A Happy Tech Inspector Story

[dtengineering]

Occasionally on CD there is a post discussing an unusual incident in tech inspection, often unhappy for the team involved.

I'd like to share a happy story. At GTR this weekend we were nabbed for having a 9" long by 3/4" diameter pneumatic cylinder. Credit to the tech inspectors... 8" long is okay, 10" long is okay... but 9", for some reason (it wasn't on the order form) is not. I could express my opinions on whether this makes sense, but that would distract from the happy part, and really makes little difference. A rule is a rule, and it is the tech inspector's job to enforce it.

Now this wouldn't be a big problem for us, except our 10" cylinders were back in Vancouver... a five hour flight away. So the lead tech inspector spent about half an hour on the phone helping us to find an 8" cylinder we could buy, while "our" tech inspector went to ask other teams if they had one we could borrow.

Turns out they found one we could borrow on Friday morning (thanks to 188 for offering to go retrieve it overnight from their school) or one we could buy that afternoon at SMC pneumatics. We bought the 8" one, had it installed in under an hour, passed tech and... get this... the robot actually worked better with it than it did with the 9" one.

Thank you to Tristan and Nicholas, GTR tech inspectors for a great example of gracious professionalism in seeing that all FIRST rules were enforced in a supportive manner, and helping us make our robot better in the process.

Jason

P.S. And thanks, of course, to the very long list of other volunteers who make the GTR so wonderful.

[fluffy]

yay happy story!

thats pretty cool to hear

[Richard Wallace]

This is a great story. Tristan is already renowned on CD for his detailed knowledge of the rules -- here is an example of getting the right result while continuing to respect those rules.

It is nice to see the volunteers in Canada recognized for just one of the hundreds of little things they do to make the Greater Toronto and Waterloo regionals an inspiration to all of the FIRST community.

[JBotAlan]

I would much rather hear this then hear the others bash FIRST...thanks for this!

Happy stories? Hmm...well, we broke a potentiometer on the arm. When we broke it, the code on the 'bot crashed--red light of doom (I still am not sure why...ACT OF GOD!), causing it to freeze in position, effectively keeping the elbow motor from binding/white smoking/other bad, bad things.

Within 5 minutes, we had a new pot mounted and recalibrated. (little did I know, during the next match it would "drift" 66 (yes, sixty-six) degrees, causing one of the presets to backdrive the elbow...I'm glad they caught it before destroying things)

That's the best story I've got. That, and the fact that I met 3 old friends, all made through FIRST at some point, over this weekend. Wow, that should be on the "Overdosed on FIRST if..." list...

JBot

[Rosiebotboss]

Thanks for painting the tech inspectors in a positive light. We are not a bad bunch of people.

My favorite story is at Championships last year. I do not remember the team number, but I was assigend a rookie team from NYC. The team consisted of a science teacher and I think 6 students. They obviously needed help from an experienced builder. Their wiring was a mess, the pneumatics did not work.

I spent an hour with them showing them what needed to be done, how to make it neater and to pass. I came back 3 hours later and everything was done and looked great. They were very excited that someone took the time to show them the correct way to route wiring, plumb pneumatics etc....Here was a teacher with little experience building machines, little resources, and little direction and she did the best she could inspiring the students to do the best they could. The students were grateful.

[Tristan Lall]

Thanks to everyone for the compliments. It's always a pleasure to be of assistance—inspectors, as much as anyone, want to see every robot competing.

There's one little semi-related thing that some of you might be scratching your heads about: why was an SMC cylinder being considered? Normally, it wouldn't have been (per the rulebook), but the teams in Canada received an e-mail from FIRST HQ exempting "SMC cylinders, provided they are of identical [stroke] length, bore, and mounting schemes of those on the custom cylinder order form in the back of the Pneumatics Manual." We felt that while this was a deviation from the procedure in <R25>, the teams would expect that they could rely upon that e-mail, and make purchasing and design decisions on that basis.

Conveniently, SMC Canada has a warehouse in the vicinity of the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, which enabled us to refer several teams directly to them, when their robots' pneumatics were incompliant.