Soccer Ball Sold Out

[indieFan]

Wait a second. You all mean to tell me that you expect to have a specific soccer ball available to you?

Isn't this just another part of the engineering problem? At my company, we have to begin building things before we have everything in house due to contract issues. We have to begin building things before we have test benches set up. We are a development area, so we're constantly looking for the right material for the right job.

And, in my opinion, if you are designing for a single specific soccer ball, you are being too narrow minded in your design. The manual even states that the "...color and surface may vary." Are you going to deflate your ball to various pressures during testing? Are you going to scuff parts of the ball up during testing? While you could, you probably won't.

Just expand your design to cover a range of possibilities and you'll be fine. If required, test one of the smooth, rubber, non-stitched soccer balls like the ones used in Phys. Ed. and one that is a quality competition, stitched soccer ball. If both work, you're design is robust enough to handle any type of soccer ball thrown at it.

Otherwise, good luck finding one in an auction on ebay or through nextag.

indieFan

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

But I make no apologies for saying this wouldn't even be perceived as a problem if they'd put just ONE regulation ball in every KoP. I'd happily trade the KoP wheels... especially the rather useless slick ones... for one regulation soccer ball.

Jason

Jason, I couldn't agree more. How do we make the best possible design we can, without having any reference whatsoever as to the specifics of the game piece we are playing with. It is not in the kit, it is not in any store, and now, we cannot even get one, even just ONE! And how do we know that this HS500 ball is really the same, without ever having seen an HS300?

[jsasaki]

It would have been nice if FIRST supplied us with at least 1 ball in the KOP like they did with the orbit balls last year.

[rfolea]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

I'll begin this with my standard preface that

BUT... if it is indeed the case that the soccer balls are now sold out, this is entirely inexcusable. Last year... the first time... was a forgivable mistake. But to source game pieces made of unobtainium for two years in a row is unacceptable.

Jason

"Well hopefully we will see two things out of this:
1) a lesson learned for distribution"

Why does everyone refer to last year as "the First Time?" Does no one remember the poof ball fiasco - that company was totally blind sided. Said they could have easily been prepared if someone had just mentioned it was coming ...

Stupid Question - I can't find the spec's for the ball in the documentation - can someone point me towards it? Is it the HS300 everyone is referring to?

[Ram Raman]

Quick question for anyone who went to the northeastern kickoff... does anyone know what parts from the KOP were missing?

[cooldude8181]

I have never thought that all the soccer balls are a little bit different.

I will have to bring this up to my team because it is a very good point.

[gyaniv]

GOD...
I almost started crying from laughing while reading it...
Feels good to have Nike as a sponsor that gives you 50balls for free... And not the cheap kind...
So awesome to be us right now...

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

I'd happily trade the KoP wheels... especially the rather useless slick ones... for one regulation soccer ball.

Jason

The slick wheels are very useful, especially for smoothing-out 'jumpy' drive trains.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Guys, I'm right there with you in agreement with FIRST keeping their games under wraps. They absolutely need to take into account the secrecy of the game. That being said, I feel this is an issue that can be handled rather simply when communicating with a company. It is a large commitment (think about the amount of FRC teams that need soccer balls now). Why should I have to design my robot to work with a bunch of different balls when I know exactly which one will be used in competition? It seems to me like this is a problem that can be handled better.

Brandon, I completely agree with you, FIRST needs to tell suppliers in advance that a large order will becoming in along with a large demand come the beginning of the year. Its not fair to the teams or the company who is being left in the dark.

Also, being engineers, the game design commitee probably overlooked the fact that different balls perform differently when kicked and moved. I guess this will be another engineer mishap to over come like indiefan said. Let's look on the bright side though, at least soccer balls aren't sold out worldwide yet!

[MrForbes]

I wonder how inflation will vary among balls during a competition, and between competitions. And I wonder if this difference will be at least as great as the differences between different brand/models of balls.

Perhaps the sky isn't falling? I guess we'll find out when teams post videos showing their magic device handling and shooting different balls, and spec balls at different inflation.

[rwood359]

Originally Posted by Doug G

It was fun to talk to the rep from DTI yesterday. Apparantly we were the first to place an online order with them on Saturday, so he called and asked what was going on. Why is everyone ordering these balls on the same day? At first he thought it was some practical joke. I mean, how often does a company sell all of its product in a matter of hours ... by surprise. Anyhow, they (the rep at least) was completely unaware their ball was being used for this competition.

The simple solution to information control is a non-disclosure agreement between FIRST and the supplier. The same type of agreement that FIRST requires the beta teams to sign before getting the beta systems.

[GaryVoshol]

So this company, which sells out of their entire stock of 1000 balls in one weekend, didn't notice when they got a single order of some 1000 balls to be shipped to NH? (50 events, 20 balls each = 1000 balls. Is 20 even enough?)

I'm sorry, I think this is inexcusable negligence on FIRST's part. Based on further information provided below, I strike that comment. But it appears they didn't make the supplier aware of the magnitude of orders they might expect.

They probably asked for a quote of 1000 balls and took a good price, without asking how many balls would be left in stock after their order was placed.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

So this company, which sells out of their entire stock of 1000 balls in one weekend, didn't notice when they got a single order of some 1000 balls to be shipped to NH? (50 events, 20 balls each = 1000 balls. Is 20 even enough?)

Well,
1) I don't even think 1000 is enough cause you have one field, a practice field, and then the usual wear and tear replacements.

2) You can't really blame the company. The company probably has sales of 100 balls of that type in a month, and they weren't expecting to sell all 1000 of their stock. And even then, after a month, the company is just going to go back to selling the usual 100 balls per month, so without prior knowledge, there is no way the company could've prepared for this.

[Tetraman]

I have made the determination that this is now the only problem with the entire Breakaway game and senerio.

I completely agree - this is inexcusable considering it happened last year at an even much larger scale. However, I'm always inclined to forgive FIRST as they usually realize the problem and make arrangemets to fix it.

[ayeckley]

Originally Posted by rwood359

The simple solution to information control is a non-disclosure agreement between FIRST and the supplier.

Seconded. This is very common practice in the engineering world when you need to have discussions with vendors, potential teammates, etc. without wanting the whole world to know what you are up to. The penalty for violating the terms of the NDA is a lawsuit ($), so breaches of contract are really very rare. Perhaps soccer ball distributors aren't used to establishing NDAs with potential customers, but the FIRST organization surely is. I'm guessing that it's a conscious decision on their part -- but I'm not sure what their reasoning is.