Today is the big day
only 2 hours until the pits open
I’m so glad my school held off on closing other wise we wouldn’t have been able to go. If we have an early dismissal we have to leave early.
I can’t wait to see everyone’s ingenious creations.
Please can anyone give updates that is there!! I am stuck at college and I want to hear how things are going! Please post any robots that have struck you as good, or any game impressions in general!
Ok everyone, heres an update:
So we got there and the first issue everyone had to overcome was the weather. Freezing rain, hail, ice, the road conditions weren’t great. On top of that the weather was starting to get bad as everyone was driving down. Some schools actually ended up canceling class, like 56 and 303’s school. Guess what that means? No buses, so there were quite a few teams that got off to a late start.
It gets better, the official field doesn’t have any **Poof Balls, **zero. The shipment that was on its way down for today probably got delayed because of the weather, however they got enough teams that brought balls to competition that they borrowed all of those and returned them at the end of the day. As for the control system, rumor has it that NJ had more problems than VCU and BAE, but they were working on it and its getting there slowly but surely.
Most teams that got there didn’t pass inspection at all today. There were teams that had all sorts of problems, improper wiring, illegal parts, robots 33 pounds overweight. I talked with the inspectors and they said that the robots just weren’t developed enough and had a lot of issues.
The average practise match had 2 robots on the field total. 2. Of those robots none really ran smoothly everyone was having problems at one point or another. Autonomous mostly looked to be buggy too, not too many looked clean.
Overall the game play looks like its a whole lot harder than anyone predicted. The ramps at the corner goals are preventing a lot of easy points being scored, if you thought that ramp was easy to get on and score on, watch and see its a good bit harder. The center goal is getting some balls in and by the look of it more teams are giving up on the corner goals and just trying to make a shot with the center goals.
Everything should and will clean up for tomorrow, but for one of the first regionals this year NJ looks like it’ll be great, a lot of teams are looking good but a little more than half still have a good deal of troubleshooting to do.
See everyone bright and early tommorow!
jeez Connor how did you beat me home? last I saw you went off to find a staple gun when I went to leave. IMO 103 had the most functional robot. Very consistent and over all well rounded
How did 1403 run Conor? And 25? Which robots look the best so far?
Thanks for the update.
JT
229
cough you mean 1403? cough
We looked pretty good, we were having some glitches in the ground feeder (tubing on it changed size in the cold of storage) we had a bad master link on our drivetrain the snapped in an early match, but thankfully everything got back in line and we should be good for tommorow. We got a nasty scare when we weighed in at 120.5, but that was later corrected on the account of the offical scale needed to be re-calibrated, which left us at 119.5. We spent most of the day making sure that it was running the way it was supposed to and tweaking a few things here in there. Our camera is looking pretty good also.
25 also looked good, I love the way they load balls into their shooter. They looked to be minorly tweaking a bunch of stuff all day, but I’m not sure if their Autonomous video is proofing to be legit, who knows it was a weird day for everyone.
Right now the team to watch out for is in no doubt 103. They got there a bit late and left early, but they basically opened the robot up and it ran beautifully. Those guys got a robot that works, and it works well, if they aren’t seeded high, they should be the first pick on saturday.
I have a list of bots that impressed me a ton in my head, I’m not so sure about their numbers but there are some ones that looked good, I think 486 and 637 that I really liked, they both had shooters that when loaded made great shots. I think they played defence really well too.
Anyone know how 375 was doing?
Info on Team 293 anyone?
Today was a challenging day, volunteering and everything. I was the person with the head set walking about the field on the red alliance side. Anyway, I am very impress with all the teams and may talk to a couple of y’all on SAT ( I can’t be there tomorrow due to college demands) but yea, um, it was very good and can’t wait for the real competition to begin.
I had the tedious job of sitting at the scorer’s table and saying 3,2,1 go…not that exciting (I really get to open up tomorrow)
ANYWAY onto the ?'s
We DO have Poof Balls now, Karin Kloberg tracked them down and transported 140 Poof Balls to SBA in her mini van.
Sara Neid got the update for the scoring software so hopefully a lot of those bugs will be worked out for tomorrow.
And I do agree with a lot of the teams getting slow starts. 293 missed a few of the beginning matches, but towards the end of the day got into the swing of things. 375 looked like it was having a little trouble with its ground feeder, but its shooter worked well. I was surprised at some teams that didn’t even make the field…the most promenent that comes to mind was 48, they didn’t take part in one practice match all day! 
I also agree the the Cybersonics and the Positronic Panthers are the top two teams to watch as of now, they were the only two that consistently performed IMO. However as the day went on a plethera of teams came into their own and made their presence known…such teams that come to mind are 11,25, 1403, 293, 102, 56…and some others that I can’t think of right now.
It’s shaping up to be a glorious competition and I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow when I get home.
There are differences between a real field and a school field. We don’t have time to sit and spoof a video … we’d rather perfect the autonomous modes. Everything else works flawlessly.
calm down brat i believe u! looks like thiers some good bots, should be a pretty good regional.
How about 88 (TJ²) ?
How are they doing. (Why did NJ not have a regional site again?)
Thanks for all the updates folks. I’ll be there tomorrow, and will visit some teams so keep an eye out for me.
Good luck to all!
Congrats to Wayne Cokeley for receiving the WFA!
Wow!
GO WAYNE GO WAYNE GO WAYNE GO WAYNE!!!
Congrats on winning the WFA.
Very 
Any awards updates??
Anyone have the rankings?
How is 375 doing? Who are the top teams so far?
Funny story about those rankings
for what seemed like almost the entire day the ranking system was down right through the end so as far as I know no one knows who’s at what place.
but here they are http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/NJ/rankings.html
top teams in 1-8 order are
375
25
1811
56
1418
381
103
486
As for awards
87 got the imagery award
innovation in control went to 225
Creativity went to 293
Driving tomorrows technology went to 637
433 firebirds got the entrepreneurship
1676 got the 1st judges award
1089 got the website award
Ernie DiCico won outstanding Volunteer
WFA finalist: Wayne Cokeley team 25
http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/NJ/awards.html
Just a reminder to everyone attending. We are starting extra early tom marrow.
Here are the match results to round everything off
http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/NJ/matches.html