FRC Blog - Safety Superheroes & Comic Con

[cgmv123]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...roes-Comic-Con

Taking over the blog today is Hannah Foust, FRC Program Coordinator. Hannah is responsible for working with UL in setting up the Safety Animation Award, and handles a number of other important tasks too numerous to list. Please see Hannah's note below.

2015 Safety Animation Award Theme

Here’s that moment you’ve all been waiting for! [Drumroll]

The 2015 UL Safety Animation Award theme is… Safety Superheroes!
We want to see 40 second animations that showcase FIRST inspired safety superheroes that you’ve come in contact with, or who you imagine would be a great addition to your team.

For more information on the UL Safety Animation Award and to see last year’s winning videos, please visit the FRC Safety Page. Animations must be submitted in STIMS between Thursday, October 9th, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Noon (ET) and Thursday, December 11th, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Noon (ET).

Salt Lake City Comic Con

Speaking of superheroes... As we noted before in this blog, we showed off an FRC Field at the 2014 Salt Lake City Comic Con. The event took place over the weekend, with many thousands in attendance. Thanks to RD Richard Anderson (who survived the orc attack) and his team for making FIRST Louder!

Check out who dropped by the field during the event:



Grant Imahara, robotics expert, myth buster, and special effects guru, stopped by to meet with teams. Thanks Grant!



Are these the droids you’re looking for? It looks like the blue alliance recruited R2-D2, while the red alliance picked up his blushing doppelganger.

[Jon Stratis]

Man, I feel bad for the red alliance... That R2 unit has a bad motivator, look!

[Gregor]

Not myth buster anymore, but we still love you Grant!

[FrankJ]

We left our field at home, but we where at Dragoncon in Atlanta. A somewhat similar event.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Not myth buster anymore, but we still love you Grant!

and no more FRC 841 either. It would be cool if he came back to mentoring a FIRST team again.

[Qbot2640]

With yet another animation contest announced...I am finally going to ask: Why the weird submission format? Is this some kind of industry standard that I don't realize (since we don't do any other animation or really heavy video editing)? This has always been a hassle to create, and then I'm always worried that it didn't work somehow - and have no way to view the file to make sure it's ok. I really wish they would just allow some "universally recognized" video format, like avi or something!

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

With yet another animation contest announced...I am finally going to ask: Why the weird submission format? Is this some kind of industry standard that I don't realize (since we don't do any other animation or really heavy video editing)? This has always been a hassle to create, and then I'm always worried that it didn't work somehow - and have no way to view the file to make sure it's ok. I really wish they would just allow some "universally recognized" video format, like avi or something!

ISO disk images can be burned to DVDs and handed to the judges they pick. Depending on the judge, handing them a flash drive with 40 .avi's on it may not work out.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by BigJ

ISO disk images can be burned to DVDs and handed to the judges they pick. Depending on the judge, handing them a flash drive with 40 .avi's on it may not work out.

You know, I understand the reasoning behind the submission criteria... FIRST wants to be able to burn a DVD and pop it into a DVD player at the event to put it on the screen. They also want something standardized so they don't run into issues like not having the right codec around.

But really... in today's world it seems like we could move to something like submission by YouTube - upload an HD version to YouTube, and give FIRST the link. Then instead of handing judges DVD's, you just give them a list of YouTube links. All these videos seem to end up on YouTube anyways...

[BigJ]

I'm not saying it's an efficient or correct reason, I'm just saying why it probably is how it is I'm very thankful we can just plop an approved video file on a flash drive for Chairman's now, though.