At the beginning of the season we were told that the boiler processes fuel at an average rate of 5 balls per second. Many took this number purely at face value, assuming that there would not be a wide variance. Now that we have seen many competitions, a lot of people have now seen the mechanism that sorts the balls.
From what I have heard it has 14 slots in the high goal portion and the motor rotates it at about 60 rpm. I feel that the 5 balls per second has to be a lie if it is operating like that.
Has anyone counted how fast it is able to process when it has a lot of balls in it?
I have gathered some hopper autonomous videos from various teams that shoot fairly fast. Will try and do some analysis tonight to estimate the rate at which these balls are being processed. Video links here if any are interested.
In their defense, I’d a whole lot rather they report a much lower rate than the maximum processing rate than report the maximum and lead teams to believe that it will always process Fuel at 14 balls per second. Also, I’d say that the process of getting the Fuel to fall into those slots takes longer than getting the Fuel out of those slots. So since 14 Fps is the max and 5 Fps is the conservative average reported by the GDC, how much Fuel can the Boiler reasonably process in 15 seconds? I’ve no way of knowing, unfortunately.
From an FTA: FIRST built the Boiler to process Fuel at a rate much higher than 5 Fuel per second. They only stated 5 Fuel per second because that was the minimum they felt comfortable guaranteeing. So really 5 Fuel per second is more of a minimum.
At the San Diego regional, no teams were flooding the boiler. I can say that scoring 2-3 balls can take several seconds to process. The balls bounce around a lot.
When taken at face value it kind of is. 0-14 balls per second depending on how packed the Boiler versus 5 balls per second average depending on how packed the Boiler is. Those are hugely different statements. The 5 bps is really leading people on.
While both may be accurate, one gives a better picture of what is going on.
I did a little video analysis, using a few matches of teams with high scoring fuel auto’s that have video on TBA with the event scoring overlay.
From two matches each of 118 at Hub City, 33 at Southfield, and 1706 at St Louis, this is what I found:
Counting Timing Relative to Shots Entering Boiler:
There is typically a 2-3s delay to the FIRST COUNTS from when the FIRST SHOT enters the top of the boiler
There is typically a 4-5s delay to the “FAST PROCESSING” from when the FIRST SHOT enters the top of the boiler
There is typically a 4-5s delay to the LAST COUNTS from when the LAST SHOT enters the top of the boiler
Boiler & Counter Notes:
There is typically a 7-8s period of counting - usually counts are a little slower for the first couple seconds and last couple seconds
Typically the period of fastest counting lasts about 4s, and the total from this fastest period was usually 17-25 counts (~4-6 bps)
The highest total balls counted in a 1s span (aligning with the event timer) was 9 balls
Total balls counted seemed to align pretty well with the number of shots I saw entering the top of the boiler (at 0.25x speed in only one attempt per match; so I’m 100% sure my count wasn’t always accurate either). My total and the field total were the same 3x, within 1 ball 1x, and within 3 balls 2x. I’m not saying the field didn’t have the true count in all 6 of these matches (just that it didn’t match my first attempt at a count in 3 instances) and I’m not saying the boiler is always accurate - I’m sure there are some errors.
Balls seem to be counted in autonomous when the field timer reads 0 and 135 (0 shows very briefly, so I believe 135 is displayed for the 15th second of autonomous)
Don’t take any of this as gospel… these are simply my notes from watching 6 recorded autonomous periods. I tried to be accurate, but only watched each video 2-3x.
Obi-Wan: So, what I told you was true… from a certain point of view.
Generally speaking, a “lie” implies some level of wrongdoing and/or malice. I certainly know that if I accused a co-worker of lieing they’d be a little upset. I don’t think it’s a word I’d apply to the folks at FIRST.
