What did we learn from week 2 of the 2013 season?

[Becca334]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

This statement concerns me. One of the outcomes of the Einstein investigation was to impose bandwidth limits on every team to prevent the system from overloading and cutting off comms to other teams. My understanding is that if a team was using too much bandwidth (from camera or otherwise), they are the only team affected. It sounds like entire alliances were having issues from one team using a camera and possibly using more than their allotted bandwidth. Was this the case? If so, it indicates to me that the bandwidth limits were not working as designed.

Yes, one team was affecting everyone on the field with more than their allotted bandwidth.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

This statement concerns me. One of the outcomes of the Einstein investigation was to impose bandwidth limits on every team to prevent the system from overloading and cutting off comms to other teams. My understanding is that if a team was using too much bandwidth (from camera or otherwise), they are the only team affected. It sounds like entire alliances were having issues from one team using a camera and possibly using more than their allotted bandwidth. Was this the case? If so, it indicates to me that the bandwidth limits were not working as designed.

I don't know what happened with the cameras at NYC, but we had similar issues at Horsham last week. The FTA advised several teams (including us) to play without our dashboard, explaining that it was our choice but we were likely to experience continued lag (lost packets) if we did not. We turned it off for the match and later down-res'd, lowered FPS and fixed our code--afterwards we and our alliance partners experienced no problems, even with us running vision processing and an second camera and others running 1-2 of their own.

However, this does, to my untrained brain, contradict another FTA statement from Horsham: that when we and another team turned off our dashboard for the match in question, everyone's trip times got better. At least, I that's what I thought he said. It seems counter though, so unless someone else has knowledge of a similar situation, I'll assume I misinterpreted him.* Nonetheless, they did not start the match until after this discussion, and it took quite some time to determine it. (They also found another router that needed to be turned off before this dashboard investigation began. Both elements took some time, not that I fault anyone at all for it.)

*EDIT: I guess so then. Is it possible that the bandwidth limits only identify the team that is exceeding them, rather than stopping them all together? Then again, I don't know why we would have had the choice to leave ours on if it was affecting others (and we certainly wouldn't have had we known, not that we didn't anyway). And apparently NYC didn't know who was causing it. Ok, so scratch that idea.

What I learned from Week (1-)2: apparently there's still more education needed to sort out FMS bandwidth issues.


In other news - I learned to make sure I remind drive teams to look for discs fallen and stuck on your robot (count towards your 4), and also that G30 only applies when you contact your loading zone carpet--not when you break the plane. I also learned that pyramids come apart up to 1/4" in normal match play, and that you absolutely, positively have to wait for the green lights before entering the field. Oh, and that if no one warns them, the lighting crews may want to do some really crazy (cool) light tricks on the vision targets, in autonomous, in the finals.

[Yipyapper]

I learned that, no matter how many times they win a regional, the thoughts of "maybe they won't win this year" won't come true for 2056.

15 regionals attended since their creation. 15 wins in that span.

You guys are so amazing to follow year after year.

[Camren]

Originally Posted by xraymypanda

From a full court shooter which got stopped by them, a modification at lunch turns a small defense bot into a tall defense bot to stop a low full court shooter(me). Then into an 84" tall robot to stop a taller full court shooter. That's all it takes, given that the full court shooter is alone.

This was a disappointing show in my mind I personally thought it was more of a trolling device. I called them RTD (Royal Trolling Devices) because they were created to shut down 2169 King Tec the first match one of these RTD's were found shutting them down the crowd cheered for every blocked shot. I dont know why it just seems ungracious to me, but at the same time you are helping your alliance so it is kind of hard to say how FIRST worthy these duct tape contraptions are.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Camren

This was a disappointing show in my mind I personally thought it was more of a trolling device. I called them RTD (Royal Trolling Devices) because they were created to shut down 2169 King Tec the first match one of these RTD's were found shutting them down the crowd cheered for every blocked shot. I dont know why it just seems ungracious to me, but at the same time you are helping your alliance so it is kind of hard to say how FIRST worthy these duct tape contraptions are.

2169 should have been expecting this. This isn't an engineering fair and demonstration, it's FRC. Defense is part of the game. You can't expect a good FRC team to just sit there and get clobbered by a full-court shooter; they're going to engineer a solution to the problem. As long as those teams weren't breaking any rules, I don't see how their actions are possibly ungracious.

[NotaJoke]

At the same time, don't count the full court shooter out just because there's a pool noodle in the way. A team at Waterford had their blocking mechanism broken by flying frisbees.

[xSAWxBLADEx]

Originally Posted by NotaJoke

At the same time, don't count the full court shooter out just because there's a pool noodle in the way. A team at Waterford had their blocking mechanism broken by flying frisbees.

Do you have a video? For what not to do for a "net".

[DanielCH]

Originally Posted by xSAWxBLADEx

Do you have a video? For what not to do for a "net".

Red alliance had a pretty well made sign.

[Gregor]

Defense can shut teams down, and is only going to get more rough.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Defense can shut teams down, and is only going to get more rough.

This may be the year of the drivetrain. teams with powerful drivetrains that can both push bots around and zip across the field will be able to avoid most defense or win most pushing matches.

[Arpan]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

2169 should have been expecting this. This isn't an engineering fair and demonstration, it's FRC. Defense is part of the game. You can't expect a good FRC team to just sit there and get clobbered by a full-court shooter; they're going to engineer a solution to the problem. As long as those teams weren't breaking any rules, I don't see how their actions are possibly ungracious.

Right, and they did adapt to it. Our finals alliance had 3061 on counter - defense, and we managed to keep several 84 inch robots from interfering with King Tec's shooting.

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by Arpan

Right, and they did adapt to it. Our finals alliance had 3061 on counter - defense, and we managed to keep several 84 inch robots from interfering with King Tec's shooting.

In the second finals match, 2826 was firing full court shots faster than 2169 could. We managed to block 10 of their shots with our disk hopper - it was never intended for this and there was a risk of damage to it, but you do what you need to when necessary.

[Arpan]

Yeah, that was awesomely done - you saved us the match.
I think that this is a harbringer of a very successful alliance pattern at world-
a full court shooter, a blocker/collector/pyramid shooter, and a counter- blocker.
For the most success, all robots should have 18 point autos, and the blocker/collector should probably have a 5-disc (though I don't think anyone had one of those at northern lights). All robots should also be able to score if thier role is not needed (for example, running out of frisbees wasnt a massive problem for us, so you guys could run feeder-station cycles shooting from close in instead of collecting and putting those in. Or, like how against the rookie alliance (rock solid and that group), when there was no 84 inch blocker, 3061 was able to score points.

[JoeyPass]

This was an excellent learning experience for everyone. It was great to see teams innovate on the fly and come up with creative solutions with what limited time and materials they had. This is exactly what FIRST is all about. Don't ever give up, keep on innovating, root for the underdog because you never know what new ideas they will try.

For us as a team, this was a gift. We knew that it would eventually happen though we did not know what form it would take. This allowed us to try different counter strategies and it made for some exciting matches. Sincerely, from team 2169, thank you to all of the teams that forced us to get better. We hope to proudly represent Minnesota at the World Championships.

[MisterG]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

2169 should have been expecting this. This isn't an engineering fair and demonstration, it's FRC. Defense is part of the game. You can't expect a good FRC team to just sit there and get clobbered by a full-court shooter; they're going to engineer a solution to the problem. As long as those teams weren't breaking any rules, I don't see how their actions are possibly ungracious.

This!

Besides, since they (2169, 525, 3061) :

• were *crowned* tournament champions
• went undefeated in elims *and*
• scored in the triple digits in all elim matches (high score 147)

I guess they were not overly upset by improvised blockers.