Feb 15, 2024 Written by Collin Fultz, FIRST Robotics Competition Senior Director
The stage is set, and official events begin next week! I’m excited for official matches of CRESCENDOSM presented by Haas!
Even if your team is not competing until later this season, there are things that you can be doing now to make sure you’re ready for your first event.
We created this video of “What to expect” at a FIRST ® Robotics Competition event. I encourage everyone, from rookie teams to 20-year veterans, to check it out! Thanks to Tyler Olds of First Updates Now for helping with the original script for this video and to Justin Holmes for editing the video!
Now is a great time to host a team meeting on travel expectations and Youth Safety. Resources for mentors are available on the FIRST ® Youth Safety page. Lead mentors – make sure you have emergency contact information, medical needs, and parent permission slips as required by your host organization or school. Make a plan for what team members will do in case of emergency.
Teams can find event information, including public agendas, team lists, and local detail on each event’s webpage. Other event information is also available on the FRC-Events webpage.
Conducting a pre-inspection is a great way to make sure you’re ready for your official inspection at the event. Your team can work through the same Inspection Checklist that Inspectors will use. And check out our Inspection Video playlist to get an idea of what Robot Inspection is like.
When packing for your event, don’t forget to bring your:
If you haven’t yet, please review the Event Rules section of the Manual. I want to remind everyone of E117:
If your team needs accommodation for events, including accessible seating, please contact the Program Delivery Partner for the event.
Finally, if you’ve not yet registered your team members, please save yourself time and do that before the events. Teams in the United States and Canada can use the new Express Enrollment to make the process much easier! Make sure you print your team roster prior to the event to make check-in at the event easier. More information is available on the Youth Registration webpage.
Lots of familiar faces and venues I think this is such a great resource for new and returning teams alike and hope everyone watches it. Share with your new members or neighboring teams who could benefit?
P.S. if a stuck a camera in your face in the last season and you didn’t complain or ask why, thank you!
Following this link I saw this under “What to bring → Optional Items”
Team-Provided Mobile Machine Shops - FIRST welcomes team-provided mobile machine shop facilities/trailers at events that comply with FIRST and venue requirements.
Today I received am email from the Hawaii regional planning committee about this adopted idea from Nor Cal events piloting “Pick-a-Pit.”
Whoever has the most volunteers signed up in VIMS associated with your team, selects a pit spot, then the next team with the most volunteers, and so on.
Pilot regionals:
While I love this idea and it can help with larger teams. It caused as disadvantage to teams with smaller student and mentor bases. Also how would it work for volunteers who only volunteer 1 day or work with multiple teams?
I’m registered as an inspector only Thursday while I’ll spend Friday and Saturday helping my students across my multiple teams. Does that credit all of my teams with a volunteer? Does it matter if it’s a 1 days volunteer vs 3 day?
Personally I dont like it for 2 reasons, 1 of which I already responded to the committee.
Teams from the neighbor islands, US mainland, and International teams will be at a disadvantage from a financial standpoint because volunteers still need a hotel (place of stay), travel expenses, etc. to volunteer vs. Oahu teams.
I hate a pit map that has random teams placed wherever. It makes it incredibly difficult to find them if there is no rhyme or reason.
There is rarely any real advantage to be gained from pit location. It’s almost exclusively a matter of convenience. This strikes me as one of very few carrots that an RPC can dangle that 1. Teams will want and 2. Doesn’t offer a competitive or financial advantage. It sounds like a great idea to me.
There are some great advantages/disadvantages depending on your location at the Hawaii regional. At Ventura in the open area, where I’ve seen both of your teams, sure no problem, just a farther walk.
The pick-a-pit system being piloted in the bay area isn’t about who sends the most volunteers, but instead the order of admittance to the program. The amount of volunteers required is correlated with the number of team members registered in TIMS, so smaller teams would have to provide fewer volunteers than larger teams.
The planning committee has brought this point up and are working on better labeling pit aisles to show which teams are in them. Many bay area events already have teams interspersed so this shouldn’t make the already confusing pit locations noticeably worse, and hopefully with proper signage, we can actually make it better!
While I see people’s annoyance with random pitmaps, there have been positives to it.
With 5030 we’ve had years where we put our pit connected to 340 or 2791, teams we worked with, shared stuff constantly and even would move stuff across pits and take the bar out.
With the Long Island regional, they try to spread international and rookie teams out a bit to have a veteran presence close by to assist. This was nice as it allowed me to be with my rookies but also near my other team, and teams that are traveling/working together to be placed near one another.
Plus it can be nice to switch up and spend the competition stationed next to teams you normally wouldn’t, make new friends and learn more about a team you might not pay as much kind to.
With 5030 we were always put right next to 5254 at competition (nothing wrong at all with this, they were great and we’d chat constantly)
But it also meant the two blue and yellow teams get confused, and we didn’t get to chat with other teams as often.
I see both sides of it though, when running around to help teams if you need to constantly look at the map to find a team is a pain.
I think this is such a great resource for new and returning teams alike and hope everyone watches it. Share with your new members or neighboring teams who could benefit?
