[FTC]: 1st Qualifier of the Res-q season OVERVIEW. Flagstaff AZ, November 7th

[MattRain]

I was contacted by ftcmentor (cheer4ftc), about a few questions regarding our qualifier we had yesterday. As ftcmentor mentioned, I would like to make it public to everyone. Please ask any other questions you may have.

Background First: I am a Tournament Director here in Arizona, that works very closely with the AZ Affiliate Partners, and I make it a point to volunteer at every qualifier and competition we have in the state of Arizona. Our Affiliate Partners wanted to have a "shake-down" event in their town, Flagstaff, AZ, in order to learn all of the bugs, and kinks that we have with this new system. As a result, they needed to have this Qualifier very early in the season. Only 7 teams signed up for the event. Due to this happening, the larger, veteran, and more well known teams in our state, including ours, attend the event, in order to make it a legal qualifier in terms of teams attending.

Please remember that I will be repeating myself in some questions...

Questions:

How did the sports start and sports stop go? Any issues?

The first matches of the day were a learning curve for the teams and referees. Teams would either start a few seconds early, or forget to stop moving their robots at the end of the game. As a result of that, my teams will be adding in a 2 minute timer to our teleop program, in order to have it stop itself at the end of the game. Once the robot stops, we will make sure that our phone app has also been stopped.

As for the refrees learning curve. I watched multiple teams, including my 3 students, holding their Driver Station phones during the whole autonomous period. Teams would have a tendency to still be pressing buttons on their phones, after the beacon buttons were pressed. After watching this, I made our Affliate Parnters aware of the situation, as well as our Head Ref. (Please remember that this is the first qualifier of the season, and we are all just getting the hand of this.) After making them aware of what was happening, the teams were no longer holding thier phones when the Autonomous Period was running. Please see the video below. I will reference this video a few time in the questions below. I was in charge of designing, and building the tables you see in front of the teams, for the teams to place thier controllers and phones. Each alliance has only a 2' by 1' table in front of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UA1R4Su_Ek
(Not my video)

How did the new electronics hold up? Were all teams able to start and finish matches with working robots, or were robots dying during matches? Did any teams have their modules completely die and then be unable to finish the tournament?

As I stated in the above question, teams had difficulties in the beginning, learning the start and stops of their robot. As for the electronics they held up pretty well.

PLEASE remember to purchase extra fuses for your PDMs. We had issues during the day, were a team would pop a fuse every once and a while. None of the teams at the event, even ours, even thought of having extra fuses on hand. Luckly, the team that was blowing their fuses, had extra PDMs on hand, and just replaced the fuses that were already in the board.

For the most part, we (all teams) didn't have to many issues with robots dying throughout the day in the middle of the matches. There are a few exceptions though that I would like to point out. All of these problems we encountered, are completely avoidable.

1. A team, during the teleop period, accidentally set the autonomous timer, which in turn, shut their robot off multiple times throughout the match. Please keep in mind, that under the heat of the moment, you may not notice that you have done so, which is what happened for this team. After the match was ending, the problem was found, and corrected

2. My team had a nasty spill during their second match in semi-finals, which resulted in a broken USB cable. The YouTube video that I mentioned above, shows us on the left hand side, the ones with the large metal side guards, not moving for the entirety of the Finals. (Background: Our team came as a filler spot in order to make the qualifier a legal event. As so, we ghetto rigged all of our electronics, and random servos to function for the day, as our robot is only half way completed, and still in parts at the shop.) Because of the ghetto rigging of our electronics, the Micro usb to mini usb cable, which connects to our phone was severely damaged in our fall.

The lesson here: PROTECT YOUR USBs, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1108784 (Valley X, Trojan Robotics)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1106087 (Valley X, Trojan Robotics)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1099628 (Cheer4ftc)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1096699 (Valley X, Trojan Robotics)
https://twitter.com/trojans8640/stat...10567272099841
(Myself, and other Affiliate Partner, mass printed some of these to give to teams at inspection.)

3. As I stated before, the tables that Arizona is supplying for your controllers, are right next to the field. As a result, your extra cords for your controllers have a tendency to hang off of the table. We had two instances where the cords hung over the field wall, right next to a robot. Once the autonomous started, the robot would then attach itself to the said cords, and pull them off of the table.

Lesson learned: As part of our field inspection, we will be requiring teams that do not have a traveling case, or wire management, to be zip-tieing the extra, none used wire together. Teams only need to have enough cord that allows the controller to reach them, and allow them to move a little bit. (My teams will be bringing small briefcases, which will have the phone mounted to the lid, and the controllers in the bottom section for transport. Once on the field, all they have to do is open the briefcase and pull the controllers out. Sort of like something you would see in FRC.

4. Our qualifier started 25 minutes late, due to teams not getting though the require inspections in time. We were able to make up this time in the first few matches, since we were not having all the issues that comes with a central control system. The new platform allows for very quick turn around times. As a result of that:

Arizona will be including a 15 minute break into their schedules now, between the start of qualification rounds, and Lunch, as a "Mandatory Charging time." Many teams do not have access to multiple phones, and with very quick turn around times, the phone batteries don't have time to charge as much as they should.

Did any teams have their modules completely die and then be unable to finish the tournament?

Our Affiliate Partners purchased 3 extra PDMs just for this case. Other than the blown fuses, we did not have any issues with teams being unable to compete. (No one ever completly died.)

How did this year's game look? Were there any surprising rule interpretations? How did penalties go? Were there many >5 debris penalties issued?

Again, this was the very first qualifier (That I know of), and is very early in the season. Most of the robots at the event only pushed the blocks around the field, as they were either not completely ready for the event, or were a rookie team. As a result of this, there were alot of penalties as a result of possessing more 5 debris when plowing them into the Floor Goal. Please remember <GS7>.

Plowing (bumping, moving, touching, etc.) Debris located on the Playing Field floor is allowed and does not count towards the five Debris Possession/Control constraint if the movement of the Debris is not purposeful

(i.e plowing them into the Floor goal)

Any surprising designs or strategies?

The team that won the event, only focused on hanging (i.e. 1 objective). This team is known for going to the first qualifier of the season in our state, and doing this. They have won an advancement every year to the Regional with this strategy.

As for strategies in-game. Again, this qualifier is so early, most of the teams only scored in the floor goal. Its still to early to see alot of strategies.

At least for Arizona, in the beginning of the season, having an autonomous, being able to score very well in one area, can get you pretty far in the beginning. Once the season goes on, it definitely becomes a lot harder to win in our state. (Unlike some states, there are not alot of "power-house" teams in our state)

Was there much defense being played?

Nope, too early for it.

How were the robots?
Did any teams successfully push the rescue beacon button?
None, too early in the season.
Dump the climbers in autonomous?
Only one team in Autonomous. A few, including mine were able to do so in Teleop.
Score in the high goal?
Too early, Floor goal and hanging were the major contenders
Climb the cliff zone?
2 robots out of all of the teams had climbing abilities at the event. Only 1 robot could do it successfully 75% of the time.
Release the zip-line climbers?
The bottom zip-liner. A few teams could do this one.
Did the zip line release work well or did it have problems?
They worked alright. Every once and a while the 2nd zipliner would release when triggering the bottom zip-linner... Only the team triggered zip-linners were counted.
Were there any robots doing backwards somersaults down the mountain?
A few, including my teams. Makes a really nice thud. One team had some awesome rolebars, and would do a somersult back on to its wheels. Reminded me over Arizona, FRC team 1011 CRUSH, in the "Breakaway" season.
What was the high score and what were the top alliances able to accomplish?
Hanging, high scores were below 200.

Please ask questions if you have any.

[Christopher149]

Do you have scores from the event? Would about 50 pts per robot generally win qualification matches? Any good rookies?

How did team's numbers on the robot generally look? How many teams had carts to move their robot to and from the field?

Looking forward to competing in two weeks.

[MattRain]

Originally Posted by Christopher149

Do you have scores from the event?

Not with me currently, but scores ranged anywhere from 0-30 points for the lower teams, 30-80 points for the middle range of teams, and 80-170ish for the the higher ranked team matches.

Would about 50 pts per robot generally win qualification matches?

It really depends on the State. In Arizona, in the beginning of the season, for this game, yes, to a point. (Depending who you were with, or going against.)

Give it another month, and 50 points will probably be nothing.

Any good rookies?

All of the "rookies" this year were older teams, with a new set of students. (We didn't have any 5 digit numbers at this qualifier)

How did team's numbers on the robot generally look?

Alot of people don't follows the rule numbers in the manual. My team for example, just sharpied on our numbers. Give us another month, and a complete bot, and we will have the robot painted and vinyl numbers/sponsors. But thats the higher end teams.

How many teams had carts to move their robot to and from the field?

My team was the only one at this event. Both of my teams have a cart, each with thier own numbers. Depending on the venues, you may have a distance to walk. At the event this weekend, the pits were a mere 30 steps away.

Looking forward to competing in two weeks.

I have no clue how MI competitions are, but we wish you luck!

[sethmo38]

Thanks for the writeup. We also had our first qualifier over the weekend and our first match was ugly with the sports start. Things went smoother after the first match. I was the FTA and I made sure that everyone had their autonomous opmodes selected and initialized before we randomized their beacons even though nobody could hit the buttons.

Starting wasn't so much the problem as stopping when the match was over. One team climbed into the low zone after end game, but did not hit stop on the phone and accidentally hit the controller and bumped itself off the mountain. I had to take away their points and give them a warning. I went around to all the teams in the pits after this and let them know that their coach needed to hit the stop button when the buzzer sounds, otherwise we would have to give out penalties for movements after the buzzer.

I think I will have our programmer write up some simple code to stop the robot after 30 sec and 2 min and send it to the coaches of the teams in our league. I see this as the only solution to stopping the robots after the buzzer.

Other than that, the new system wasn't so bad. I did have to help several teams get their robot restarted while on the field waiting to start. Every time they had an error on their phone, turning off the bot, unplugging the phone usb, closing the app on the RC phone, waiting 10-20 seconds, then powering everything back up fixed the issue.

We had three teams show up with non-working robots. I was able to help two of the teams to get their robots up and working.
-One was having an error while using AppInventor. I do not know AppInventor, so I showed them how to get a tank drive bot going from a default PushBot build
-The second team did not have an opmode programmed and they did not understand the wiring/use of the legacy controller. They also crimped their own Anderson Power Pole connectors, but did not use the tool properly and had a loose connection. I showed two of their members and their coach how to use the crimp to get a good connection and walked through the Java programming with their programmer. They were able to compete in 3 out of the 5 matches and were super excited.
-The third team had Java programming issues and also the same issue with the Anderson Power Pole connectors. We just didn't have enough time to get them going to compete. I stayed after and helped them sort out their issues though.

I think it was too early in the season for our League to hold a meet, but it is what everyone agreed on. At least it gave the teams a good idea of where they need to be for the next meet in December

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by MattRain

I have no clue how MI competitions are, but we wish you luck!

I have no idea either! Woo for being a rookie.

I feel it's ironic that we have a closer FRC event by several hours than the nearest FTC event.