Discrepancy at Chesapeake, Israel, Waterloo?

[dk5sm5luigi]

Originally Posted by DaveF

...and looking at it another way.... the field is run by volunteers doing their very best with what they are provided. Is it fair to speculate about what they did and didn't do, what they should and should not have done, what did and didn't happen, what was and was not said, when you were not there on the field looking at the robots, discussing the issues and monitoring the FMS? There is a lot of misinformation in this entire thread. It is much different watching the occasional match from the driver's station or watching all the matches from the stands, than it is when you are on the field for every match.

I was on the field the entire time as a volunteer and heard many of the conversations going on. I could not believe what I saw and heard some of the time.

As far as there being field issues I wasn't paying attention to which spots had these problems and don't necessarily agree with what some people are saying here. My only issue is with how teams were being disabled before the match even started.

[samir13k]

I dont know if this is just a thing thats in our head, or an actual problem.

We won every match on blue and lost every match on red, and our partners Wildstang said that they had a similair scenario. Also, 2 matches in a row during the quals our partner robot in the center position were having issues with their coms during the match and were sitting ducks. (both were on red alliance)

edit: It was the Boilermaker regional

[waialua359]

The point that should be made is that if there was a problem on the field, volunteers or not, it should be addressed. One example is allowing a rematch.
In Portland, if there was a problem, it was addressed, even though it delayed the scheduled matches. The quarterfinals ended at 5:20pm. In San Jose, there was no rematches. In fact, the regional including awards ceremony ended at 5pm. I'd take the former, so that every team has a chance to compete fairly.
This is an expensive event. If the regional only has 7 matches, you can do the math and figure that it amounts to almost $860 per match. The point is to inspire kids both professionally and gracefully. I hate the fact that the thread is turning into a "volunteer" issue again, like in previous years and that we should just suck it up if a problem occurs.
Let's have the attitude to explore issues/problems and fix them collaboratively.

[pitzoid]

Interesting thread:

Let me dispell some of the myth.

FMS sets up connections exactly like you do in your testing except for the fact you're using a WPA key to make sure no one can interferre with your radio transmissions intentionally/unintentionally.

Each team has a VLAN tunnel specifically for their bot that doesn't cross with ANYTHING else on the field. Certain things are blocked in the tunnel having to do with video ports, but nothing else.

So for the most part, communicating with your bot on the fields is the same as whatever testing you did at your school.

That being said, some things I've noticed that you all should look out for hooking up on the field.

1) Make sure your ethernet connection is all the way inserted into your DS
2) Make sure the DB9 is plugged in securely also. If the DB9 seems "loose" make sure you mention this to the FTA so they can correct. The DB9 supplies power and the enable circuit for the DS, if it jiggles loose during a match, you will see the DS screen go dark or reboot causing connection loss.
3) No Comms issues could be for a number of reasons. Initially mainly having to do with the static discharges that were happening on the field, but that seems better with the addition of the trailer drag chains. I'd suspect now many of the issues being seen have to do with radio placement in the robot, i.e. where the WGA is.

I was at the PHX regional this past weekend helping out the FTA when I could (been a PHX regional judge last 6 years) and I saw a few times where teams would have issue with their radios dropping during a match and the number one thing I'd get from hostile teams when this happened was "it worked in our lab". Well guess what, being on the field with 5 other robots and a bunch of production gear is worlds apart from "being in your lab" not optimal for potential noise being introduced to your radio. So regardless of whether you think you've got it ll figured out or not, move the radio as far away from other noisey things like motor controllers and relays as possible. I suggest a MINIMUM of 6", more if you can. In Phoenix there was not a single field fault the whole tournament. There was one replay due to a vision target falling off a trailer during a match. The Qualification and Elimination tournaments both finished early. Certain FTAs and Field Crews are still gaining familiarity with the new robot and field systems. Until we work through this natural cycle of introducing new gear, there will be some issues. We're already seeing incredible improvements from the first couple weeks of regionals, the last two weeks overall have run very smooth (after introduction of the trailer chains).

There's no FMS conspiracy to make Red win more than Blue, thats just silly. The scorekeeper has indicators on their screen for if FMS is having issue with any of its periferies on the field. FMS communicates with each SCCE on the field every 20ms to check the gigabit network. This is twice as fast as you communicate with your robot. If there's a problem, it lets the scorekeeper know.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by rcflyer620

One thing I found that was fairly consistent was the flat black ethernet cable provided in the kit was problematic. teams that had swapped it out for real twisted pair ahd almost no problems with communication.

Originally Posted by pitzoid

So regardless of whether you think you've got it ll figured out or not, move the radio as far away from other noisey things like motor controllers and relays as possible. I suggest a MINIMUM of 6", more if you can. In Phoenix there was not a single field fault the whole tournament.

Hmmmm....interesting....the flat, black ethernet cable is rather short, the twisted pair cable is kind of long. Could it be that those robots with the radio mounted further away from the other electronics worked better? or that the shorter cable just doesn't work as well?

(I love the correlation-causation comic)

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by dk5sm5luigi

I would have to say that I saw that happen at least 7 times. The FTA would bring the student out onto the field point out the issue and then disable them before the match started.

Is this by direction of the GDC or a local decision?

[Jack Jones]

Originally Posted by Liz Smith

… You wouldn't expect the field crew to make sure all your drive motors are connected and check to make sure your battery is fully charged before each match so why should they be the ones responsible for making sure your radios are connected properly?

Originally Posted by pitzoid

Interesting thread:
…
Until we work through this natural cycle of introducing new gear, there will be some issues.
.

There’s your answer. The field crew deserves our understanding while making the new system work. The reverse should also be so. The big difference is that the teams are the customer and the crew, paid or not, works for them.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Does anyone who has set up or torn down the field know if the drive station control boxes for each side are marked as "red" or "blue"? I believe the Chesapeake field came from Boston, which had experienced the same problem with the red middle station. One match at Boston was restarted at 4 time because of this. Is it possible that this station became middle blue at Chesapeake?

The SCC have red/blue tape at the top of the handle but that doesn't guarantee that they are setup that way. It's possible for the spare SCC to be in use as was the case for part of LA and PHX.

[Bongle]

I think that if a team puts a robot on the field that doesn't have its radio plugged in, it is their own fault, and it isn't the FTA's job to make sure they have it right.

As for the "but what about the alliance they bring down with them?" argument, that's an invalid argument. If that argument guided decisions, then teams with poor robots would never get to play, because they'd bring down their alliance. A team with an unplugged radio made a mistake, and their alliance partners made a mistake by not checking for the unplugged radio.

The ease of checking for and fixing an unplugged radio and the dire consequences of failing to do so should make it absolutely inexcusable for a team or alliance to be so boneheaded as to put a robot on a field with their radio unplugged.

Then there are the logistics issues if the FTA allowed them to plug it in once they detected an unplugged radio:
-What if a team's radio is located in a relatively inaccessible location on the robot?
-Would they delay the match by 2 minutes while the team digs out the radio and plugs it in?
-Will they only allow teams with accessible radios to plug them in?
-Who would decide what is an accessible radio versus an inaccessible radio?
-What if they accidentily discover (or cause) another wiring bug like unplugged cables? Will they be allowed to put those back in?
-If not, how would you enforce the "only plug in your radio and nothing else" rule?

[pitzoid]

Originally Posted by pitzoid

Until we work through this natural cycle of introducing new gear, there will be some issues.

Well, these are just my personal opinions, but being everyone seems to think their own opinion best, I thought I'd just share mine.

My back ground is running nuclear reactors on submarines, and building automation equipment responsible for billions of dollars of manufacturing. Needless to say, these are two real world environments where “attention to detail” is critical. One could cost many lives, both could cost a lot of money. Both things are near and dear to people everywhere.

With that said, how did I get an aptitude to field deploy complex gear the way I can and overcome a million variables having to do with dealing with imperfect technology and inexperienced techies? Well, I screwed things up. Mostly in situations that didn’t kill people or cost millions of dollars, but that’s how I learned my “attention to detail”. My programmers still marvel at how myself (not really much of a programmer) can test their code, and find things they would have never thought of. It’s because I have a logical sense of thought and I notice the small details. All this came from training, a lot of training. Student competitions are great places to learn this as no one is going to die, and at the end of the day, all you did was learn.

The people who equate the money spent on this program to the number of matches a team runs are missing the big picture. Yea, it stinks when your bot just sits on the field while the other bots run around, but you learn a lot from that. People learn best when they self question their abilities about something they care about, if you aren’t going to try your best to make yourself better, no one else will. Pride and Ego are very powerful forces.

Is it right that teams were bypassed to get a match going on time? Don’t know, wasn’t there. But for the most part, if a Match was scheduled to start and all the teams weren’t, kinda sounds like the real world….. I mean, planes usually don’t wait for you when you’re late to the gate, why should FMS? You can argue this up and down, there are probably a thousand “right” answers. Fact is, if you weren’t there, you’re burning a bunch of wasted calories. Every event has its own personality.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by pitzoid

Is it right that teams were bypassed to get a match going on time? Don’t know, wasn’t there. But for the most part, if a Match was scheduled to start and all the teams weren’t, kinda sounds like the real world….. I mean, planes usually don’t wait for you when you’re late to the gate, why should FMS?

So how does that work in the other direction? We lost almost an hour at BMR due to the failure of FMS and the field. Why should 5,000 people have to wait for that to get fixed?

We've got people in this thread calling teams who forget to plug in their radios "boneheaded" and generally deriding them for forgetting something that's easy to forget after rushing to get the Labview change that just took 10 minutes to compile loaded on their robot with seconds to spare and something that they didn't have to worry about with the IFI system because the IFI engineers anticipated this problem and designed a solution in (separate tether port). Yet any time similar criticism is spoken towards the FIRST side of things, there's pleas for patience as the event staff "learn the ropes" of the new system, or accusations that it's un-GP to complain about FIRST's stuff not working, etc. It all seems a little lopsided to me.

Basically, FIRST took a working system, made it more error-prone, and then blames the teams for making errors. Nice.

The people who equate the money spent on this program to the number of matches a team runs are missing the big picture. Yea, it stinks when your bot just sits on the field while the other bots run around, but you learn a lot from that.

I don't really think teaching teams hard lessons is FIRST's big picture. Their "big picture" is inspiring students and getting them interested in science and technology. Sitting on the side of the field with a non-functioning robot is not inspiring and makes the technology look error-prone and frustrating. I believe IFI understood this well and that's why they had someone at every event making sure that every robot was linked up and ready to go for each match. The fact that they switched to a new system takes forever to link up is a decision FIRST made that they should have to live with, but they seem to be shifting the burden of this decision to the teams who had no input when the decision was made.

As you can all tell, I'm getting very tired of everyone ripping on the teams. Maybe I should take the same attitude as others here are taking next time a team asks me for help in the pits. If they were too "boneheaded" to show up with a working robot then too bad for them. Wonder how FIRST would feel about that attitude.

[kjohnson]

First, let me address the discrepancy issue between red/blue alliances: what a joke! Whether you are on the red/blue alliance makes no difference, everything comes down to who your alliance partners are and how well you play the game. I was on the field for nearly every match (practice, qualification, and elimination) at the NASA/VCU Regional. We had the same amount of problems with communication not syncing on both the red and blue alliances, but the difference was that we did our best to fix them. Read on...

Originally Posted by Bongle

I think that if a team puts a robot on the field that doesn't have its radio plugged in, it is their own fault, and it isn't the FTA's job to make sure they have it right.

Then there are the logistics issues if the FTA allowed them to plug it in once they detected an unplugged radio:
-What if a team's radio is located in a relatively inaccessible location on the robot?
-Would they delay the match by 2 minutes while the team digs out the radio and plugs it in?
-Will they only allow teams with accessible radios to plug them in?
-Who would decide what is an accessible radio versus an inaccessible radio?
-What if they accidentily discover (or cause) another wiring bug like unplugged cables? Will they be allowed to put those back in?
-If not, how would you enforce the "only plug in your radio and nothing else" rule?

At VCU, we did everything possible on field to get every team's communication linked. If their radio was unplugged, the field crew plugged it in. If the robot's power needed to by cycled, we did. We made every effort to have every team play in every match (Just ask the 3rd seeded alliance of 612, 2068, and 1908). If there was an issue other than the radio, we bypassed the robot for that match and directed the team first to inspection to have their game adapter checked for proper configuration, and then to the NI representative. After reprogramming, teams that dropped communication randomly during the match had further problems (ask 2108, 1222).

Even after all the problems with unplugged radios and taking the time to fix them, we still finished Friday ahead of schedule!

The majority of teams that were bypassed had either reset their game adapter, or had a programming issue.

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Is this by direction of the GDC or a local decision?

It was a local decision by that regional to bypass the teams with unplugged radios. As I said above, at VCU we made every effort to ensure communication.
We even allowed teams that never practiced on Thursday to come onto the field and check communication before the pits closed at 8 P.M.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

So how does that work in the other direction? We lost almost an hour at BMR due to the failure of FMS and the field. Why should 5,000 people have to wait for that to get fixed?

Unfortunately this fits the analogy pretty well. If you miss the plane, it's your problem, but if the plane is late everyone gets to wait around for it. Here's the thing though, do we really want to be comparing ourselves to an industry with such low customer satisfaction?

I don't really think teaching teams hard lessons is FIRST's big picture. Their "big picture" is inspiring students and getting them interested in science and technology. Sitting on the side of the field with a non-functioning robot is not inspiring and makes the technology look error-prone and frustrating. I believe IFI understood this well and that's why they had someone at every event making sure that every robot was linked up and ready to go for each match. The fact that they switched to a new system takes forever to link up is a decision FIRST made that they should have to live with, but they seem to be shifting the burden of this decision to the teams who had no input when the decision was made.

I completely agree. In the 3 events I have been at in my previous two years I do not recall a single match starting with robots not linked with the field. In fact I remember the exact opposite, every effort was made to get a team linked with the field before the match started. If teams were allowed to go on to the field and turn their robots on in previous years I definitely think they should be able to go plug in their radio this year.

FIRST made the decision to change to a control system that takes longer to sync and FIRST made the decision to have a game with a long field reset time. The burdens that these two things place on the schedule should not be passed on to teams unless absolutely necessary.

Does starting a match without a team tech them a lesson about attention to detail? Probably. Does it inspire them? Probably not. As much as this competition "isn't about the robots", the robots are what inspire the students. Matches where your robot doesn't move aren't fun or inspiring for the drivers, the coach, or the parents and students in the stands. We should be doing everything we can to get every robot moving in every match.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

As you can all tell, I'm getting very tired of everyone ripping on the teams. Maybe I should take the same attitude as others here are taking next time a team asks me for help in the pits. If they were too "boneheaded" to show up with a working robot then too bad for them. Wonder how FIRST would feel about that attitude.

Just so it doesn't look like I'm only tossing stones at other people:

-It was boneheaded in 2004 AND 2006 when I and the other programmers mistakenly let the robot run in a match with code that couldn't drive in a controlled manner, leaving us ineffective for a match.
-It was boneheaded in 2006 when I didn't check the charge level of the backup battery before a match, leaving the RC dead.
-It was boneheaded in 2006 (again) when I uploaded an old version of the code, thinking it was the new version, leaving the robot undriveable.
-It was boneheaded in 2006 (was not a good year for me) when I failed to remove the programming cable and it got caught in our drive chains, ending a match.
-It was boneheaded this year when we failed to double-check our main battery wire, which then came loose and left us dead for the entire match.

Any mistake that can be fixed in less than 30 seconds (ok, the code ones may not be 30-second fixes anymore ) and only takes a visual inspection to fix, I would call boneheaded. I don't really mean it in a mean way, I just mean it in a forehead-slapping "oops" way.

[Kingofl337]

Pitzoid I have a request, for love of all that is good please update the monitoring software for Atlanta that monitors the following things...

Log the following times per team
1. Field E-Stop Status Per Robot
2. Driver Station Connection -> Ping is fine
3. Wifi Bridge Connection -> Again Ping
4. System Watchdog
5. User Watchdog
6. Log The console data being sent from the cRio for each team

This data can be used as a black box of sorts to determine why a robot stalls on the field.

Also, I agree with Dave, this was not the teams decision to switch this new system. Why are we being punished when it breaks down? I can't believe that it hasn't come down from FIRST to always err on the side of the teams if no obvious problem is found.