Yeah, our arm was experiencing some unexpected/unwanted problems right after our first qualifying match on thursday. Essentially, the outer tower was being crunched in from rotating it, due to the inertia of the manipulator once the tower stopped moving (its a bit heavier than we expected…). Finally, after lunch today, we were able to fix it so we should running well tomorrow. Drivers are starting to get the hang of it as well. As a side note, thanks to all the teams out there that offered to help throughout the morning while we were working to get our bot up and running! See y’all tomorrow and good luck!
Brenton (above) pretty much summed up everything about our little robot issues. Worry not, tomorrow we should be back in business, with legal bumpers and fitting within the 72 inch box or whatever and all of this other nonsense that occured. It might just be me, but it seems like the judges like to judge us hard because we’re a veteran team.
On another note, whats up with the ref sometimes removing a keeper from a robot and sometimes not? In one match we got the keeper hung up on the flag from our robot after autonomous period had ended… I thought they had to remove it at the end of autonomous, because I had seen that at a webcast from last week. But I didn’t see it happen at UCF so I figured the rule had changed… but no, because a few hours later, I saw a ref run onto the field after autonomous and remove a keeper from a robot. I’m not yelling at the refs or anything… I’d just like to know what’s up?
Oh, and no more tinted safety glasses? I knew the reflective ones that are dark like sunglasses were illegal (someone on my team got yelled at for them on Thursday) but today a lot of us were yelled at because our lenses are tinted pink. If I recall correctly, the rule only states that the dark ones arent allowed, but the tinted ones are ok. So why the rule change? Its rather inconvenient, since our team already spent a ton of money to buy enough safety glasses so that everyone on the team would have some. If they were going to change things, this would have been nice to know at Kickoff. But thats just me.
Good luck to everyone tomorrow!
From Team update #5
Depending on how you interpret this, specifically the last sentence, it can either make the pink safety glasses legal or illegal. The amber bit suggest that they’d be illegal due to them being neither clear nor amber, but the last sentence suggest they’d be legal because it is not a dark shading, unfortunately it is not clear which is the correct interpretation. Personally, I’d lean towards the illegal bit, since there is a very noticeable improvement in vision when using amber safety glasses esp. in low light condiditons, I can’t imagine pink safety glasses offer the same benefits. (although I’ve never worn pink safety glasses)
i heard through the grapevine that 744 changed their wheels to face us. made me feel a little better 
Depending on how you interpret this, specifically the last sentence, it can either make the pink safety glasses legal or illegal. The amber bit suggest that they’d be illegal due to them being neither clear nor amber, but the last sentence suggest they’d be legal because it is not a dark shading, unfortunately it is not clear which is the correct interpretation. Personally, I’d lean towards the illegal bit, since there is a very noticeable improvement in vision when using amber safety glasses esp. in low light condiditons, I can’t imagine pink safety glasses offer the same benefits. (although I’ve never worn pink safety glasses)
You can see just fine. Your world just turns a different color. Seeing in pink is how it should be!
From what I have seen, the keeper is only removed from a robot when it could easily be scored without the team wanting to deliberately score it. For example, if a robot is holding a keeper directly above a spider leg but never let go during the auto mode, the refs will remove it. The reason for this is, if the keeper falls onto a spider leg after the auto mode is complete, the way the match is played and the outcome could be drastically different.
We are changing the tires on our center wheels which should give us more traction. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I think we are up against Team 744 two more times.
At BAE the head ref removed the keeper every time, just look at the first match (where he kinda destroyed a keeper :p). I agree that consistency would be nice sometimes.
most teams were either not ready or procrastinated to do them the morning of (today) and it was crazy
idk what was up with pink, but i think alot of the teams falling into that area the 2-4’s 1-5’s 1-4’s, 2-3’s, all got alot of talking to do.
(how does 233 have 8 matches, if they are 1-5, and someone stated above, that they got two more matches, this =8 there are 68 Qualification matches, so with 51 teams (each team would go around twice every 17 matches). so yes, that does =8, but my team only has 7 matches as far as what i saw on the page,)
if this is correct, my current team that im mentoring can end up 4-4. kool
like i said, alot of the teams had trouble inspecting, therefore most of the morning matches were empty, and thats why the standings are deceiving. so for those teams that are making their alliance lists tonight, wait till tomorrow and you guys will see alot of more talent (or at least i hope).
btw speaking of inspections, the match 1694 was up with 1062 and 179, i think match 48, the inspector apparently forgot to sign the paper and give it to the ref. therefore we couldn’t play that match, which we could have won by 179 climbing up our ramp…
…is there going on with the volunteering, Barry, someone answer me please,
(btw, for those of you who wern’t there afterwards, Barry got his hair dyed orange, thanks to team 1902)
That was 1889 and 1390 getting tangled up together. 1390 was playing counter defense against 1889’s advances on team 69. 1889 did have a ringer in possession. 1889’s arm got caught in 1390’s forklift, the robots tried to untangle themselves, and 1889 fell over snapping their arm off in the process. 1390 had to get rid of the 1889’s blue ringer still attached to 1889’s arm before climbing up 69’s ramp.
It was a close call, I think a penalty could have gone either way. It was definitely not intentional to tip, nor break off 1889’s arm. The 1390 students immediately asked 1889 if there was anything we could do to help repair the arm, but they said it was an easy fix and not to worry about it.
We are changing the tires on our center wheels which should give us more traction. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I think we are up against Team 744 two more times.
I know the match list is generated randomly, but how is it that we’ll be against 744 for a total of 4 times? Twice yesterday and twice today? I don’t think we’re the only ones either; there seem to be alot of repetitive matches.
like i said, alot of the teams had trouble inspecting, therefore most of the morning matches were empty, and thats why the standings are deceiving. so for those teams that are making their alliance lists tonight, wait till tomorrow and you guys will see alot of more talent (or at least i hope).
I’ve been into this for one year, but also I noticed that this year’s regional has a lot more no shows than last year. And I don’t think rankings always mean anything anyway because it usually conflicts with scouting data…
Also, there are way more penalties this year. Like every other match has a penalty on at least one side. Is this unusual as compared to last year or did I just not notice last year?
yes, there are more penalties this year, but theres much more possibility this year for them as well.
PS- GET TO THE BUS!
yes, there are more penalties this year, but theres much more possibility this year for them as well.
PS- GET TO THE BUS!
Ohoho, I’m posting this from the bus with my wireless aircard. Yes, that’s burnage for you.
The Alliances:
- 69, 56, 1029
- 1902, 179, 108
- 1027, 79, 342
- 1251, 1270, 86
- 801, 1523, 744
- 180, 233, 1889
- 1592, 312, 157
- 1557, 1543, 1065
Enjoy.
Thanks Aaroon.
Good to see Tatsu up there, sad not to see the Knights though. 
i am picking allince 2 and 3 to meet in the semi finals
Alliance 2 looks good.
What is this quarantine stuff?
1-8 1 wins
2-7 2 wins
3-6 3 wins
4-5 4 wins
1-4 4 wins
2-3 2 wins tough to call this one
2-4 2 wins
Good thing that it was a fairly easy fix!
The alliances are shaping up quite nicely…can’t wait for 1pm!
Quarantine? That sounds new… So now no fixing/tweaking a bot during lunch?