[FRC Blog] Week Zero

FIRST General Forum
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Posted on the FRC Blog, 2/16/17: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2018-week-zero-scale-outriggers

Week Zero

Written by Frank Merrick, 2018 FEB 16.

Wow, the worldwide, simultaneous Stop Build Day (Check R16 in the manual!) is right around the corner!

And you may know what that means. This weekend, some teams will be getting together for unofficial scrimmage play with their (Mostly? Partly? Kinda?) built robots.

The official Week Zero event, with an official field and electronics and being supported by FIRST staff, is taking place in Bedford, New Hampshire, USA. It’s being hosted by FIRST Robotics Competition Team 509, Red Storm, in Bedford High School. Thanks, Red Storm! Currently 32 teams are registered for the event.

Rough (very rough) schedule is below. All times are Eastern.

7:30 – 8:30 AM Load-In

8:30 – 8:45 AM Opening Ceremonies

8:45 – 11:30 AM Qualifying Matches

11:30 Alliance Selection

11:45 – 12:15 PM Lunch

12:15 – 3:30 PM Elimination Matches

3:30 PM Closing Ceremonies

4:00 PM Load-Out

If things go as planned, we will be webcasting this event. The single view will be hosted on https://www.twitch.tv/firstinspires and the quad view will be hosted on https://www.twitch.tv/firstinspires1. Be sure to check it out if you have a few minutes!

I personally can’t wait to see FIRST POWER UP played for the first time! So many ways this game could go…it’s exciting!

Oh, and one more quick note. If you are hosting your own Week Zero event with the wood field elements, please remember to include the outriggers on the scale, as shown below in red. Those outriggers can be tempting to remove to help make transportation easier, and that’s fine, just please remember to put them back on when the scale goes on the field! Teams will not be happy if the scale tips over on their robots at a Week Zero event.

https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2018-scale-outriggers.jpg

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What a subtweet. Fwiw our bot wasn’t damaged one bit and we were up and running again in about 10 minutes after a complete systems check. But yes - Don’t forget outriggers!

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I was kinda hoping they wouldn’t bring back alliance selection/elims. Imo it takes away from why you’d actually go to a week 0. Plus, the teams that don’t get picked get very few matches, as few as 2 last year.

That said, I’m excited to see some gameplay.

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Is it Eliminations or Playoffs?

I thought we had been encouraged a few years ago to refer to the final matches as Playoffs.

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It is still referenced as “Playoff Matches” in the game manual again this year. Just old habits die hard, I’d assume.

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A major part of the Week 0 event is obviously to validate the functionality of the FMS and back end. If they don’t run playoffs, they aren’t testing that functionality in a “live” environment prior to the start of the season.

From that perspective, I suspect you will continue to see alliance selections and playoffs at the official week zero events.

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