Do you think it was good

[AdamHeard]

I believe that whether or not teams utilized it's new features was much less important than whether or not FIRST had it adequately tested before season.

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

...whether or not FIRST had it adequately tested before season.

Testing is something that was definitely done..."adequately" might be able to be argued, but...I propose the following(speaking partially from experience here)...

• Extensive testing was performed prior to even the release to the beta teams (example: I was at FIRST HQ at the end of September, and was able to see a working bot on the new system, as well as pick up their "testing" WLAN on a laptop.
• The beta teams helped to refine the code and test for functionality on actual "competition" machines
• The unknown came in when introducing the FRP flooring - the resulting static charges generated could not be anticipated by testing,
• The driver stations were also left in a "set up and go" state during testing - the frequent disconnects and resulting ethernet port failure was not experienced under this environment.
• The relatively last-minute change to include the WPA encryption caused problems in getting everyone up to speed as well.

I think as an interesting comparison, I would like to have a full 6-bot field of machines playing this game, but running on the IFI controllers, without any of the static protection measures implemented later in the season, and see how well they fared.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Nate Smith

Testing is something that was definitely done..."adequately" might be able to be argued, but...I propose the following(speaking partially from experience here)...

• Extensive testing was performed prior to even the release to the beta teams (example: I was at FIRST HQ at the end of September, and was able to see a working bot on the new system, as well as pick up their "testing" WLAN on a laptop.
• The beta teams helped to refine the code and test for functionality on actual "competition" machines
• The unknown came in when introducing the FRP flooring - the resulting static charges generated could not be anticipated by testing,
• The driver stations were also left in a "set up and go" state during testing - the frequent disconnects and resulting ethernet port failure was not experienced under this environment.
• The relatively last-minute change to include the WPA encryption caused problems in getting everyone up to speed as well.

I think as an interesting comparison, I would like to have a full 6-bot field of machines playing this game, but running on the IFI controllers, without any of the static protection measures implemented later in the season, and see how well they fared.

I may be hard on FIRST, but when it comes to the driver station, it was not tested adequately. I also don't believe that FIRST should be given a blank check in all areas that is, "Well they tried.... so we can't blame them". Merely leaving a wallwart powersupply plugged into the DS KILLED a field computer at LA. This is not heresay, this is not rumor, this was my team leaving a powersupply plugged into the DS, but not a wall outlet obviously (something we did as standard practice on the OI of IFI days), that caused an hour delay at LA. I had several volunteers inform me many times that WE had broken it.

The static issue is another (and one that can't simply be blamed on the field), we had issues with unreliable and flaky ports on the DS in our shop. This was when the entire system was on one board of plywood, nowhere near a robot or FRP.

There were also many random faults and failures that my team has documented; we'll add to that list at champs (Well, hopefully not) and then send it to whoever needs to see it.

I agree the static may cause some issues with the IFI system, but many of the irritating faults we've experience this year we're unrelated to the field.