the time untill we ask him to come to our home zone and get ready to be lifted. Our Gefiltebot scored 2 tubes and then went straight to the home zone, leaving 60 secondes to get ready to raise the jacks. Our light alliance robot took his time aiming and did it very quickly while the other robot blocked the other alliance. We asked the other robot to come to get deployed quickly, but for some reason they were hissitant. They barley moved their robot, we started yelling......ok, screaming to them, to come on our robot.
Mabye it was from our temper on them, but for some reason they pressed the button to open their ramp. The score before they opened was 16-8 to us.
We tried raising in the last 15 seconds with only one robot on our side. Our jacks didn't lift properlly despite the fact that the jacks system worked with an accelrometer. You understand the final results.
One match we had a pneumatic problem where our pinch didn't turn 90 degrees and we couldn't catch a tube at all and we forgot the alternative strategy which is to defend. Another match something happened to our driving mechanical system. Both were fixed in no time.

So, all in all, we reached the following scoring in the ranking:

Ranking:31 out of 33.
Qualification Score: 2.00
Ranking Score: 9.50
Wins-Loses:1-7

Along the 2 days we recevied multiple comments about how our robot is really great and a lot of people were amazed of our pinch and jacks system which eventaully bought us the Xerox Creativty Award for having a strong gripping system, robot electrical system placment and jacks system!!!

Good job 2230!

Well, that summeriazes day 2. We're ignoring our lifting because it hasn't been quite successful yet. If our alliance would like us to lift them and they are able to get on us, we'll use the jacks and they should work on 2 robots together. If not, we'll be the main scorer and defender and we're hoping that will be the top 8 alliances reason to chose us as their alliance team in the Elimination rounds.

All in all, FIRST is fun! We are having a blast and we don't really want it to end. It's just soo fun watching this display of science and technology. We're hoping we'll be able to do allot this year and even more next year.

But lets not talk about next year yet. Lets try to win this Regional after all!!!
GO WATCH US AND CHEER FOR US! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!

GO TEAM 2230!!!!!!

[Bomberofdoom]

What
a
day.

3rd day of Zcharia's Angels:

We went back to the qualification matches. We lost in two of the matches, but on the third match, our friends from Ra'anana, Steampunks - 1577, helped us grab another win.

Sadly, it didn't stop us from reaching the last spot in the rankings.
We were totally depressed that we had soo much bad luck with our alliances and that we weren't able to get things right. Most of the times, our alliance team did loads of mistakes and we lost because of it, but we made some mistakes too.
So, it's the alliance choosing time. At the first team selection to join the alliance, we were not asked to be joined, but at the seconed we were asked by the very kind and very strategicly ready alliance captain team, team 1947 - The Black Knights. We were to play with them and 2210 - Druzebot.
We used the hour of lunch to go over our strategy and figured that we, 2230 and 2210, should try to block the opponents chances to score more than 60 points so we may focus on 1947 lifting our robots.

First Elimination round
We come up ready for the match, set our robot and go!
1947 opens their ramps and get ready to go. Our robot heads our to put tubes on the spider that splits the "blue side" and "red side". We put 2 tubes when we're called to go back to get lifted. We start going back, notice that 2210 weren't able to put a tube at all, but yet the worst to come has come -
2210 started rising in smoke. The referee disabled the robot and the match conituned, but 1947 wasn't able to lift us because it can't lift one robot unless there's another wheight on the other side and there wasn't.

We lost the first match and we were all worried about the next match. 2210 rushed to quick-fix the robot and amazingly they did!
We went to the seconed match, we used the same strategy and we were able to bring it out into the game. Both robots came back to 1947 and we were lifted. The opposing alliance attempted to add more points by putting tubes on their sides on the first and seconed row. It wasn't enough for our 66 points.
We were in the sky becuase the lifting has actually worked.

Seconed Elimination match

We went against Steampunks. A very strategicly ready team. We decided on doing the same thing. What happened was by the time we put our tubes, an opposing robot pushed 1947 towards the tubes and when we came back we were not able to position our robot properly but we where on the lifting system in such a way that 2210 could be lifted. It wasn't enough for us because Steampunks kept scoring and scoring more tubes.
Same thing happened in the seconed round and we lost.

But we didn't care.
We were last on the ranking list, we were chosen to join an alliance in the Elimination rounds and we reached the Semi-Finals and finished at 3RD PLACE!!!!! That's enough reason for us to celebrate!
We cheered for Steampunks at the finals, but 1574 - Miscar, where able to win the 2nd and 3rd round of the Finals. I've seen some of the Steampunks team members being extremly frustrated from the match and some even cried and there was a reason for that.
It was the seconed year in a row where ther reached the finals but lost. They missed their chance to reach the finals twice because of Miscar.

All in all, it was a wonderful 3 day competition. I had loads of fun, I made wonderful friends from various teams, made certain communication bounds between a few teams we knew and enjoyed participating with them.

This is our first year, our first competition and we reached higher than we expected. The best part is we actually won an award, and one we think that says something about our team, especally our building team who thought about the robot, and that award is the Xerox Creativity Award!!! GOO JOB TEAM!!!!

I really enjoyed FIRST. I feel I'm part of it. I can't wait for the next challenge to fun. I've learned soo much from FIRST and I feel it took the full potential out of me. I really want to win next year.

THANK YOU FIRST! THANK YOU FIRST ISRAEL!! THANK YOU ALL WHO MADE THIS SUCH A WONDERFUL AND FUN REGIONAL!!!

GOOD JOB ZCHARIA'S ANGELS!!!!

GO TEAM 2230!!!!GO FIRST!!!!

[neilsonster]

What a great summary from the perspective of your team (2230). It totally captures what it's like to experience a FIRST competition for the first time! The first regional I ever attended (Finger Lakes 2005) was very similar for my team, so I can really relate to your story.

It sounds like the 2007 Israel GM/Technion Regional was a great success.

Congratulations to your team for winning an award and for making it to the semi-finals as a rookie! Welcome to FIRST!!!

[Tottanka]

hey there partners...
i'd like to fix a little mistake of yours...
Steampunks didnt make it to the finals last year. they lost in the semis to 1947,1943 and 1957

[Bomberofdoom]

eeps. thanks for the correction, but I remember they lost 2nd in one of their years except this one.

[Guy_E]

I uploaded the final game in the Israeli Regional to Youtube. This was really an amazing game. My team, 1574 did an amazing job in hanging tubes (6) and teams 1657 and 1950 did wonderful defense. This is really how a real game should look like.

During the quarter finals, my robot hung 7 tubes alone, one of which during autonomous mode. Unfortunately, during the final game the grip was stuck inside the arm, and that why the robot didn't hang any tubes. Our autonous mode was successful 2 times during the regional.

Final game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ6kWTSkCrI

See you all in Atlanta,
Guy

[Bomberofdoom]

Congratulations 1574,1657 and 1950!!! Go show Atlanta what you've got!!!

[JackN]

I can't find on the FIRST site who won the CA and EI awards.

[Bomberofdoom]

It's probablly not up yet.

[David55]

EI - 1946 "Mishka Monsters"
CA - 1657 "Hamosad"

[dangerousdave]

Thanks Guy_E for uploading the last match video. We are enjoying watching it here in the USA. Look forward to seeing you and your team again in Atlanta.

Also, in the last match I see that the Keeper rings were removed from the floor. I never saw any matches in person or web cast, where the unscored keepers were removed unless they were in danger of scoring.
Dave