[FRC Blog] Einstein Report Released

[Kristian Calhoun]

http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2012...-released.html:

Hello Teams,

The Einstein Report, along with important information from Jon Dudas, President of FIRST, has been released and is now available here: http://www3.usfirst.org/node/2426

Frank

[Grim Tuesday]

I would just like to say that FIRST handled this entire situation in exactly the perfect way.

[Akash Rastogi]

Wow some shocking and disappointing things in this report.

[AdamHeard]

Skimmed through, need to thoroughly reread.

As of now, impressed with the thoroughness (as well as their decision to give automatic champs births along with waiving the entry fees for the first event).

Unsure how I feel about some of the descriptions of inappropriate actions.

[steelerborn]

I can't believe what I am reading, who would do that to kids.

[jblay]

I'm quite shocked by this, why would anyone do that?

Really impressed with the way first is handling this though, great move making sure the teams from Einstein get to come back to championship in 2013 and also waiving their first play fee.

[Ernst]

Additionally, Einstein match play suffered from an intentional act of interference.

Does the report specifically say what type of interference took place? I see references to potential RF interference in a few of the paragraphs about 25, but that's about it.

Also, does anyone know if the guilty party stepped forward willingly, accidentally interfered, or anything else?

I can understand why they would want to be vague about who did it, but at the same time I want to know more.

(See Alexa's post below)

In the end, though, I'm impressed with how well they handled the situation.

[dodar]

After reading through this, I believe FIRST should either replay the matches or declare no champions this year and allow all 12 teams free payment for next year's championship.

[Steven Donow]

And the usage of a Galaxy Nexus will only fuel iPhone fanboyism

But in all seriousness, pretty disappointing that someone would do that.

Some slight skimming through shows that this is an interesting read.

But reading the planned fixes/changes has me excited...new radio...more documentation on DS components AND field components...looks like next year will be interesting to watch things unfold as FIRST implements new changes/monitors everything (hopefully) more closely...

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by ZehP

Does the report specifically say what type of interference took place? I see references to potential RF interference in a few of the paragraphs about 25, but that's about it.

Also, does anyone know if the guilty party stepped forward willingly, accidentally interfered, or anything else?

I can understand why they would want to be vague about who did it, but at the same time I want to know more.

In the end, though, I'm impressed with how well they handled the situation.

I suggest reading the Failed Client Authentication on Einstein section. It explains everything regarding that.

[rocknthehawk]

Just finished reading through.

Wow. I'm impressed by how detailed the entire report is, and at how well FIRST has handled the whole situation.

[SenorZ]

Hmmm. Intentional interference... sounds like FRC is really starting to look like a "varsity" sport.

Aside from Einstein having issues there were tons of radio and cRIO issues at regionals. It really is time for FIRST to look at a new system.

[IKE]

Thank you to the teams and persons and FIRST for the exhaustive effort.

[techhelpbb]

I'm happy to see that the electronic power supply issues were considered and annotated. All the testing I did at off season events showed few and far between issues related to the AP/router power supply with some issues with the AP/router power supply (from the battery to the radio power input) taking a bit longer than might be a good idea to reach full output regulation from cold power up (how sensitive the AP/Router is to this is variable and some units might be effected). The time the AP/router supply takes to reach full regulation voltage may leave room for the routers to come up in strange states. This makes sense, all the teams suggesting they fixed their problems when they powered down the AP/router a second time and then back on again after powering up the robot when they initially got on the field (how often it happens though would be quite hard to determine).

The person attempting to connect to the field network is bad news and as long as critical field functions are connected to a public common network FIRST will run this risk. Lucky for everyone this was done line of sight to the effect. Frankly the attack (lack of common sense/failure to communicate intentions) in question could easily have been done any number of clandestine ways that would not have been noticed (I am not going to list them out of concern that someone will try them). Unfortunately it's really easy for someone to create something that will attempt to connect to the field network while aggressively hunting for Internet connections.

I see that they considered the antennas for the field and a few placements of the field equipment. I would have thought they would have tested that further with the robot side equipment power measurements as both sides transmit and receive but apparently that did not happen. Suggestions on how to best optimize the range of the KOP standard robot mounted AP I should hope will find their way into next season.

Overall, I'm satisfied that they've done all they can with what they have as far as a test is concerned. I'm not sure I'm convinced that this one person was the cause of so many headaches however. Einstein was hardly the first time connectivity issues surfaced that were not readily explainable by power supplies issues or programming.

My thanks to FIRST and all those that have worked so hard on trying to make sure this does not happen again.

[linuxboy]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

Hmmm. Intentional interference... sounds like FRC is really starting to look like a "varsity" sport.

Aside from Einstein having issues there were tons of radio and cRIO issues at regionals. It really is time for FIRST to look at a new system.

I believe Bill mentioned that the NI contract will be up for the 2015 season.

- Oliver