Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage Pre-Season Event

[Danny McC]

Hmmm if someone could get some videos up before the beginning of week one regionals I would love to see them. Thank you ahead of time if you do.

[Elgin Clock]

Some raw video from the stands & near the field from Suffield Shakedown 2009 at various stages of competition:

HERE: http://www.thesixweeks.com/suffield2009.wmv

Thanks to John Boucher from my team (team 237) for hosting it, & hopefully he doesn't kill me for posting this when he maxes out his bandwidth this month from everyone watching it!

[JohnBoucher]

Thanks Elgin. I owe you one.

It's just a minute of what was going on at Suffield.

The game got a lot better as the day went on. If you had the surface to practice on, you were ahead of the other drivers. By the end of the day drivers were very even.

The spinning move was the Litchbots.

[Uberbots]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

I recall Andy announcing that 1124 was scoring with the camera, right at the autonomous/teleop switch, so I'm not sure if it was done in autonomous or teleop.

Haha, what andy said and what actually happened were two completely different things in that respect (-;

The camera had hysteresis, in the sense that when the 545 turret motor went the camera would move (an issue we have yet to address), so he probably perceived this as the camera doing stuff. The turret would also drift in autonomous for some reason. I dunno... new programmers means new code phenomena.

so in reality, there was no autonomous turret control, though the scrimmage made it pretty obvious that we desparately need it (though the second driver did sorta get a hold on the turret by the end of it). Today, in fact, we got a neat control loop done for the turret, and are working on distance control for the overshoot.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Uberbots

Haha, what andy said and what actually happened were two completely different things in that respect (-;[/size]

Ah, I love it when that happens. We've "accused" of tracking the green light by the play-by-play announcer before.


Did anyone at the scrimmage notice any burn marks on the field? Our home regolith field is now spotted with brown where the rapidly rover wheels have begun to melt the high ridges. It smells terrible when it happens, and if you run your hand over it you can feel the increase in traction.

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Fred Agnir

...but I'm thinking that if it was your team and our team as the duo, we might have had a better than even chance. ...

Fred,

That would be an interesting alliance indeed... Good Luck.

Mike

[Mr_D_Mentor]

Durign the competition, the officials made a big deal about exchanging the free cells for the super cell directly opposite it on the rack. They even imposed penalties for not following this nit-picky procedure. I just re-read the rules and I could not find this requirement. Rule <g22> reads as follows:

... During the last 20 seconds of the MATCH, each EMPTY CELL in the FUELING STATION may be exchanged for a SUPER CELL. ...

notice it says "a SUPER CELL" - it does not specify any particular super cell.

I think the teams that were un-duly penalized are owed an apology.

[Herodotus]

So from the people there what is the overall opinion of the game, bearing in mind how early things are. Exciting? Boring? Good? Bad? I don't like the sound of how much the human player can score, but I'll reserve judgment till I see things with my own eyes.

[MarcD79]

Good evening everybody! You might not recognize the name, but you will recognize the face. I am Mr. Davis who has enthusiastically volunteered every year in the setup & take down of the scrimmage fields. I had the honor of official Field Supervisor & to mentor FIRST FTA Frank Merrick. First of all I want to thank everybody involved with help in scoring, field reset, judging, DJ sound, webcasting & anyone else who was directly involved. It is a very energy draining, but greatly rewarding event to be involved in. Now to an answer for how the rounds went. We obviously had to rethink how to reset the field, count scores & get the next round of robots on the field in a quick manor. We changed the sequence around probably 4 times until we obtained the smoothest transition & eliminated round-to-round turn-around from 9 minutes to around 5.5 minutes. I can personally say that having the payload specialist be the only one to load the robot from his/hers own station was the best solution. There was confusion as to when they could obtain those moon rocks. In the end the solution was to bring all bins on the field, fill them & return to each station. I'm sure FIRST will make some changes.
D.C. is waiting for us!!!

[MarcD79]

This is the answer to the legolith wearing. When we dismantled the field we did see a lot of the white powder that was worn off the field from tire spin. Other than a few minor scuff marks , there wasn't any scaring to the field surface.

[MWTrek]

On behalf of the event organizers I’d like to thanks everyone for their help and cooperation in running this event. We understand that waiting in queue was the last thing you wanted to be doing on the last Saturday of build season. We thank you for your patience.

We’d also like to thank all of our volunteers who helped with the event. In particular we’d like to thank:

-FIRST for generously allowing us to use their field and for working hard to maintain a smooth running event.

-Team 571 for graciously offering to help clean up after the event and refusing to leave until every last table was put away. They ended up staying over 5 hours, and even drove to WLHS to help us unload the rugs.

-Bob Charrette for donating his time and his truck to transport the field from New Hampshire and for his help queuing robots during the competition.

-Mike Betts for helping teams with their questions on the Labview software.

-Marc Davis for his work on the field as the field supervisor and for his help with other event logistics.

-Jx2 Productions (two FIRST alumni from team 839) for providing music and helping with the queuing of robots.

-Team 230 for providing the webcast which was watched around the country.

-Team 178 for their DREAM FIRST exhibit.

-The countless others who make this event a success. Without them this event would not be possible.

[AcesPease]

Originally Posted by MWTrek

On behalf of the event organizers I’d like to thanks everyone for their help and cooperation in running this event. We understand that waiting in queue was the last thing you wanted to be doing on the last Saturday of build season. We thank you for your patience.

We’d also like to thank all of our volunteers who helped with the event. In particular we’d like to thank:

-FIRST for generously allowing us to use their field and for working hard to maintain a smooth running event.

-Team 571 for graciously offering to help clean up after the event and refusing to leave until every last table was put away. They ended up staying over 5 hours, and even drove to WLHS to help us unload the rugs.

-Bob Charrette for donating his time and his truck to transport the field from New Hampshire and for his help queuing robots during the competition.

-Mike Betts for helping teams with their questions on the Labview software.

-Marc Davis for his work on the field as the field supervisor and for his help with other event logistics.

-Jx2 Productions (two FIRST alumni from team 839) for providing music and helping with the queuing of robots.

-Team 230 for providing the webcast which was watched around the country.

-Team 178 for their DREAM FIRST exhibit.

-The countless others who make this event a success. Without them this event would not be possible.

I'd like to double everything Matt said.

And especially thank Team 571 for helping out with pick up.