Kettering Results from Week 2

[Joe J.]

This was a really great event, it had a very comfortable "feel" to it.

Thanks to 33 and 548 for joining our alliance it was great playing with you! You both have awesome machines & great drive teams!


A few concerns: The seating (seemed pretty crowed) I didn't spend a lot of time in the stands though.

The awards just didn't seem as "formal" if that makes scene. Maybe they felt rushed, our the music seemed a weird fit for the ceremony. Not sure just felt weird.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

The RED alliance was not given more time than BLUE to get the DS problems fixed. (gotta love that DS :-/

The situation was that BLUE's DS went bad first - before the first elimination match began, the problem was diagnosed and the FTAs brought out the spare and helped them replace it. As soon as it was fixed, the RED blinker came on
because one of theirs went out. Same as for BLUE, the RED DS was replaced by a spare, only to find that it had not been flashed. The so called extra time was charged to the field (their bad for not having the second one already flashed) Turned out that both sides had the same amount of extra time to connect/reconnect their electronics. How was that unfair?

Well that certainly seems fair to me. In fact, they pulled our second DS back from us as we were installing it because they were worried that IT was not flashed either.

The way that is was communicated on the field was that they had some other issue, and they had to either call in another robot or go. That whole deal took about 10 minutes (finding of initial fault, Paul giving the field explanation, etc). If it was the field's fault the whole time, that's a whole different story. . As you said: You've got to love those DS's. I hope having two go bad in the same elim match is lighting a big red light for First.

Nice job to 245, 70, and 2619. You guys were great.

[HighLife]

I'd also like to acknowledge our great team mates 70 and 2619. 70 had a great auton and 2619 was a defensive wonder. I remember playing 2619 during the last qualification match of the day and they made me feel totally helpless as a driver.

Originally Posted by Tom Line

The way that is was communicated on the field was that they had some other issue, and they had to either call in another robot or go. That whole deal took about 10 minutes (finding of initial fault, Paul giving the field explanation, etc). If it was the field's fault the whole time, that's a whole different story. . As you said: You've got to love those DS's. I hope having two go bad in the same elim match is lighting a big red light for First.

Nice job to 245, 70, and 2619. You guys were great.

Tom I was the alliance captain and I was just as confused. The head ref came over and said you either use one of your cards or you run with a dead robot on the field. I told him we'd go with the dead robot option and I had no idea why they gave us so much time.

By the way some of the match videos are up!:
http://vimeo.com/channels/adambots#3531366

I've still got most of the HD videos to render though, so stay tuned.

[MattLi]

Originally Posted by Herodotus

I saw this too. At first I assumed you guys would win simply because you would outscore everyone else by a wide margin, but actually the other alliances were able to keep up the scoring fairly well. 2619's defense was absolutely amazing. Several times they kept teams from scoring the whole match, and definitely won a few matches with that defense.

Congratulations to 70, 245, and 2619. You were an amazing alliance and definitely deserving of the win. Congrats to 65, 2771, and 2586 on being finalists as well. You put up a great fight. Congrats to 2771 especially, you guys are an amazing rookie team, and I think you will have many good years ahead of you.

Thank you to 1504 and 1025 for being great alliance partners. There were some tough alliances on that field, but I think we managed to put up a pretty good fight, and only fell short by a little bit. This was a much better start to our year than we usually have, so hopefully things will only get better.

Thank you to all of the volunteers and referees this weekend. There were very few problems, and I think the whole competition was run quite well. They only major issues were the problems at the start of the eliminations and the seating problem.

Yeah there was absolutely no way that we have won without 2619 or 70 on our team. Even though our robot scored well and moved fast, if we were taken on by a defensive robot, our score would be cut in half. In order to win we had to have a another high scorer and a defensive robot. We got both.

[MrMatt]

As a mentor from 2619, I would like to thank teams 245 and 70 for a great showing at finals. Hope to see both of you at State!

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by MrMatt

As a mentor from 2619, I would like to thank teams 245 and 70 for a great showing at finals. Hope to see both of you at State!

Congrats Matt, from an OLD friend. I was cheering you guys on the whole time.

[Not2B]

Well, that was fun. Glad 33 and 548 joined us. Thanks!

Here's my views on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good:
- Nice, small regional feel.
- Much smoother than I expected, the volunteers did a GREAT job.
- The volunteers were all so NICE too.
- The second screen in the cafe area was nice to have.
- Good judging. Good judge selection.

The bad (or at least, could be improved):
- Lack of seating. That was inconvenient.
- Lack of power. That was frustrating.
- The sound level was actually painful. We couldn't even talk to the person next to us.

The ugly:
- The number of teams that had trouble getting to the field. I could care less about how that affected the game. (Trust me, I really don't). But I could feel the frustration from the teams. I wish they had more time to prep. Maybe it's just growing pains.
- My team might noogie me for this, shaking more gray hairs loose (hence the ugly), but I like hearing from guest speakers. Please don't get rid of too many.
- You should SEE some of the pictures I got of my team when they were not looking. Talk about ugly. heh heh heh.

[IKE]

[quote=Not2B;833365]Well, that was fun. Glad 33 and 548 joined us.

The ugly:
- The number of teams that had trouble getting to the field. I could care less about how that affected the game. (Trust me, I really don't). But I could feel the frustration from the teams. I wish they had more time to prep. Maybe it's just growing pains.
QUOTE]

This is the downside of the 12 match/40 team format. There is not a lot of prep and fix-it time. All that aside, believe it or not, there were fewer No shows than at Midwest which had significantly longer times between matches.

This format reinforces the need for a robust robot and prepared pit crew.

[Tom Line]

It also reinforces the need for Labview to improve their build times. 5+ minutes to build means that teams utilizing labview are taking a big gamble trying to make a code change between rounds - one error compiling and you're in trouble.

C++ teams? Not so much.

[joeweber]

I agree with the slow down load time. Our programer had the program ready to down load, but it sure seemed to take for ever when they are calling you for second call and it is still loading!!!! Evrybodys saying hurry up but all you can do is watch the line get longer.

[Clinton Bolinger]

Here are the results:

Kettering - http://www.firstinmichigan.org/stati...ults_Week_2_KU

Overall - http://www.firstinmichigan.org/stati...esults_Overall

Looks like 2771 is going to States Congrats, you guys are an amazing rookie team.

Thanks to 818 and 1 for selecting us to be on your alliance it was great. Juggernauts your shooter was awesome, dropping both Super Cells in the final seconds against 1504, 910, and 1025.

Congrats to 245, 70, and 2619. It seems like 2619 always gets the best of us at Kettering (Rookie Regional 2008 and Kettering District 2009).

Team 33 congratulations on winning chairmans you are truly an inspiration to us younger teams.

-Oris-

[Raumiester2010]

Originally Posted by IKE

This format reinforces the need for a robust robot and prepared pit crew.

ill agree with you on that one... we got lucky and our robot still hasn't suffered any major breakdowns (knock on wood) and we missed all the practice rounds because we did another one of our famous "change our strategy/robot on the first day of competition" like at Atlanta where we did a huge re-mod last year which, like in this instance, made us WAY more competitive than we would have.

oh ya, if anyone was wondering why we didn't move on the first match of quarter- finals, bad batts SUCK. we checked it with the volt meter and it read out 13 volts, when it went under a load it dropped to 9. couldn't move at all. i feel kinda bad because a lot of us thought it was the programmer's fault, thought it was bad code.

so, heads up to other teams about the tricky batteries. the only way we could check it was to run it for a second in the robot before the matches.
maybe you guys can come up with a better solution but thought i would give everyone a warning.

Good luck to everyone in the coming weeks and congrats to team 33 on chairmans

[JNelson]

Looks like 2771 is going to States Congrats, you guys are an amazing rookie team.

Thanks to 818 and 1 for selecting us to be on your alliance it was great. Juggernauts your shooter was awesome, dropping both Super Cells in the final seconds against 1504, 910, and 1025.

Congrats to 245, 70, and 2619. It seems like 2619 always gets the best of us at Kettering (Rookie Regional 2008 and Kettering District 2009).

Team 33 congratulations on winning chairmans you are truly an inspiration to us younger teams.

-Oris-[/quote]


Thanks Oris. We certainly are enjoying the ride, and learning a ton from other teams

[Not2B]

Originally Posted by IKE

This format reinforces the need for a robust robot and prepared pit crew.

I wholeheartedly agree. I think that was a wakeup call for lots of teams.

It never occurred to me that the main auto mode for 90% of the teams would be FULL STEAM AHEAD into walls, robots, metal bars, etc... Glad we seem to be holding up without issues.

Hey - other Michigan teams yet to compete! Get ready for fast turn matches and robot beatings.

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by IKE

I would appreciate it if folks took the time to add both positives and negatives that way the "right things" get continued, and the "Wrong things" get addressed. I use the word addressed, because what 1 person sees as a wrong thing, many others may not.

Apologies in advance for such a long post...

Over the last two weeks I had the chance to attend the Midwest Regional as an inspector, and then the Kettering District as a competitor. I don't think any of these comments will be a surprise to the FiM people - you have heard them in private and in public at various times.

First, the core volunteers who are making the 2009 Michigan District system happen deserve many many thanks for working so hard on making sure the events run. The relatively small number of people who spent so much time interacting with and helping the teams solve technical issues at Kettering deserve gold medals.

The amount of money we are saving this year by going to nearby district events, and not staying in any hotels, and replacing nicer team dinners with pizza while still at the venue, is a lot. If ever there was a year to save money, this is it. It makes the activity a little less big-time, but I think we would have had to make such sacrifices anyway in this year of financial challenges.

The increased number of matches is great. It makes you realize how important a robust robot and an easy-to-update control system are. Friday and Saturday were non-stop and long.

So far, the "coverage" of the district system has been limited. We need some actual objective evaluation of it. I don't know what FIRST-Manchester's evaluation plan is, but I worry that there is not enough objective evaluation - there is a lot of repeating of talking points, and some avoidance of the negative issues. The talking points are: 1) I worked a full day at work on Thursday, 2)more plays, less money, 3)the event went great, 4)no shipping. But it would be nice to get some more objective statistics and details.

Some possible statistics would be 1)does a 2-day district + Thurs night practice + 8-hour Access Period take more time away from work/family than a 3-day regional? 2)how many people attended vs a regional? 3)could they see/hear the action? 4)did they have seats? 5)Was press coverage better? 6)what are the no-show robot statistics? 7)were field issues similar to the non FiM events? 8)was tech support from FIRST/NI/FMS sufficient? 9)How did the self-shipping work out? (It is NOT being suggested these are all problems - but these are useful fact- and data-based criteria for an objective evaluation).

While it is difficult to be objective about the "feel" of the event, my opinion is that the Kettering event was like an FRC off-season event. Someone likened it to an FLL event, but it did not have the same "show" quality of the FLL State Championship that I have been judging at for the last several years. I saw some video from the Traverse City event, and that did not look as good as Kettering. Does anyone disagree that the District system has replaced the "arena show" with a "gym event"?

The compressed schedule makes the show a little less impressive. Because teams have less time to get up and running at the event, and because for many it will be the first time they are on a real competition field with game conditions, some of the learning curve happens during matches instead of during practice. Are there any statistics capturing how many teams used matches (instead of practice) as their "get it running" learning curve? For example, what are the FRC vs. FiM statistics on how many teams were running an autonomous mode in their first couple of Q-matches as compared to their last couple of Q-matches? You would think that this might be a positive statistic for the "more plays" concept. It could also be a negative statistic showing that teams needed the practice session.

Speaking of practice, is there any data on how many teams took advantage of the open practice sessions on Thursday night and Friday morning? Was there enough time to cycle all teams through a practice (assuming they were ready, which they should be at later events)? My impression was that many teams who needed the practice were not yet ready, and that open practice time was being used by the "prepared" teams. It would be interesting to see data on who got stick time on the field during practice.

Is the compressed schedule the reason why there were no awards on Friday, and why only 7 students per team can go up to receive awards on Sat? I think anything that gets the students up in front of a cheering crowd to receive an award they won is worth the time. I understand that we cant do that in Atlanta, where there are many thousand people, but it seems like we could/should do it at a district/regional.

Do the non-Michigan teams know that we get to bypass the 40 lb withholding allowance for parts made during the 8 hour robot access period?

Were the rules being applied consistently? I have two issues which I think are big ones:

(1) I walked into the building Saturday at a couple of minutes past 7AM. There were dozens of people in the pits, and some teams were working on their robots. I do not know how long they had been in there, and I did not see any officials (safety, inspection, etc.) monitoring any of this. The agenda indicated pit opening time was 7:30 AM.

When I asked one of the key volunteers what was going on with teams in the pits so early, he said that one of the FiM officials told him "this is the new FIRST." When I then went to that specific FiM official and asked him about teams in the pits early, he told me that it was important that people didn't have to wait outside in the cold. Huh? This is disingenuous. We were talking about people in the pits, and it was unseasonably warm outside.

It is things like this that have made me wonder about the management of FiM, when we hear different answers at different times, depending on who is listening.

(2) This issue was already raised by another competitor, but I think there was at least the appearance of favoritism on the playing field. A team had a DS problem at the very beginning of eliminations, and it was announced that it was a DS problem (a team problem) as opposed to a field problem. Several minutes went by while this problem was being worked on and eventually resolved. No timeout was taken. In the finals, this same team had a problem at the beginning of match1, and at that time a timeout was taken. An extension cord was run out onto the field from under the scorer's table in order to allow the team to power up their DS so they could run a motor on their robot. I thought this was going too far.

In summary, I am thankful for the cost savings, but worried that the so-called "new FIRST" is diverging from "old FIRST" in an unsupervised fashion that may not be following the rules/guidelines/philosophy of FIRST. I think more should be done to maintain consistency and transparency.

Respectfully submitted,
Ken