The new control system rocks. I cannot stress this enough. This was the first time in my 8 years of FRC that my team has fielded a robot without a single major controls problem during competition. The new motor controllers are absolutely fantastic; we didn’t have a single problem with our Talon SRX’s, and the integrated signal wires are a godsend (even using them in PWM mode, being able to easily daisy-chain motor controllers on the same side of the drive train saved us a lot of wiring effort and mess). Just about everything is a huge upgrade from what it was before.
Ditto the new control system. A huge improvement over cRIO, and I’m sure it will only get better (nits were delays in establishing DS<->Robot communications, and some minutiae in the new Java WPIlib).
I REALLY wish the beta program was different. We had quite a few issues with the new control system this year. There were just some small things that would have really helped out had we had access to the control system with the rest of the beta teams. Unfortunately, it seemed most of the beta team presentations seemed like variations on the same presentation. Not much real debugging seemed to happen, just a “this is how you use the system and here’s what it can do”. There didn’t seem to be much sharing on the little differences that have to be done between the RoboRio and cRio. I’m not a programming guy, so I can’t really point any one thing out at the moment.
Really liked that FIRST is attempting to emulate the FIRST in Michigan championship video format.
For reference of FiM videos, the FiM 2014 video is a fantastic FRC video production !
Can I ask how you’d like to see it improved? We were part of the beta and if there is something specific you’d like to see then I can try to take the idea forward with the folks we still have contact with. They asked for feedback on how to improve the beta program and we’re trying to give them some.
I thought that the different beta teams, there were about 100 of them, did a good job of covering the different aspects of the beta testing in the dozen or so presentations that I saw. Let me know, would love to pass the feedback forward.
I think for me the biggest thing I liked about 2015 was that the finals at events was always the best two alliances. In the past, there have been several events I have been to where the semifinal was the real final. Since, alliances played against each other based upon ranking it happened fairly often the two best alliances would play each other before the finals. I liked thanks to the average the two best alliance played in the final.
The new control system was excellent. I’m so glad to be done with those awful WAGO connectors. All the new connectors are snappy and much easier to use. The smaller size of all the electronics in general was a huge step up. The roboRIO having USB connections was very useful in having an easy way to deploy code without dealing with networking.
Having eight alliance for Einstein with two fields was a wonderful idea. It made the transition time much better between matches. In the past there was a lot more dead time and having two fields fixed that. Also Einstein being a full elimination event made it more intense and interesting. I very much hope that stays.
I really enjoyed the less strict rules about robot size and parameter. It led to some really neat ideas that were fun to watch. Not having the hassle of changing bumpers was also nice. It might
I appreciate that FIRST decided to create an API for third parties like the Blue Alliance to get data from. When it worked it seems like updates were pushed faster than with the past system of web scrapping. I would like to see FIRST in future work more with these type of third party projects. I think the API being down so often shows an area where this can be even further improved. If FIRST could reach out to people who make these type of things and have them make some official stuff for FIRST I think it would be better for everyone. FIRST biggest asset is the people who love it enough to poor time into great third party resources.
That FiM video is incredible! And maybe a statement about last year’s game versus this year’s. The game is very entertaining to watch and much more “sports like”, as opposed to this year’s “Red alliance is stacking totes! Not to be outdone, blue alliance is also stacking totes!” 
There is quite the difference in seeing a presentation on how a control system is nominally used and actually getting your hands on the hardware. You learn more about the small idiosyncrasies than would be demonstrated in an hour long presentation. A very specific example is being able to use an odd number of bits per word in SPI (as documented here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133046) If we were able to get a hold of the beta system, we would have been able to figure it out before the season even started instead of getting an answer more than halfway through the season. I find it difficult to believe that this wasn’t seen by any of the beta testing teams (and should have been shared).
Are you of the opinion that information was intentionally withheld to provide a competitive advantage, or is there another complaint?
I honestly don’t know. Given how prevalent gracious professionalism is in FIRST, I would like to think that is the case, but you can never tell. All I know for sure is that we would have been able to figure it out (or would have known it to be an issue) prior to it becoming a problem.
As a programmer, I loved the new control system. Our team this year had essentially no electrical-related issues at competitions this year, whereas in the past we always had many. I’m sure our electrical team would like me to attribute this to them having improved, but I think the new components helped too.
This game really managed to cut down on the complexity of the rules. With regards to design, this freed up our options and allowed us to explore more creative options. We didn’t do anything crazy with tethers, but our robot certainly wouldn’t have been possible if we had to follow strict bumper rules and size limits. Gameplay-wise, in past seasons avoiding penalties has been an important part of the drivers’ job, but this year the only way our robot could get a penalty would be if we were trying to.
My belief, starting from as soon as I saw the game video, was that FIRST never intended for non-interactive, non-win/loss gameplay to be permanent. I think it was a combination of 1) doing something really different to throw teams for a loop and 2) creating a (relatively) safe testing ground for more streamlined rules. The challenge for them now is to return to more interactive games without returning to the old level of rules complexity and penalty frequency.
The queuing and field set up at champs was awesome. I could tell that someone spent a lot of time thinking about it to make it work smoothly, and they did very well. The entire pit and field layout seemed to be very efficient this year.
We learned a new kind of game this year. New way to design, new way to play, new way to score, new way to advance, new way to ref.
I think this might have been a factor that allowed some teams to bubble up in stature. Top teams like 1114, 111 and 67 manage to fight through defense and still score in normal games. This year many mid-range teams could shine because they didn’t have to try to fight defense and score.
I doubt we’ll have another no-defense game next year, but it was a refreshing change this year.
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I liked the relaxed restrictions on size, regardless of the shenanigans it almost allowed on Einstein.
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I like Cheesecake, and the responsiveness to the loud voices of the community to keep it an active part of FRC. Perhaps restrict it somewhat in the future, but don’t eliminate it!
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I really liked the whole concept of assembling in under 1 minute on the field in order to breach outside the starting frame perimeter. It made for a much easier design in some cases and allowed us to focus on the tougher aspects.
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In general everyone at FIRST HQ seemed to be more willing to show their humor, like ‘Chute Door’.
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A Champs format with Quals ending on Friday was easily the best thing about the new Champs schedule. Planning logistics, lunch, etc for Saturday was much easier. I’m sure alliance captains appreciated it too.
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Districts are coming, next Winter (to MD/DC/VA).
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Frank’s responsiveness and openness on his blog really helped add context to some of the announcements from this season
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600+ teams at champs - I like it!
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I liked the small practice spaces at Champs, and would like to see more of them with 20 minute time limits rather that 15 minutes. Those little areas made all of the difference for us capability-wise, and it really looked like there was plenty of floor space to add many more. It would be nice to see more small practice spaces at the Regional/District levels, but I know those are limited by the venues.
Agreed: 20 minutes would be just right, but 15 was not quite enough.
To make it even better: get each practice space a big clock and a reset button. When you start on the field, the next team in line makes sure you hit the button to reset the clock. When it hits 20 minutes, the next team in line clears their throats until you get off the field. All the volunteers need to do is keep the queues full.
Practice spaces in each division would be better still.
The lack of defense allowed more creative thinking. I don’t want to see it every year but it allowed thoughts you would not have considered in past games.
I know for us we would not have used mechanum wheels if there had been defense and we would have missed out a lot of knowledge and fun getting to know them. The rather flimsy arms we had for picking up the 2nd and 3rd bin in auto would not have survived a game with defense.
I thought the added traffic from 600 teams was handled well by opening up more entryways into the pits and generally more thought to traffic flow thru the building.
I learned that the judges might possibly think you’re being sarcastic when you cheer for literally everybody when you’re really being serious.
In other words we didn’t win spirit award and we were bummed about it.
Team Spirit Award sponsored by Chrysler
Celebrates extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit through exceptional partnership and teamwork furthering the objectives of FIRST.
The team spirit award has nothing to do with cheering at competitions…
Our team makes an effort to read through the descriptions of the awards so that we can tailor our interactions with judges at the event towards winning the awards that we want.
It’s worth noting that judging criteria can be ignored or followed rigidly at any event. Outside of Chairman’s (an even that sees some latitude) criteria is not always enforced to the way teams may expect.
O, my bad, we are still a fairly new team and don’t know the requirements for awards outside of winning the competition.