[Bill's Blog] 4/18/12: Are you excited yet?

FIRST General Forum
1

Taken from Bill’s Blog, 4/18/12, found here.

Good Afternoon Teams,

As you can imagine, things are crazy busy here at HQ. I met with the full FRC staff at lunch today for a final all hands on deck meeting before we all take off in different directions. They’re tired, but excited and ready to go.

Six fields from the regular season are waiting in St Louis where they will become the four division fields and the two practice fields. The pristine back up field that has been sitting in Memphis awaiting deployment in the case of an emergency is slated to be used for Einstein. Three more trucks will leave HQ in the next two days carrying the Championship judge materials, pit supplies, trophies, volunteer provisions, game pieces and a wealth of other equipment specific to the Championship.

I am scheduled to fly down on Sunday with the Engineering Manager. Several members of the Engineering Department will join us on Monday, then the rest of the staff follow on the Tuesday before Championship. Set up in the dome and convention center will actually start this Saturday, 21APR. Before we can bring in the fields and event specific supplies, the production company needs to fly the rigging, the floor has to be taped out to show where everything goes and the electricians must start running the power.

I know an enormous amount of information is being sent to teams attending Championship. Please make sure someone from your team is reading all the Championship email blasts so your team doesn’t miss any important information. Copies of all the blasts can be found on the FRC Team Email Blast Feed page.

As your team prepares for Championship, you should keep in mind we will have 400 FRC teams this year. We expect the pits will be approximately 10’x10’, but space will be tight and you may have to modify your pit layout to fit in less than the full ten feet. Plan accordingly. In addition, please make sure your team completes and returns the electronic team background sheet for the new Team Hometown Media program to assist our Marketing Department as they spread the news about Championship. Also the Practice field policy for 2012 has been posted on the Championship page of our website. In addition to the usual two full practice fields, we’re going to have four wooden practice fields just for shooting hoops.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X7Rsd22xh2Y/T48UnoopgzI/AAAAAAAAAII/5Zc4H1GLeNA/s1600/qr+for+website.gif

During Championship, you can follow FIRST on our new mobile-friendly website.

After Championship we’ll be in touch with all FRC teams to request feedback. The staff will be working on updates to the kit, the 2013 & 2014 games, the field management system and a host of other elements of FRC over the summer and we want your input. Please be sure to have someone from your team complete the end of season surveys when they come out after Championship.

Speaking of input, Microsoft is looking for information about if and how teams used Kinect this season. If you’re going to the Championship, have used Kinect this season, and would like to share your feedback, please contact Alfred from Microsoft at [email protected].

7 days until Championship
See you soon!

I’m excited, how about you?!?

2

As someone who isn’t going to CMP, I just giggle/sigh at improvements to FMS and Kinect, and will plan on trying out the mobile website.

Good luck to everyone!

3

Their practice field policy makes it very difficult to evaluate triple balancing with other teams prior to selections…

4

Yes Bill, yes I am excited. But I’m also sad I can’t be there :frowning:

5

I’m worried that they can’t yet say for certain as to what the pit sizes will be. A lot of teams put a lot of work into their pit areas, and some are very difficult to adapt.

6

Agreed. I wish they would give us a definite answer if they are going to be 10x10 or an exact smaller number, instead of just basically saying ‘be prepared for a random smaller pit size.’ Why increase the number of teams going if it might affect the functionality of other teams?

7

Would you rather they said nothing, then pointed at the rulebook when people complained? Give them a little slack for at least giving a heads up IMO.

8

At least they are giving you guys a heads up and when desiging a pit display you should have a plan to trim it down a foot or two! To an extent you can’t really plan things out 100% when it comes to the floor plan of an event when you need to consider traffic patterns and major intersections where extra space will be needed for safety.

A 10x10 pit is not guarunteed when competiting. They might have to sqeeze 6inches or maybe a whole foot but just live with it and enjoy the Championship! :slight_smile:

9

True, just another part of the challenge of the Championship!

Hmm, didn’t think of that. :yikes:

2014 game? Man, they’re way ahead of schedule compared to where the GDC was this time last year :wink:

10

Can’t FIRST pull most of this information out of their TIMS records?

Will somebody with Adobe Acrobat Pro (or similar) please make this into a fillable PDF form that we can send in electronically?

11

This is going to be a problem. Maybe some teams will ship their bridge from home?

12

That would be not only an extra expense for a team, but where would they put it at competition? It would still require practice field space.

13

Perhaps near one of the wooden hoop setups? Although given that there’s no solid information about these supplementary setups, whether there’ll be space for such a setup is dubious…

14

Does this work?

Team Profile Form.pdf (161 KB)


Team Profile Form.pdf (161 KB)

15

Works for me! You should send this to frcteams!

16

I’m glad they are adding the extra wooden practice fields for shooting hoops. That’s going to help the main practice fields run smoothly. Good call.

Jane

17

Speaking of input, Microsoft is looking for information about if and how teams used Kinect this season. If you’re going to the Championship, have used Kinect this season, and would like to share your feedback, please contact Alfred from Microsoft at [email protected].

I’ve got feedback: Don’t.

I like the kinect, and love the idea of controlling the robot that way, but my code is more accurate and faster, and there are not enough weeks in the build season to practice with it. I know Bill mentioned that “the Kinect will play a bigger role next year”, but I honestly hope it does not. I think if it stayed as an optional hybrid-period mode, it’d be useful to some teams, but any “bigger” role may ruin things.

Just my $.02.

18

We joked about bringing our bridge, but ruled it out when we figured there would be no where to put it.

19

Almost. There’s an option somewhere to make it both fillable and saveable in Acrobat Reader. Select that option, then send it to FIRST.

Also, might want to advise them that they can even deploy a version of that form with a “submit by e-mail” button, if they’re so inclined. (That’s another built-in Acrobat feature.)

20

In our team’s case, the use of the practice field might speed up when we can get to inspection. I wished they would at least let you use practice field Wednesday once you have been inspected. That would be very lovely.

Our pit is built to fit 10x10 and because wood frames and metal bars dont really compress well (or at all) it would be difficult for us to adjust for smaller…

After beta testing with the Kinect and using it in competition I have a lot of feedback to give. I wrote about 2 pages and will send it in as well as post it to CD once i have finalized it.