2010 Silicon Valley Regional

[Scott Bahl]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

971's driver, Scott, is easily one of the best I have ever seen.

Also, 971's roller is pretty cool. They implemented a software clutch using motor current and drive base speed. It works like money.

Hey thanks!

Though i have to admit it got pretty hard at times, 8 out of the 16 matches the kicker malfunctioned and stuck out of the robot, blocking the rollers, leaving me with a tiny bit of intake on each side of the kicker to work with.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

All in all this was a great event! I had an awesome time.

Thanks to our alliance partners 1868 and 675.

The 675 crew is really cool. Very enthusiastic and dedicated group of people. It was an honor to play with you guys again. Too bad we never got up the ramps. Ah well, there's always CalGames. I think I drove everyone on my team crazy with that cowbell you gave me.

Also thanks to 1868 for the pick! Robot was a good striker, and a tough machine.

I was very proud of the way our alliance performed in the finals. Despite the odds, we managed to tie the red alliance in the first match and put up high scores in the following matches.

Team 971 is pretty amazing. Their robot is proof that good ball control is the key to winning. Even without a functioning kicker or a hanger they were able to easily score 10+ points single handedly. Congrats guys.

[CallieJ]

Originally Posted by =Martin=Taylor=

All in all this was a great event! I had an awesome time.

Thanks to our alliance partners 1868 and 675.

The 675 crew is really cool.

Also thanks to 1868 for the pick! Robot was a good striker, and a tough machine.

I was very proud of the way our alliance performed in the finals. Despite the odds, we managed to tie the red alliance in the first match and put up high scores in the following matches.

We were honored that you accepted our pick! We really, really wanted to be on an alliance with you given your team attitude and technical aptitude.

I have to say, this was an incredible event. If you had told me my first year, when our robot could barely move, that one day we would be team captains for 3rd alliance, pick the legendary team 100, and almost beat 254 in finals.... I wouldn't have paid attention.

I wish they would give "Most Spirited Alliance" Awards instead of just team ones. We would've won for sure. Congratulations for the win at San Diego and have a great time at Championships! We wish we could join you.

[Josh Fox]

Are there any pictures of the Poofs or 971 floating around? I'm dying to see them.

Video would also be more than acceptable.

[Scott Bahl]

Originally Posted by Josh Fox

Are there any pictures of the Poofs or 971 floating around? I'm dying to see them.

Video would also be more than acceptable.

P.S. 971's last 3 qual's, the drive Jaguars fried and the robots performance was very unimpressive. Luckily 254 gave us Victors to replace with for the Drivebase CIMs.

(i would watch out for those jag's if i were you)

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Scott Bahl

P.S. 971's last 3 qual's, the drive Jaguars fried and the robots performance was very unimpressive.

The jaguars didn't exactly break. They would work intermittently, which is in some ways worse. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was. Scott was noticing that the problem was getting worse and worse as the qualification matches went on. We finally correlated that during a match, Scott hit the wall and pushed against it in high gear for a tiny bit to grab a ball. When he tried to back up, one drive side immediately started acting up. It seemed like the Jags had trouble with the momentary high current draw that was caused by pushing against the wall, and then waited for a second or two before coming back to life. So, we'll be using Victors in our drivetrain and with our other high current motors from now onwards.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

It seemed like the Jags had trouble with the momentary high current draw that was caused by pushing against the wall, and then waited for a second or two before coming back to life. So, we'll be using Victors in our drivetrain and with our other high current motors from now onwards.

This is a designed feature of the Jaguars. They have an overcurrent fault protection built in that will trip before the 40A breakers will. The fault automatically clears after 3 seconds.

The Jaguars are rated for 40A continuous, 60A for 2 seconds and 100 peak.

[ThomasL]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

This is a designed feature of the Jaguars. They have an overcurrent fault protection built in that will trip before the 40A breakers will. The fault automatically clears after 3 seconds.

The Jaguars are rated for 40A continuous, 60A for 2 seconds and 100 peak.

This issue plagued us (649) all of Friday, with our wheels locking up when we rapidly changed directions. We limited our max speed in code for the last round on Friday to reduce current draw before swapping out swapping out for Victors Saturday morning.

We put on a decent performance after that for our last three qualifying matches. Given our trouble moving cleanly for the first seven, it's not much of a surprise if any team found us risky as an alliance pick.

(We also had a rather embarrassing issue: a metal staple found its way into our digital sidecard, occasionally shorting it out. Oops... Thanks to Kiet of 254 for finding it and pulling it out for us. It was jammed in there good.)

Anyway, IMO, a more proper solution to this would have been to limit how fast the motor could change speed in software, instead of swapping to Victors.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Josh Fox

Are there any pictures of the Poofs or 971 floating around? I'm dying to see them.

Video would also be more than acceptable.

Here's a video of F1-2. It's mostly focussed on 971, but it's a pretty good field shot so you can see what 254 is doing most of the time as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X27bojZ26k

[Josh Fox]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Here's a video of F1-2. It's mostly focussed on 971, but it's a pretty good field shot so you can see what 254 is doing most of the time as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X27bojZ26k

Thank you very much.

That was some truly fantastic driving done by team 971.

[phoenix_fire]

Team 2489 had a great time at SVR this year. It was our first year using pneumatics in our three year history, and we did run into some problems. We would like to thank Mike from team 115 MVRT (Chairman's Award winner) and Steven form team 100 Wildhats. With their help we were able to get our kicker working on Saturday.

Congratulations to MVRT for a well deserved Chairman's Award!
Congratulations to 254, 971 and 649 for winning.

Special shout out to the Dean's List Finalist Award Winner from our team, Anne Liu.
We love you Anne!!!

[Chickenonastick]

Does anybody happen to have a video of the SVR alliance selections?

[Doug G]

I had setup a Pinnacle video transfer/encoder, but someone swiped the Black 8 GB, USB memory stick from it at the end of the day (perhaps took the wrong one by mistake?). Anyhow, if anyone has it by chance - upload the video from it!

Also thanks to 192 and 1280 for picking us. We gave 100, 1868, and 675 a good semifinal run at it. Congrats to 971, 254, and 649 - definitely an amazing alliance.

[JYang]

Team 604 would like to thank Teams 8 and 1323 for being amazing alliance partners and to Teams 254, 971 and 649 for being great opponents. Congrats on your win!

I have posted photos of teams I took throughout SVR here: http://picasaweb.google.com/cubing.r...yRegional2010#

Hope you enjoy!
-Jenny

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by JYang

Team 604 would like to thank Teams 8 and 1323 for being amazing alliance partners and to Teams 254, 971 and 649 for being great opponents. Congrats on your win!

I have posted photos of teams I took throughout SVR here: http://picasaweb.google.com/cubing.r...yRegional2010#

Hope you enjoy!
-Jenny

Great pictures of both the teams and the people! Thanks for sharing them, they almost make up for missing the event!

Will you be taking a similar amount of pictures at Sacramento?