[FRC Blog] More about the Chairman's Award Finalists and HD Video in FIRST Championsh

FIRST General Forum
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Posted on the FRC Blog, 4/11/17: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2017-more-championship-chairmans-award-hd-video-pits

**More about the Chairman’s Award Finalists and HD Video in FIRST Championship Pits!

Written by Frank Merrick, 2017 APR 11.

**Chairman’s Award Finalists – Slots to Next Year’s FIRST Championship

In this blog, we announced that we would be recognizing three Chairman’s Award Finalists at each *FIRST *Championship location. Talking through this in more detail yesterday at HQ, about the importance of this recognition, we noticed a bit of a discrepancy. Engineering Inspiration Award winners on each Division get an automatic invitation to the following year’s *FIRST *Championship, along with, thanks to the tremendous generosity of NASA, payment of their *FIRST *Championship registration fees. This seems to be unbalanced compared to Chairman’s Award Finalists. So, we are making a change. All Chairman’s Award Finalists at the 2017 *FIRST *Championship will be offered slots at the 2018 *FIRST *Championship.

This does *not *mean they will automatically be considered for Chairman’s Award at that later Championship – they still need to earn that award sometime during the season to be considered – but they will at least automatically be able to attend. What about that registration fee coverage? I hope we can find a sponsor for that eventually, but I can’t make any promises, and it may take some time to sort through.

**Some Totally Sweet HD Video Goodness for FIRST Championship Pits

Check it out – at both *FIRST Championship locations, all individual team pits will have a cable drop that teams can use to watch any of 12 HD channels right there. 6 channels will be broadcasting the live feeds from fields (one per subdivision), the other 6 channels will show continuously updated rankings (again, one per subdivision). So, you can keep up with any subdivision you like, in addition to your own.

To take advantage, you will need to have some kind of receiver in your pit that can decode the signal. Reasonably-priced options are available, either in the form of actual TV sets, or adapters for equipment you may already have. With the proper equipment, you can watch, and maybe even record, to your heart’s content!

Each Championship location will also have two sets of large monitors strategically placed in case you are interested in keeping up with the action that way.

More detail, including technical specs, here.

Yay, HD!

Frank

*Cable is how your parents used to watch a medium they called ‘Television’ before streaming was invented. It may be old school, but it has the distinct advantage of working well.

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Cable in the pits? Ahhh yessss!

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Well I guess this brings “Pit Scouting” to a whole another level.

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I’m glad they went with Cable, rather than something like a private Ethernet network. Sometimes older technology is just better, and any AV company worth working with for champs should easily be able to do this, and have it just work. I’m surprised this idea hasn’t been thought of before, but I really hope it does stay.

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Cable in the pits is awesome. Good work FIRST folks!

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Pure speculation - This cable drop means there will likely be no projection screen of each field in the pits ever again.

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Neat!

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Awesome changes on both accounts. Love the return of World Chairman’s Finalist, and it is great to see it have real tangible meaning.

-Brando

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I’d have preferred broadcast and the use of “rabbit ear” antenna.

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I sure hope they’ve finally fixed the issue where they try to force pit crews behind the back curtains so they can’t watch playoff matches at champs. It would be a shame to get into another verbal disagreement with another volunteer, since I’m not forcing some of my most dedicated team members to be stuck behind a curtain missing the final matches of their FIRST careers. :mad:

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The telephones are over in the FTC pits. :wink:

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If there isn’t at least one team running a Melee singles bracket in their pit, I’ll lose hope in FRC.

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Maybe they’ll have cable in there too? That would solve that problem.

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I would say mitigate, but not solve. Anyone know of any reasonably priced TV’s that are QAM ready and have a dual tuner so you can split screen the standings and matches?

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The real trick is going to be getting that added to another channel. FIRSTSmashLive is where it’s at.

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Can that replace the Music Hits they’ve been playing at events? That’d get so many more views.

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I just bought a $27 QAM tuner (with recording capability) on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/IVIEW-3200STB-Multimedia-Converter-Recording-function/dp/B00RDQGBIE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491954393&sr=8-1&keywords=qam+tuner

I actually bought 2 and a coax splitter. Gonna see if we can get two computer monitors and have matches on one and rankings/other division matches on the other.

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I have a Samsung smart TV from a couple years back that can do PiP from two channels, I think I paid $250 for it.

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Random thought, any idea how long this cable will be within the pit? Will it be long enough to reach anywhere in the pit, or will we have to bring extensions to make it reach.