disaster in israel regional

[lior_regev]

Well, after being in the field 3 days (including nights) long, I can tell you that there was no one as the Event Manager. Chris, Shahar and I were fighting these comm problems al the time. eventually we figured out how to make things work. Also the match on the 3rd day that didn't work at all was self-inflicted by one of the robots, incorrect robot code can send loads of errors and since we couldn't use our strong router these errors made the system crash. we COULD'NT tell which robot was the one with the errors and we didn't have the time to run a full diagnostic scan.

Problem is that in Israel everyone thinks they know the best thing to do. Hint, THEY DON'T people should stop messing around with codes they don't know without help!!

All we can do now is hope that our plan to give some seminars will help.
I know people are disappointed but our main problem was that Israel's goshdarn goverment didn't let us use 5Gighz so the main server didnt work.

Just to give you guys a cclue about what happened, we ran an Off-Season Event for the robot controls using FMS Lite, and the scoring and sounds and everything else was done by the FMS Server which was not connected to the robots. we had to run them simultanously and manually. so I hope you understand,

Lior

[yarden.saa]

from my point of view it looks like the orginizers didn't think about that there was not anyone from usfirst who know the field and it's accessories. It must to have anyone who know the field and it's elements like the router. One of our mentor built a lot of wireless networks in israel and he said that the router's place was wrong because the signals got to audience and not to the robots.

[yo1122]

The regional sure was disappointing,but the communication problems could be if you program your robot right (we tried to send as least data as possible and we didn't have any problems during the games,they just took so long to start...)
And about the hanging:

The picture speaks for itself.
(By the way-the battery onlt fell after the game ended so we didn't get a penelty!)

[MissDaisyGirl]

I am so sorry to hear about all of the problems that were had at the Israeli regional. I know that if I had been there I would have been going out of my mind.

In NYC this past weekend they got pretty backed up with matches that they decided to have both of the awards ceremonies on Sunday night and then limit it to 2 people to pick up the awards when announced. Saturday night though the pits closed at 7 pm so we definitely had time to do awards. I would have preferred that rather than getting home at 11 pm Sunday night.

[Racer26]

For those of us North Americans that don't know:

In Israel, the 5GHz frequency band that we use to run our robots is a restricted military frequency, and they're not allowed to use it. This is likely the source of much of the Israeli Regional's problems, as FIRST HQ and FIRST in Israel had to come up with an alternate solution using the 2.4GHz band. This solution was probably less than perfectly tested, and hasn't got nearly the mileage on it the our 5GHz based system does here in NA.

[texarkana]

Sounds alot like some of the US regionals. Invalid results because of persistant field comm problems.

[fordchrist675]

That is really a saddening and disappointing experience. I hope that you stay with it, because FIRST is truly a wonderful program and regionals usually are something so rare and wonderful to behold. It's like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I wish you all the best, and I hope that you guys stay with it and hopefully they get these kind of problems fixed.

[gyaniv]

This is not the programmers fault... yes some teams had "Watchdog Not Fed" on their DS but most of the teams had "No Robot Communication" when they had communication problems...
"No Robot Communication" can only happen by a field error that is related to the field router and robot access-point, and "Watchdog Not Fed" is programmers fault most of the time as far as i know.
As the driver of team 2230 i can assure you that during most of the games the communication problems were because there was no communication with the robot, and even in our semi-finals game, two robots in our alliance didn't have communication at all with the robot during most of the game (team 1690 and team 2214) which caused the game to be 3 robots against 1 robot, and since it is the elimination games the robots where good (we were against teams 2630 1657 and 2669 the regional champions) so we didn't stand a chance, and the field crew didn't even care about all the communication problems and continued the game normally like nothing happened. and we didn't even had a chance to fix it because of the stupid decision to make the elimination games 1 match and not the best out of 3 games.

[Nadav Zingerman]

With all the fuss about the communication problems, everybody forgot to mention problems that were far more important. The Israel Regional showed a lack of understanding and commitment to the values of FIRST.

The comm problems created an incredibly stressful and difficult environment to compete in. Most teams managed to make the best of the situation and compete fairly. However, the regional had two major Gracious Professionalism incidents:

• I don't know the full details on what lead up to this incident, but after one of our matches, drive teams from team 1574 (MisCar) and team 3076 (Ort Arad) began yelling at our drive team and also throwing food at them. Following this incident, FIRST Israel administration talked to these teams. 3076's captain apologized, while MisCar's refused. At the end of the day, it was announced that MisCar was being disqualified from the tournament, and that they are requested to leave. Our team petitioned FIRST to reverse it's decision, as it harmed those on the team who were not involved. Most of the team later came by our pit and apologized. On the third day MisCar was allowed to play and their captain gave a public apology before their first match.
  
  In past years, MisCar has been an undefeated champion (until '09). They always managed to bring to the field an impressive and robust robot. Many teams, including ourselves considered them the best in the country. All of this makes the situation so much more unfortunate.
  
• As someone mentioned here earlier, all finals were a 1-match elimination, and not best-of-3. The first Semi-Final tied 5-5, and the winners decided by coin toss (FIRST announced beforehand they would do this in case of a tie). While this is an enormous injustice to the losing teams, their reaction is unacceptable. After losing the toss they quickly left the field. Right before the Final match was started, members of Team 2672 (Osfia), and others whose team number I do not recall, stormed the field, sat on the bumps, and demanded a rematch. The students were cheered on by adults, their teachers and mentors. Only after several embarrassing minutes were they removed from the field. Since the final match was several hours behind schedule (even the Head Referee had to leave before it was over) , team leaders for teams that live far away, who had moved mountains to arrange travel arrangements for their teams at that hour, were delayed even further.
  This incident was worsened by the fact that Osfia team members belong to a minority group in Israel, and during this ordeal some race-related provocation came from the audience.
  
  All teams and individuals involved should be ashamed, especially the adults.
  As a side note, FIRST definitely needs to hire better security at the entrance to the field.

As to the technical problems, 1075guy is absolutely right. I hope that in the future FIRST engineers give more effort to a suitable workaround in Israel. The use of 802.11g (2.4GHz) instead of 802.11n (5GHz) more than halved the bandwidth of wireless communications. Whenever too much data flooded the router, it would lose comm. This flood of data was caused mostly, from what the field crew told me, by error messages generated by the Watchdogs in some team's code. The problem lies with FIRST for not preparing for this situation, as well as with the teams who improperly coded their robot.

[EricH]

I have one question, and only one. Aside from the frequency:

Did all the teams log out of their Driver profile and log back in between matches (and/or make sure their Developer profile was logged out)? That backed up Arizona for a while, before teams started doing that in the queue line. Don't ask me why that screwed up communications (I was still trying to get teams inspected), but apparently it did.

[Stephen Kowski]

Originally Posted by yarden.saa

israel regional was a complete disaster.
there was a problem of communication with th router that they couldn't solove.
in the first day the problem was in low level and we played on the field 5 times.
int the second day the communication with some of the robots on the field stopped a lot of times. the judjes dind't know what to do because some matches workd aqnd other not. there was a lot of disappointment for all the teams. the final 20 seconds were not exist. the router didn't work at this period.
in the third day first organizers didn't know what to do so they cakk to a captain's meeting. in this meeting the captains decided to cancel all the games from day 2.
when we were at the third day on match 2 the clocked stopped at the middle od the game and all teams on this match were musgt to reset their robot and started again. match 2 was reseted 7 times.
at day 3 it we couldn't hang on the tower beause the final 20 seconds were shorter.
the finifh matches were after 3 rounds only. we got to the qurter by being selected by another rookie team. in the final we were 3 rookie teams in the same alliance.
my team robot was the only one who could hang at the all regional but we couldn't hang because of the communication problem. we won in the rookie all star award. it waqs a completely disapointment for us. the competition's ranks were not reliable.

You aren't alone. Sounds a lot like Bayou.

[Armon]

That's not all, some prizes was not given due to series time trouble. I don't recall seeing the Woodie Flowers Award, Industirial Design Award and Website Award being given.

All the points from the qualification rounds that was played on the second day were canceled within a democratic choice between all captains. The ranking was concluded from three games total for each team.

The video of the Chairman award winners wasn't presented along with the Imagry award animation (which was stopped in the middle!), again due to time trouble.

The Semi-final which my team was concluded in a toss of a coin, there was no time for best out of three matches in the finals.

In the final game two bots weren't working, one of our alliance robot (the striker) had communication problems which has nothing to do with the code (their robot worked perfectly well in the semi-final and the quarter finale with the same program). We end up losing the game (#3075).

With that said, and the rest of the problems that the guys mentioned in earlier posts, I can say it was a disaster.

[JaneYoung]

It is good that you have CD to discuss some of the issues that affected your regional. I'm not sure if it is ok to discuss the particulars of the teams but I leave that to your judgment. It sounds like there were tremendous pressures for everyone involved that were compounded by problems.

Perhaps those of you who have posted in this thread could work together to write a letter outlining the difficulties in the different areas and how they culminated into the end result that you are discussing here. It would be good to have as many of your facts straight as possible and to leave as much emotion out of it as you can. You've all done an excellent job in this thread even though you have been able to express the frustration you've dealt with. We can listen to you but we can't do anything to help you other than to offer suggestions such as the one I'm offering.

If you decide to write to FIRST and would like for me to help you with your letter, I would be more than happy to do that with you.

Jane

[Tom Line]

I can't say that I agree with discussing incidents that occurred and naming names like you did, but what's done is done.

I think Jane made the best point in this entire thread - the spirit of first is to acknowledge that bad things happen, and decide you want to make them better.

Make a list of every single thing that went wrong at that regional. Work back to the root cause of each, and then write a letter to first and to the regional organizers suggesting solutions.

Some things I can come up with off the top of my head:

1. Have the teams come out a day in advance with their robots, take them to the field, and work through the communications issues with them.

2. Hold the event in a school gymnasium or other venue that will give you and extra day or two should you need it.

3. Annouce ahead of time that this is FIRST, and political / religious / other affiliations should be left at the door in the spirit of gracious professionalism.

I can't understand the call for more security at a FIRST event. What an incredibly different atmosphere you must be working in that what we have over here in the States.

[Racer26]

I had thought about this some time ago. I wonder if its possible for FIRST HQ to go to the Israeli Government, and request special permission to use the 5GHz Military band (802.11n) for the purposes of the FIRST program, due to the immense benefits it provides to the involved students.

Its not the 802.11n is explicitly outlawed in Israel, merely that the 5GHz band it resides in is reserved for Military use. Whether or not its actually in active use remains open for discussion (I know theres lots of frequency bands reserved like that that sit unused) and I doubt that our 802.11n radios would have any appreciable level of interference with whatever Military equipment they might be running on that band.