After Coming Back From The LA Regional: My Thoughts On FIRST

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by DustinWyke

my team does an E-Waste event and also sells Hexbugs at community events in our town. both of those raise substantial profit.
We also apply for grants and ask for support from local businesses.

I need to suggest to my team now to host an E-Waste event

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

My team gave out little tridents in the competition this year... we made like 300 of those...

What ever happened to "not trying to show off"? You guys do it, other teams do it. Its part of FIRST.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

What ever happened to "not trying to show off"? You guys do it, other teams do it. Its part of FIRST.

It wasn't my idea, don't blame me

[davidthefat]

So what are your thoughts about the FIRST kit of parts? I personally don't like the fact that they make you use the CRio and Class mate and all those regulation stuff, its cool that they give us that, but I would much rather have the freedom to choose my microcontrollers and the means of communicating with my robot... Seems to reflect the "real life" more. Different companies have their own ways and products that they use to build their products... Its not all the same. I think more freedom will allow more interesting robots

[EricH]

It's one of the best ways to keep the field level. Think about it this way:

You are a team with a bare knowledge of programming, and so you do an R/C controller (like for a plane or a car). Your first match is against a team that has a computer on their robot, built and programmed by the team in ubercode, and controlled via a VR controller.

In addition to the nightmare I just described, there's another one: No way to govern the start/stop. Imagine being a ref going out to check that team X is hanging and having team Y not stop playing the match. Not pretty...

I'd much prefer the IFI system's reliability, but I like the power of the cRIO. Vision tracking with IFI was tough. Now, half the teams out there have it. But the IFI system didn't lose comm every other match.

I think that keeping limits on certain things keeps the field more level, and actually forces creativity. Yep, forces it. I'd love to see some rules modified (like I'd love to see an arm game again, and that means bumper gaps), but the creativity is now more subtle.

If you're interested, I think FIRST has the rules for previous games on their website. Take a look at the ones from the 1990s, especially the allowed materials list. Yep, there was a list of allowed materials. Not on the list? Sorry, can't use it. There were a lot of very creative robots in those years. Oh, and we get just motors now. When we used drill motors in drivetrains, sometimes they'd come in the drill. Now that's a fun dilemma: When do we take the drill apart to use it in the drive, because it's so useful in building the darn robot?

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

So what are your thoughts about the FIRST kit of parts? I personally don't like the fact that they make you use the CRio and Class mate and all those regulation stuff, its cool that they give us that, but I would much rather have the freedom to choose my microcontrollers and the means of communicating with my robot... Seems to reflect the "real life" more. Different companies have their own ways and products that they use to build their products... Its not all the same. I think more freedom will allow more interesting robots

There's a few reasons.. First, it's less expensive getting the KoP than buying all your own things. FIRST gets them at reduced prices and passes those on. Secondly, it lessens the advantage to the more affluent teams (who you were complaining about) because they can get products that will run simply better than what other teams can afford. i'm sure there's more reasons, but those are just a couple.

[GUI]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

So what are your thoughts about the FIRST kit of parts? I personally don't like the fact that they make you use the CRio and Class mate and all those regulation stuff, its cool that they give us that, but I would much rather have the freedom to choose my microcontrollers and the means of communicating with my robot... Seems to reflect the "real life" more. Different companies have their own ways and products that they use to build their products... Its not all the same. I think more freedom will allow more interesting robots

There are a lot of aspects of the control side of the competition that make a standard robot control system necessary, including safety and making it as easy for a team to get involved with at least a working robot. I can't really comment on individual control systems as that's not something I've done much work on, but there is a lot of logistical work that goes into determining certain parts of the rules including the controls.

I suggest you take a look at this thread in regards to why some teams seem to be so successful, and ways to get inspired to be more competitive.

It seems that you were perhaps discouraged a lot by problems with your robot or maybe you just had different expectations for the competition. Please hang in there and look for ways you can get more out of FIRST, you just might be surprised at what you can accomplish.

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

My team gave out little tridents in the competition this year... we made like 300 of those... Im thinking of making an app or game for the iPhone or Android (or both) and selling it. May be Xbob Live even

I saw a bunch of kids (of ALL ages) playing with those tridents...very cool.

BTW, our robot driver from the Arizona Regional was unable to compete in LA, so the guy who was operating the kicker became the robot driver and a new student jumped in on kicker/roller control. The new robot driver literally drove the wheels off of our 2008 robot getting some practice since AZ. By time Sat afternoon came around, the robot driving was vastly improved.

As far as controllers and communications, this is the second year FRC is using the cRIO and the 5 GHz gaming adapter. FIRST doesn't have the resources for R&D of a major manufacturer of video games, still they put a sophisticated, high bandwidth communications architecture with a substantial amount of processing power in each robot. It will take time to work through all the bugs, with a lot of the "testing" occurring at the events. By finding and reporting problems, you are part of the solution. Over time, it will all get better.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by EricH

I'd much prefer the IFI system's reliability, but I like the power of the cRIO. Vision tracking with IFI was tough. Now, half the teams out there have it. But the IFI system didn't lose comm every other match.

Actually, in LA the most common reasons for "loosing coom" were in no particular order:

Bad battery
Bad battery connection
loose radio power connection
loose cRio power connection
touchy Classmate ethernet connection (on Classmate side)
radio reset due to shock
one robot got turned off when a ball landed on the main breaker (my favorite)
we also had numerous teams forget to plug their radio back in after programming changes, but those were caught and corrected before match start

none of these have much to do with the field control system

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I will try my best for the team, I personally DGAFed on my code this year, will have to work harder on it. and fundraise and offseason work. In fact I am going to try to make a little robot my self from scratch and solder every wire and stuff together my self to practice for next year

Practice robots are great. Whether it's your little "scratch" robot (you have heard of VEX, right?) or last year's robot with some tweaks, or a kitbot, if you have a second robot, your drivers can practice with it after your competition robot ships. That is, whenever the programmers aren't trying out new code on it.

Team 330 has been doing this the past few years (our storage room has way too many robots, but that is just my opinion). We've found the practice robot to be very helpful.

By the way, how could you notice our team members' skinny yellow jeans, but not our robot's skinny yellow arm?

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Cory

To be fair you are thinking of the MC, not the announcer. I don't know who the announcer was, but I thought he was fantastic. very knowledgeable about the game and the robots. I was not a big fan of the MC.

Game announcer there was Dave Seidel of JPL. We were most fortunate to have him with us last year. He collects a bunch of info from the teams on Thursday and when the match list comes out, puts together a spreadsheet and pops out his own announcer sheets.

Here's an older conversation with Dave about what he does, etc.