disaster in israel regional

[synth3tk]

Regarding the 5GHz band, it may also depend on whatever they're using in the area. For instance, if you're close to a base or outpost, then you may have a harder time trying to get it cleared.

Now I don't know the specifics of your government or the technology used, but that's my assumption.

[brianelite]

Originally Posted by 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.

It doesn't sound like FIRST can succeed in Israel. If coaches are urging students to disrupt matches there is no hope....

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by brianelite

It doesn't sound like FIRST can succeed in Israel. If coaches are urging students to disrupt matches there is no hope....

I disagree completely with that statement, there are many people in the world who do not respect others or their differences... including both adults and young people. That is not a reason to lose hope... that is part of what FIRST may be able to (and is trying to) teach the next generation. That we must work together even in the midst of competition (read as "coopertition").

This is not a reason to stop trying... If we give up then we will definitely not succeed.

[JimWright949]

Hello all,

Could I ask a few questions? Did Israel have a pre-ship competition? Are the teams in Israel helping each other?

Washington State, due to both Kevin and Deb, has gone through a huge growth spurt. We borrowed the idea of a kick off robot build from Oklahoma, (thanks Ed (476), Ken (476), and Ron (1750)), where we make sure, or at least try, every rookie team has the latest code on as well as know what to do to get the system going. This also opens up communication between our Rookies and Vet teams.

Both Oregon and Washington sends their Head Robot Inspector to pre-ship events just to see what the problems are going to be. Holding a pre-ship event, and trying to make it as close to the real event as possible, highlights problems that will show up at the regional.

I think if a little bit more of a support structure was put into place in Israel, the teams would not be getting to the regional with code that could cause the problems described here.

-Jim

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by brianelite

It doesn't sound like FIRST can succeed in Israel. If coaches are urging students to disrupt matches there is no hope....

You're right... this is easily the most disturbing portion of this entire thread. The coaches and mentors of those teams should be even more ashamed of themselves than the students ought to be. Those teams need to be taught the purpose of this competition.

[Leav]

As a long time participant in FIRST competitions (student, volunteer and mentor) and an active volunteer in FIRST Israel, I'd like to chime in if I may (noting that any opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of FIRST, or FIRST Israel).

Right from the start, I think there is no question that this year's regional was quite simply a disaster and that the, the communication problem which plagued the regional was a crippling blow to teams competing at the Israeli regional (what the Turkish, Bosnian and two Californian teams must think of us now... ).

While a handful of teams exhibited extremely disappointing behavior, it has not been noted here (and so I will make the point myself) that the vast majority of teams were kind and understanding, keeping their head high throughout the competition and trying to make the most of a very unpleasant situation.

For this I would like to applaud the teams: the Israeli students have consistently shown true character in these past seasons, proving their understanding of, and commitment to, FIRST's core values.

I must agree with Jane's suggestion: Internet forums are nice and dandy (I'm writing this in a ChiefDelphi Forums T-Shirt!) but real world action is most definitely in order!

I think you all know how to contact me in the real world or online if you need any help.

To the Worldwide FIRST community:
Please understand that teams were placed under stresses and strains far beyond what they could ever be expected to withstand.
Thus these "incidents", while being very serious, are far from representative of the FIRST Israel community which is, as I stated above, a thriving and powerful community which is very committed to the core values of FIRST

-Leav Oz-Ari

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Leav

(what the Turkish, Bosnian and two Californian teams must think of us now... ).

Leav - What the teams are probably thinking is, wow - what an experience! That would be what our team would think. It is amazing for me to even think we have a Bosnian team. How very very cool is that? And a Turkish team and they competed at the regional in Israel.

Sometimes - as hard as it is, we have to look at the bigger picture. When communications sputter or fail. When emotions gather into a potential storm. When teams have to find compromise in the midst of a fierce need and want to compete and compete well. The posts in this thread by the members of 7 different teams from the regional - so far - show that you all have held your heads high and that you want to compete and compete well. It also shows that more work needs to be done. Bayou had problems. We all watched as the teams and the volunteers struggled to make it work. My team is competing in Dallas this week and I hope for and wish for a smooth efficient competition. I do. But, what I know is that the FRC teams are tough and made up of people who understand what it takes to build a robot to compete in an FRC competition. They will deal with the situation just as all of you dealt with what happened at your regional. Where you may have lost in communications with the robots, you gained in communicating with Gracious Professionalism. All of you. You strove for it.

We can all learn from this.
Jane

[Jon236]

Fellow FIRSTers,

Thank you Leav for your comments. I was proud to present Leav with the Volunteer of the Year award. Leav represents the high quality we have seen amongst Israeli students, and now, alumni. In fact, there seems to be a strange illness which 'infects' those now in the IDF who were on FRC teams.....the only cure seems to be tireless efforts at the Israeli Regional.

As one of the volunteers (JA, Field Setup, etc) who has assisted every year in Israel, let me state the facts:

First of all, let me state that key volunteers (Israel & US) worked tirelessly around the clock with 0-2 hours/night sleep. Our FTA's worked 40 hours straight aided by Israeli coffee and hummus.

1. The FIRST Israel team had to make some very tough decisions because of the tight constraints and circumstances we faced. The team's interests were always in the forefront. We are all upset that we didn't have a perfect competition.
2. FIRST Israel did an exemplary job in communicating issues to the teams; they simply didn't like the facts.
3. In Israel, we use 2.4 GHz with 802.11n, NOT g.
4. We had the benefit finally of a secret Military Intell Comms unit (they guys who can make your cell phone explode) who worked around the clock to get the system working.
5. Working with Andrew from NI (who was fantastic!) and the IDF guys, we were able to ascertain that the issue was partially one of bandwidth, one of team software, and perhaps unknown hardware issues. Basically, we have seen what happens when a complex operating system meets limited bandwidth and hardware.
6. FIRST HQ support was always available by skype, but they hadn't had this
problem in the US.
7. We have been thanked by many teams, including the rookie Bosnian team who stated they want to come back next year.
8. There will be an audit with FIRST Israel and FIRST HQ to do a failure analysis; the results will be valuable to all of us.
9. At the end of the day, despite the field disaster, it was a great educational experience for the teams in Gracious Professionalism.
10. All awards were given out, with the exception of the Coopetition Award and the Highest Rookie Seed award. Due to the late hour, we needed to finish by 9 pm or the plug would be pulled by the stadium.
11. We had a great Event Manager, Faza. They do a fantastic job; but they don't do routers.

[garyk]

In San Diego, intermittently a robot on the field would never come ready. A Field Tech would work on the control system, under the drivers' station, and sometimes it would be fixed, and sometimes not. I know this had to be frustrating to the teams and alliances affected.

Speaking as a hardware/software guy, sometimes this happens. I've had demos fail in front of real or potential customers. What can be learned from all this? When today's students become professonals and find themselves creating products, you'll remember what happened to you as students and take extra care to avoid it. And to those who end up in management, remember that quality takes time, resources, and money.

And when the crashes happen, you learn from it, and you go on.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by brianelite

It doesn't sound like FIRST can succeed in Israel. If coaches are urging students to disrupt matches there is no hope....

Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.
- Robert Johnson

Mr. Johnson has it right ;-)

I don't think we should judge the entire Israeli FIRST efforts by one event after one very long, tiring, and emotional day.

Joe J.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.
- Robert Johnson

Mr. Johnson has it right ;-)

I don't think we should judge the entire Israeli FIRST efforts by one event after one very long, tiring, and emotional day.

Joe J.

I have to agree, the regional may not have went smoothly but it does NOT mean it is impossible for FRC to succeed there. FIRST (and all involved) need to determine what went right, what went wrong, and what they can change.

This regional has shown us that there are still major problems with the way FRC runs international events and that we need to work harder.

We need to step back, admit that mistakes were made (by all parties) and figure out what we can do to fix them in the future. We don't need to blame people or groups, we need to find solutions.

[David3316]

I'm one of two team captain of team 3316, it was a big disappointment for my team that this year had so many issues because all of our team members but 2 are going to graduate this year and thus not experience this wonderful experience again.

There were many issues except the communication issues, my team had only one match working properly out of the 3 which we were supposed to compete in (aside the 1/4 finals). in the 2nd match the robot which we played with (3339) was supposed to hang and thus win the match but the communications failed in the last 15 seconds and cause the results to be the exact opposite.

We addressed the judges directly claiming that a re-match was a must and all they said was there is no time, i cannot understand why a competition that could have technical failures of this magnitude is being played in an arena that cannot allow any time extensions, it is a serious matter that has to be solved in the future in my opinion.

Besides that, before our 2nd game our modem cable was gone even tho we didn't move our robot at all, we suggested that other team took it after searching all over the place and the judges didn't even give us extra time causing other teams to suffer when each match is crucial..

It was truly heartbreaking to see the final being 3 teams against 2 for most of it while one robot is blocking a goal. I fell sorry for the teams that came from california, one of them was on top on the 1st day and ended ranked 43 in the second day despite a brilliant robot..

I hope the issues will be resolved next year, even though it was my first and final year in this project as a student.

David

[fireyoshi]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

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

Except that in Bayou, all scheduled matches were played, the award ceremonies went as planned, and there were no racial slurs being tossed around. I feel sorry for the Israeli teams and hopefully conditions will be improved next year.

[lynca]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

building a real time control system with 6 to 10 Windows XP PCs in the loop without a professional grade, real time software overlord on each is like playing Russian Roulette -- someone is eventually going to get a bullet the brain.

I completely agree. The blue box last year was a real-time system that did have its own problems. Hopefully FIRST can settle on a middle ground and test the equipment completely.

I believe this also stems from not allowing all the teams to test the Driver Station / cRio code until Kickoff. Out of the fifty Beta teams with access to the 2010 system only a handful posted documentation on the system. The Lunacy Beta test model was the best implementation of Beta testing so far.

At Bayou , we had major problems due to not updating the Driver Station firmware. Check to make sure your DS firmware is the latest.

[brianelite]

Originally Posted by lynca

I completely agree. The blue box last year was a real-time system that did have its own problems. Hopefully FIRST can settle on a middle ground and test the equipment completely.

I believe this also stems from not allowing all the teams to test the Driver Station / cRio code until Kickoff. Out of the fifty Beta teams with access to the 2010 system only a handful posted documentation on the system. The Lunacy Beta test model was the best implementation of Beta testing so far.

At Bayou , we had major problems due to not updating the Driver Station firmware. Check to make sure your DS firmware is the latest.

What do you mean teams couldn't test the cRio/Driver station until kickoff?

The REAL issue here is that FIRST continues to put amateurs in charge of developing the programming environment. Total disaster this year with C++, our code was blowing up for WEEKS into build season before the WPI guys fixed their library... absolutely inexcusable that these guys who cannot even compile their own library are given the task of providing the programming tools for hundreds/thousands of teams using C++... It is simply outrageous that after 2 years deployment FIRST had to scramble to put out a working cRio image/ robotics library in the final week or so...