Frustrations with Minor Technicalities

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

What other solution can you imagine other than "read the rules", as has been pointed out many times on this thread? There is NEVER going to be perfect inspections for every team. Have more than one person read them and check the robot against them as often as possible. It's much easier to change something to comply while you're at home in your shop, rather than the day of inspection at the competition.

I agree completely, the only REAL solution is the read the rules but clearly many groups are having these problems. I am curious if anyone in the community has any bright ideas on how to make it easier for us to be 100% sure we are in compliance. My brother and I are not dumb, and we are certainly not new to FRC. Not to sound too arrogant but if the two of us missed some rules I would be willing to bet you that a lot of other people did too. The issues we had were incredibly minor things that gave us no competitive advantage whatsoever, we had no problem adjusting them, they were just irritants. Irritants that we would like to avoid the future, as a result we would like to see if there is a way to make it easier for ALL teams to avoid these irritants too.

Remember, I ain't new to this, I remember when the rulebooks were much thinner and simpler to read. How can we get back to rules that are simple and clear?

Originally Posted by AmoryG

I'm not naming any particular team when I say this, but I'm sure some do have a reason for getting upset. If something was overlooked Thursday, and on Friday right before a match we're told something needs to be fixed, that might upset me. Fixing things takes time, time we could have had Thursday without much consequence, not the day of competition. It's not the inspectors fault, but it definitely is something worth getting upset about.

It was Friday, right before a match. Hence why we were so irritated, it meant we had to power the robot on, wait for it to regain comms and then charge the tanks. Wouldn't be a huge issue except for the amount of time it takes to connect the two. (Which is another irritation that is beyond the scope of this thread.)