2008 NASA/VCU Regional

[FRC4ME]

Originally Posted by VanMan

1793 actually did a good job with their alliance picks. I thought it was funny when they picked 1086 and they declined, then they picked 384 and they declined. They knew that if they were both together, they would be a tough alliance to beat. So they prevented them from being together.

Penalties were definitely playing a major role in the game. The game was great except the annoying penalties.

I can't believe there were no alliance pairings within the top eight this year. That almost never happens.

Team 339 had a great time and finished the qualifying rounds with a higher seed (#12) than we've ever had before. Thanks to 2021 and 975 for helping us put up a great fight in those quarter-finals.

One thing we learned at this regional was how strange problems can manifest themselves in strange ways at strange times. Okay, we knew that already, but this year was particularly strange.

We lost the +5V bus on our robot controller after a metal shaving landed on one of the analog input pins and shorted it out. This problem first manifested itself as a loss of the gear tooth sensors (they need a 5V input), resulting in our robot ramming full speed into the opposing alliance's player station in hybrid mode. After all, with no input from the gear tooth sensors, the robot thought it had gone exactly 0% of the way across the field.

So we got a warning from the refs, took the robot back to the pits, and noticed the yellow "low +5V output" light on the RC. We went through a long checklist to clear the problem until we finally found and removed the metal shaving shorting out the pins. Unfortunately, the +5V bus appeared to be permanently shot. With less than 15 minutes before our next match, we flipped our "disable autonomous" switch to the ON position to avoid ramming into the player station again. We were disappointed that we wouldn't be able to run hybrid, but we had no choice at the time.

During the next hybrid mode, one line, four points, and five angry refs reminded us that the switches connected to the robot controller also run on the +5V bus. Note to self: for next year, change the autonomous switch to default to DISABLED in a no signal condition.

Apparently the IR commands, such as emergency stop, don't work without +5V either.

We had to replace the robot controller to fix the problem. It's funny how a little metal shaving can almost get you disqualified. There's Murphy's Law in action.