I’m helping (hopefully) set up a practice field for multiple local teams. While surveying the location, we discussed hanging some new light fixtures, to replace the mixed 8ft fluorescent and sodium high-bays. During this, an engineer friend, who was helping out, asked “well, what light level is required?” He was incredulous when I said that FRC didn’t have published standards for field illumination.
So, I ask…why don’t we?
As precise as the game manual is, it’s orders of magnitude more precise than the vast majority of industry gets when writing a specification.
Counterpoint for argument too: There is a safety manual. This implies there needs to be enough light to be safe. Does this count as a spec?
I wouldn’t inherently expect one that’s as precise as the game manual to exist.
Furthermore, let’s say one did, and a field was out of compliance. What’s the remedy?
This is an excellent question and in comparison to the specificity of the rest of the game/event manual, guidance on lighting is surprisingly dim (pun intended).
In the age of april tags and more complex sensor systems that are subject to interference from different lighting conditions, it certainly seems logical to institute some sort of policy.
I would however expect it comes down to placing more burden on event coordinators/volunteers. Specifically that the remediation of being “out of spec” could be quite difficult. Adding lights to the field would likely require additional electrical routing, add set up time, take more floor space, add cost, possibly worsen the spectating experience and overall add one more thing to manage.
As much as I would like my team’s limelights to work consistently field to field without calibration, I wouldn’t want to add additional work for coordinators and volunteers.
Venues vary a lot. And requiring they be consistent is near impossible to make happen without significant cost. Not that it doesn’t impact designs and performance at events… my team was impacted a number of years ago (2012) when we competed at an event where there were hot (broad-spectrum) lights set up at each corner of the field in the camera FOV that drowned out any retroreflective lighting. Einstein was delayed for multiple hours one year (2017 MMP) because the sun was shining on the field, impacting both robot and driver vision.
Look at the video from CAPH 2024 finals.
That is an example of what the lighting can be on the field: dim enough to be hard to see. I want to say that’s a sodium high bay, too.
As for why no standards: no standard venues exist. Mix of high school gyms, college arenas, convention centers, a warehouse or two, some with skylights and some without. Hard to work around that mix with a consistent field light.
Was this 2018/19 at Minute Maid park?
2017 Steamworks at MMP, yes
NYC Regional on any sunny day at… I think its 3:15pm?
Beams sunlight straight onto the blue alliance stations…
NYC 16 at javitis had lights so bright shinning on the towers, it was impossible for teams to use vision tracking.
The Armory gets beautifully scenic shots, but the amount of moving light makes photography a fun game.
Because we run events in hundreds of locations using only the lighting that is available.
At champs last year, the LED screens were really bright, to the point where the image being displayed could affect what and how cameras see.
Part of me misses when events had like 100 halogen lights illuminating the field, but I don’t miss the heat.
Anyone mentioned PNW champs yet?.
PNW teams seem to know what to expect, but the webcasts for those that don’t know seem wild.
Haveing said that. The lights have gon out at Michigan champs, robots in the dark are kinda fun to watch.
Lighting in that first finals match was so bad we were struggling to get pose with vision, and between matches I asked the head ref if we could just shine lights at the speaker tags. They didn’t allow us to do that, but I did convince them to turn down the brightness of the big LED wall behind our speaker. The reduction in bloom was enough to allow vision to (barely) work again.
Not the fault of those that helped organize the regional and I probably wouldn’t have let someone illuminate the tags from the sidelines either, its just something that should be considered going forward if we are going to have AprilTags instead of retroreflective stuff. Even a small amount of light shining on the tags from the scoring table would have been enough to completely eliminate the issue.
I have said it before: They should just backlight the AprilTags!
Then we could do more dark mode matches:
I also know that some of the speaker Apriltags for LIR 2024 (Especially on the red alliance) fell under the shadow of the speaker hood, since the field was lit from above.
I remember @Gold87 mentioning this at some point, but I do know it was a significantly darkening shadow.
PNW Alum here, While the area around the field is REALLY dark, they do have a set of truss lights that are from FIRSTWA, and so the light should be the same from year to year, despite the venue changing. It’s known the field will be darker, and theres a calibration period and what not, but I did hear there was issues with shadows under the speaker and theres not much that can be done about that. they’ve been doing lights out at DCMP in the PNW for years, and so everyone knows about it. People pack lights on their pit carts, photographers from teams cry because cameras don’t work in low light (field was bright enough for photos, but good luck taking pictures of anything else) but otherwise everyone used to it.
Yeah I think I was more getting at the inconsistency in lighting across the field. Not trying to take a dig at PNW here, just trying to add an example. It looks awesome from an aesthetic standpoint though.
As an aside, pits in the dark really suck if you are in elims. A cheap headlamp or two in the tool chest is a good investment for minimal money.
wouldn’t be new ground for FIRST… IIRC before retro reflective tape they had colored diffuse panels to do vision tasks with (~2006 or 2007 ish, not positive on the year)
There was also the “hot goal” lights in 2014 and the scale lights in 2018. Maybe some other lights in there that I am forgetting
Both, actually. Admittedly we were using the CMUCam.
This was AFTER the failure of green vision targets on game pieces in 2005, unlit; most teams just guessed at targets.
2006 and 2007 were a bit better, using green cold cathode tubes through a diffuser to mark certain targets–and in 2006, who could shoot and have their shots count.
2008: No vision targets.
2009: Stacked pink and green on the trailers, pink up for red and pink down for blue.
2010: Large bullseye patterns on/around the goals. I want to say there might have been retroreflective tape on there, not sure.
2011: If I recall correctly, this is when the retroreflective tape started being used. Also somewhere around in this timeframe, teams started using illumination to trigger.
I completely understand that venues vary and setting up extra lighting can be an additional burden for organizers. However, instead of setting a fixed ZZ lumens requirement, could FIRST establish a range, such as a minimum of XX lumens and a maximum of YY lumens? While it doesn’t need to be mandatory, organizers who have the ability to adjust venue lighting could aim to stay within this range. If they can, they could report to FIRST that the venue is capable of meeting these conditions. If not, teams would at least be informed in advance.
