Early Uncrating Team

[Bduggan04]

For those of you who have been to regionals, were you allowed to do anything other than uncrate robots in the 7:45-8:30 period on thursday morning? We are trying to plan who we are going to send in early. What we really want to know is if we can set up our pit before 8:30 not necessarily work on the robot. This would also require the ability to bring more things into the pits. Any advice/help would be appreciated.

[Bluesky55J]

Well i was not one who was let in early but when i got to our pits everything was already unpacket and unloaded. you are allowed to work with your pit stuff, bring in any extra boxes that you needed and so forth. matter of fact the entire pit was set up before our robot was even touched and all are crates were allready taken away. so yes you can work on your pit area.

[Jones571]

we had our robot our and already finished most of the needed work before the team showed up. We only brought things that the 3 people could carry easily it was actually really nice to be able to do some stuff without the pits being all bogged down with people walking around already.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Bduggan04

For those of you who have been to regionals, were you allowed to do anything other than uncrate robots in the 7:45-8:30 period on thursday morning? We are trying to plan who we are going to send in early. What we really want to know is if we can set up our pit before 8:30 not necessarily work on the robot. This would also require the ability to bring more things into the pits. Any advice/help would be appreciated.

You mention 8:30. Was that when you arrived, or did they actually not let anyone besides the early uncrating team in before then?

I was pretty sure that I saw 8:00 as the pit opening time (as in previous years)

Cory

[Jones571]

no he is correct only your team of 3 were allowed in till 830

[Eric Bareiss]

If you read the agendas, they say that the pits and machine shops open at 8:30 Am thursday and 8:00 AM the other two days. So only three people from each team are allowed in the pits from 7:45-8:30 on thursday.

Agenda

I think they open the doors at 8:00 so does this mean that the rest of your team has to wait outside, or can they wait in the bleachers from 8:00 to 8:30?

[Mike8519]

At NJ we were required to wait outside until 8:30.

[melitami]

In Richmond, I was the volunteer in charge of running the early uncrate team entrance. We had little yellow coupons, 3 for each team with their team number on them. Each team had to check in with me before going into the Siegel Center to get their coupons. No one was allowed in until 8:30 unless they had a yellow coupon; we had 3 or 4 volunteers at the door collecting them, as well as VCU security people who were searching bags. The coupon idea was specific to this regional, so I don't know what other regionals it may happen at.

What most surprised me was that only 2 or 3 teams were there prior to 7:30. Most teams came around 8-8:15-ish, but there were still about 10 teams (out of 62) that did not show up before 8:30. I thought I would have have gotten swamped with teams coming early, but that was not the case.

[Justin Stiltner]

At VCU we werent allowed to work on ANYTHING other than unboxing, no hole drilling, no assembly of ANYTHING, and yes we asked... they wouldent evean let us drill holes in our cart to mount a stand that holds our robot... note that this stand wasent part of the robot in any way shape or form. They said you can unbox ONLY.

[ArJubx]

Were you allowed to setup and use computers and such. I want to use this time to quickly set up and test the wireless scouting network we plan to have at our regional, while the stadium is relatively empty.

Just 2 laptops, and a wireless router. 1 laptop as the server and a second to test the effective range.

[Alavinus]

The intention of this wonderful rule is to uncrate the things you have in your crate and get the crates out ASAP before the FIRSTers take over. This enables the pallet truck people to navigate more easily and allows people bringing tools in to get there without wading through massive amounts of people.

So I would say no to the laptops: there will be plenty of time to get the system up. (I hoped you checked with the venue to make sure the wireless LAN was acceptable)

And as to doing anything else, as long as it does not involve the robot in ANY way it should be OK. The reason we did not want people drilling holes in Richmond is that we thought people were working on their robot. If you work on the robot you could get DQ'd before the regional ever started and there would be no fun in that.

Just remember- before your pit completely expands be sure that the robots around you have been uncrated. (We want to keep the drayage folks happy)

[Greg Perkins]

I arrived at BAE on thursday around 8:15, and we were let in at 8:30. when i got to my pit, the pit had allready been mostly setup, and the students had allready been working on the bot a little bit. i dunno...

[MikeDubreuil]

I was one of the people to get in early from our team at BAE. Here's my experience:

One FIRST volunteer was outside the venue giving out wristbands to the 3 from each team who were going in early. Once you were inside, bags were not checked and we headed for the elevator line. Once we took the elevator to the basement we were able to uncrate our robot. An anouncement was made, "Teams you can only uncrate, the robots, and not work on them.....correction, you can work on your robots, go for it."