We missed the priority deadline, but still managed to pick up some nice stuff.
These were the most useful items, and then there was a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.
Quadro K4000 GPU
Digital Multimeter
4x Victor 888
Diagonal Cutters
Igus 3D printer filament
It’s a shame teams are limited to one GPU. Would’ve gotten a second one for SLI. 
After looking through how FIRST Choice worked this year I was trying to think of ways the algorithm could be improved.
What are people’s thoughts on having a max qty per round variable on each item?
In the current system if a team wanted to order 20 PDBs they could have with their #1 item and taken 20 or all the PDBs that were remaining if under 20.
However if the system had a max per round setup, a team could still try to get 20 but they would have to do it over 10 rounds if the PDB had a max qty per round of 2. I’m not sure how much of improvement this would be but it’s one of the few flaws I see in the system, and I’m not actually sure anything like this was exploited or not.
Why not just give teams 5 credits each round (or any other amount really) to be attributed to the next item on their list? If they have accumulated enough credits toward that item, they get it that round. If not, the points are added to their running total. If the item that they are “saving” credits for runs out of stock, all of their accumulated credits are immediately applied to the next item on their list, I would even be okay with teams getting multiple items in a given round with this format. Say you store up 90 credits for a graphics card and then the stock for this item runs out, this system could then just keep selecting the next items on your list until your “savings” run out.
Had the same idea when I saw the process. I think it would make it a bit more fair, but for really high priority items like batteries I think the qty per round should be one if a team can get a max of two, just to play a bit more into the limiting system and possibly make teams who don’t want them as much change their priorities.
Our FIRST Choice package arrived today from AndyMark!
Really really wanted those pneumatic solenoid valves. Ah, well. And spikes too. But glad we got the breakers, and we’re flush with micro switches now. Didn’t really need the capacitors, but it appears we came really close to not using up all 600 points…
Here’s what we did get:
0 Solenoid, Double Valve Kit (fc15-013)
2 Pneumatic Pressure Switch (fc15-113)
5 Micro switch, set of 10 (fc15-017)
2 Green Ring Light (fc15-033)
3 Snap Action Breaker Kit (fc15-115)
0 Spike (fc15-112)
1 Freelin-Wade Transparent Blue Tubing (fc15-012)
0 12V Battery (fc15-008)
1 Battery Charger (fc15-005)
0 Parker 2014 FC Kit (fc15-067)
6 Parker Prestolok Straight, 1/8NPT Male to 1/4in tube (10 ct.) (fc15-070)
1 Freelin-Wade Blue Tubing (fc15-010)
2 Parker Fitting Kit (fc15-065)
4 Parker Prestolok Elbow, 1/8NPT Male to 1/4in tube (10 ct.) (fc15-068)
0 1/2" Hex Shaft Collar (fc15-086)
0 3/8" Hex Shaft Collar (fc15-084)
0 1/2" Shaft Collar (fc15-079)
0 1/2" x 1/2" Rigid Coupling (fc15-077)
2 REV Protoboard (fc15-029)
0 1/4" x 1/4" Beam Coupling (fc15-080)
0 3/8" x 3/8" Beam Coupling (fc15-081)
0 Velcro Kit (fc15-036)
0 Sensor Panel (gyro & accelerometer) (fc15-055)
0 Freelin-Wade Black Tubing (fc15-009)
2 Teflon tape (fc15-018)
5 Igus 2014 Bag (fc15-102)
2 PCB Toggle Kit (fc15-026)
2 Ethernet Port Saver (fc15-030)
0 Power Distribution Board (fc15-054)
0 Freelin-Wade Red Tubing (fc15-011)
0 Parker T Fitting, 1/8NPT Female to 1/4in tube (10 ct.) (fc15-066)
1 Tantalum capacitor kit: Low ESR polymer (fc15-057)
0 Breadboard (fc15-061)
Kind of off topic, but could someone please correct my understanding of further FIRST Choice opportunities. I was under the assumption that come Kickoff more parts are going to be added to FIRST Choice and multiple hundreds of points were going to be added to each team’s account (I was thinking 1400 for some reason…). Is this remotely true?
I found a blog post stating that additional items would be added, but I couldn’t find anything about additional credits being added. Is that an unknown right now?
Quoting from the FRC blog, “We will be adding parts (and credits) to FIRST Choice at Kickoff. More details on that process will be posted very soon.”
So credits will be added, but I don’t know how many.
On the positive side one of my rookie teams did get their requested solenoids, so I’m feeling good about that.
We just got ours in today. Didn’t get our top two items (Solenoid kit and Batteries) but otherwise we did pretty well. We were fortunate that there wasn’t anything that our team REALLY needed this year. Last year we really needed a new classmate, but this year we’re pretty well stocked.
As the team electrical guy, I was happy to see we got one of those breakout boards for the roboRIO. Planning on building an arduino-powered light controller on it. We also got two victors, which are also always good to have around for non-precise motor applications.
Also, does anyone happen to know if the webcam that they were selling works with the roboRIO? It was second-to-last on our priority list, and we still got one. I know there’s a USB host port on the new controller, so it would seem that, if there is an embedded linux driver available for it for the new system, it’d probably work. If not, suppose we could always hook it up as a shop webcam for our team website.
Yes it does.
The drivers are all there and it just plugs and plays.
There will be example code to demonstrate how it’s used.
We’ve used it quite a bit in testing and just passing the video through to the default dashboard.
We’ve had two hooked up at once.
It only costs about $20.
Our team got a new classmate for our cRIOs (we still have the e09 one that cant even hold labview anymore!) and some other random things that I can not even remember any more.
Quadro cards are already showing up on eBay. Not sure how I feel about that.
For any teams ebaying them…
We’d trade for one, we have lots of stuff… COTS items, we can even machine some for trade.
PM me offers.
Pretty sure Nvidia will slap them with a cease and desist. It’s happened before.
Hmm. I didn’t sign any waver stating what I would do with items received by FIRST Choice. I’m not a lawyer - but since FIRST Choice is provided by FIRST after we pay them our entry fee, it seems to me that we’ve paid for what we’re receiving, regardless of how FIRST got it.
The only reason I bring it up is because I know so many items ARE donated - but FIRST chose (again) to make that item cost only 100 credits rather than the 400 or so that it was worth. There are also still quadros left in FIRST choice for people who need them.
I won’t hold it against anyone who chooses to ebay them, that’s for sure. For a team short on cash $400 can buy quite a bit. I do think trading to teams that can use them like Adam suggested is a much better idea.
We got no batteries out of a possible 2.
We got no CanJaguars out of a possible 4.
We got one solenoid out of a possible 3.
We got 260 used out of 600. And we submitted plenty.
I don’t understand this system. And needless to say I didn’t like it.
All I’m saying is I’m quite certain teams have been contacted by companies who donated product to FIRST Choice and have been told they were going to face legal action if they didn’t stop selling the item they donated.
Do you know of an specific case that has happened? Legal action means you violated a specific law or a contract. Civil actions are expensive. Just getting a lawyer to write a letter is more than the value of the video card. The items are donated to a team. They can do with them what they want. The only item that might be different are the Roborio & Crios. They require licensed software to work. Buried in the terms license agreement might be terms that prevent resale of the software. More likely, and even this is very likely, they would have First contact the team & explain that selling donated product is not in the spirit of the game.
We got some pocket lint, a crumpled stack of chemistry homework, and a bottle labeled “headlight fluid”. I feel kinda ripped off.