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Unread 25-03-2009, 14:12
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Re: Discrepancy at Chesapeake, Israel, Waterloo?

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...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bongle View Post
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.

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Originally Posted by JohnBoucher View Post
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.
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Unread 25-03-2009, 16:37
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Re: Discrepancy at Chesapeake, Israel, Waterloo?

This thread seems to have veered onto a tangent. I can't comment on what occurred at Chesapeake but I wanted to confirm Kyle's statement regarding NASA/VCU.

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Originally Posted by nukemknight View Post
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 field crew and referees were fantastic at NASA/VCU (well actually pretty much everything was awesome at NASA/VCU except getting beat in the semifinals again). They were helping to fix problems all regional long. When 1908's gaming adapter had to be replaced before the quarterfinals, Kyle patiently confirmed the configuration and assured us that he would do everything possible on the field to ensure that they were working properly. And he did, thanks Kyle! While 1908's robot was immobile for nearly all of QF 4-1, I'm convinced it had nothing to do with the gaming adapter.

In practice at DC, we had discovered that we always had to start the DS first, wait until it finished booting, and only then power on the robot. If we didn't follow the procedure, we would often experience odd robot behavior (sometimes we would be immobile, sometimes only our autonomous would work, sometimes our DS digital IO wouldn't work even though everything else worked fine, etc.) At DC, we could recreate this condition while tethered in the pits so we developed a startup procedure. At NASA/VCU, we continued to follow this procedure and it worked great until Q38 where we were once again immobile during the whole match. Of course everything checked out just find in the pit, but in the debrief with the drive team, the only deviation from the startup procedure that we used in the pits and what was used on the field was that when the DS was powered on for Q38 it was not in a disabled state (??). We tried but couldn't reproduce this failure in the pits, but we subsequently modified our startup procedure to include ensuring that the DS was in a disabled state before powering on the robot. This seemed to eliminate any further odd robot behavior. After QF 4-1, we also made sure 1908 followed our startup procedure and they didn't experience any further odd behavior but the issue could just have been a lose wire.

Thanks so much to the NASA/VCU crew for ensuring that all the teams had the best possible opportunity to shine!
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2014 VA Semi-Finalist (2363, 1533), Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award
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Unread 25-03-2009, 18:48
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Re: Discrepancy at Chesapeake, Israel, Waterloo?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmentor View Post
(snip)...the only deviation from the startup procedure that we used in the pits and what was used on the field was that when the DS was powered on for Q38 it was not in a disabled state (??).
At the risk of driving this thread even further off track, I saw this condition once in Pittsburgh and it turned out to be a flaky DS Ethernet connector.
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Unread 25-03-2009, 20:08
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Re: Discrepancy at Chesapeake, Israel, Waterloo?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmentor View Post
This thread seems to have veered onto a tangent. I can't comment on what occurred at Chesapeake but I wanted to confirm Kyle's statement regarding NASA/VCU.


At NASA/VCU, we continued to follow this procedure and it worked great until Q38 where we were once again immobile during the whole match. Of course everything checked out just find in the pit, but in the debrief with the drive team, the only deviation from the startup procedure that we used in the pits and what was used on the field was that when the DS was powered on for Q38 it was not in a disabled state (??).

Thanks so much to the NASA/VCU crew for ensuring that all the teams had the best possible opportunity to shine!
Good job on making it to semi-finals! I remember going against your bot in Q38. It started during autonomous at the outpost and did move; however, it stopped moving after our alliance partner collided with your bot. There was a huge collision with 3-4 robots around that outpost that match (if I remember correctly). The immobile part may have been caused by the collisions :S
Also, the DS does not need to be enabled or disabled. However, before you turn the robot on make sure it is disabled or enabled and on tele-op. The field judges are supposed to automatically turn each driver station on disable and autonomous at the beginning of each match (from what I have seen)
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