Regardless of the issues with FIRST Choice, this is still way better than how things used to be way back when. I’m just glad to get some useful equipment and parts for FREE.
I suspect if the records were released you’ll find that the talons were gone nearly instantly. Any team who wanted some was likely to grab a big chunk of them. Especially with no limit. We could easily use 20-25 in a season. In fact we purchased that many a couple weeks ago from AM.
Edit: Just got another email saying my second order has shipped, so clearly AM is still trying to catch up with all the orders.
Hummm… Way back when (not quite so far as when you had to return the control system each year, but for many, many years) we used to get a full control system, 4 victors, several spikes, numerous solenoid valves, a very good (if slightly large and heavy) compressor, 2 robot batteries, charger, servos…
FIRST Choice is not FREE. You can only access it if you have paid your registration fee. Yes, these items are donated, but so are many of the items that actually get shipped in the KOP. In fact, it is my understanding that according to all of the rules, the FIRST Choice items are an extension of the KOP, such as it is, and we have all paid for access to them. The problem is that it is far from equal access at this point.
I do have confidence that both FIRST and AndyMark will improve the system.
- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox
In an Email from Andymark the Talons when to an OUT OF STOCK state in 16 minutes!!!
Just like many other teams, those of us in Ontario need to save every little bit we can due to the current problems with the Province and Teachers. Losing out high demand and costly items from First choice is going to make it very hard to field an competitive robot this year. Why you ask, because the teachers are now on work to rule which leaves the running of the team by outside mentors that’s assuming the school admins will agree to it.
Teams adversely effected by Inventory Management Issues should contact frcparts@usfirst.org.
Good afternoon,
There was an issue with FIRST Choice inventory management yesterday that allowed teams to place orders for parts that were no longer available.
If you believe you were adversely affected by this issue (i.e. you ordered an item that you thought was in stock, but later learned that the part was not in stock, and thus missed out on ordering other parts you would have ordered had you had accurate inventory data), please contact us at frcparts@usfirst.org.
Meanwhile, as stated in an earlier blog post, the credits spent on these items have been returned to your account.
We’re so sorry for this issue and for the frustration it may have caused.
Kate
Keeping in mind that the previous control system was much cheaper than the current cRIO-based one, and FIRST was significantly smaller as well. Such things were much more feasible back then.
Perhaps FIRST will take some action for teams <1000 who were unable to log-in to FIRST Choice?
Good afternoon,
There was an issue with FIRST Choice login yesterday that initially prevented teams with team numbers under 1000 from logging in for the first 15 minutes.
If you believe you were adversely affected by this (i.e. you tried to log in, couldn’t, and by the time you could log in, the items you wanted weren’t available), please contact us at frcparts@usfirst.org.
We’re so sorry for this issue and for the frustration it may have caused.
Kate
Our team had a plan going in that included 4 Talons plus a Digital Sidecar, but those items were gone by time we successfully logged-in at 9:20 PST.
Yeah it would appear some teams got the shaft…but what can they do?
The only thing I think FIRST can do is make every item from FIRST Choice free for every team in the BOM.
Peyton
That doesn’t really help all teams though… the teams that don’t have the funds to purchase some of the items that were available through FIRST Choice are the ones who will feel this the most. It doesn’t matter if it becomes free in the BOM if you could never afford it in the first place.
FIRST is taking steps to make things right… we lost half of our order to the restocking issues, and FIRST is offering help with some common items. I got this email the other day after I responded with having troubles with the system:
Hello Mr. Basse,
Thank you for your response. Again, please accept our apologies for your frustrations.
To compensate, we offer your choice of one of the following items at no cost to you (dollar or credit): Power Distribution Board, E12 Classmate, 4-slot cRIO chassis (no modules), battery, or Rev B radio. Due to our limited inventory, we can only accommodate so many requests of particular items. For that reason, please let us know your first and second picks. We’ll do our best to give you your first pick and the item will ship for free (FedEx Ground or track-able USPS).
Take your time discussing this with your team, but please let us know your decision by January 25, 2013 (but if you let us know by December 28, you should have it by Kickoff).
Thank you for your understanding.
Kate
Kate Pilotte
Kudos to FIRST for taking steps to lessen the burden on teams that were adversely effected. I am happy to be a part of an organization that recognizes the need that teams have and respects the entry fee that we all pay does indeed need to be respected. With that said, we will take the cheapest option on the list because it is what we need. We would have suffered without a battery to make it through the season, and it seems like a small price for an item but when $70 buys you two batteries and that is a around 10% of your budget… I just hope this will result in less of a chance of me or our lead mentor footing the bill for our robot build personally again. With the way Michigan politics are going, I need to keep a close eye on my paychecks…
FIRST needs to do the opposite. They need to make it so that none of the FIRST Choice or KoP items are considered “free” in the BoM and raise the $3,500 budget constrain.
-Clinton-
FIRST is going above and beyond when they offer free items like that. It’s great to work with an organization that not only acknowledges mistakes, but works so diligently to take responsibility for them and to correct them.
That said, I think we (the teams who are consumers of FIRST Choice) need to be careful in our complaints. I’ve seen many posts that are some variant of “we lost our order due to the restocking problem”. That happened to me, too. But it is important to understand that we didn’t actually lose an order, because we never had it. If the restocking problem had not occurred, the order would have been rejected to begin with. We only “lost” an order compared to our mistaken belief that we had an order.
It is possible (but I bet a careful analysis of the data would show this only happened to a few teams) that the restocking issue caused a loss in this limited scenario: You were considering ordering two items, one that is close to going out of stock, and one that incorrectly appears to have stock but is actually out. You only have enough credits to get one, and you choose the one that is actually out of stock, and that order is (incorrectly) accepted. By the time you find out that your order must be canceled, the other part has gone out of stock. You’ve lost out on that order. I’d be curious to find out how many teams actually experienced that.
Where some of us actually lost orders was due to not being able to log in for the first 10 to 15 minutes, so stock was gone before we had a chance to place the order. In that case, there is a reasonable possibility that we could have gotten a valid order in, had we been able to log in at the correct time. That happened to my team, and I have sent an email to FIRST (in response to Kate’s email sent out yesterday). It will be interesting to see if they can do anything about it.
It’s also been great to see all the constructive suggestions for a better system, on this and other threads. I bet we’ll see a much improved FIRST Choice next year. Keep up the great work, everybody!
I think part of the problem was that items were not removed from stock when placed into a cart, only when the pay now button was clicked, causing items to jump out of carts. The items should be removed from available inventory as soon as it was placed into a cart. If items get dropped later and put back “on the shelf”, then someone else has the opportunity to pick it up. I suspect this would be an easy way to reduce some of frustration faced by teams.
Wetzel
This method has it’s own problems, of course. Specifically, when do you decide that someone isn’t going to complete their order and empty their cart? You’d have to put some kind time limit on it, and a short one could be really frustrating. On the other hand, a long limit is going to cause a lot of confusion when Talons start coming back in stock 30 minutes after FIRST Choice opened. I don’t think there’s any good way to set things up with the current Black Friday rush philosophy. Any little tweaks are akin to arranging the shelves and aisles to minimize the injuries during the mob scene after the doors open.
But when you place an order and the order goes through, then gives you an invoice that has your full order included, and the next day you get an email that says you actually won’t be receiving all the items you selected and paid shipping for… that counts as a “lost item” in my book. Again, I am frustrated, but I am not complaining. Yes I am disappointed, but also happy that things are being remedied.
http://d.pr/i/EJMP For reference on the old IFI cost.
Taken from http://web.archive.org/web/20080115225943/http://www.ifirobotics.com/oi.shtml which was IFI’s website in 2008, the last year we used that system. I haven’t found a similar get started kit for the NI system (I only made a cursory look though).
I think the costs for the two control systems (IFI & NI) are pretty comparable.
Probably due to a FIRST RFP requirement.
$1,147 IFI control system package
$970 cRIO control system
$525 cRIO w/modules
$ 82 Digital Sidecar
$ 24 Analog Breakout
$ 24 Solenoid Breakout
$ 30 cables: DB37+Ethernet
$ 85 DAP 1522
$200 Classmate
Since realworld cRIO’s for general purchase (basically the same specs as our cRIO-FRC2 4slot model is cRIO-9075) are CAD$1430, before you start putting modules in them? Yeah.
(responding to my own post, just to let everyone know what happened)
I got a response from Kate at FIRST (about the same time as my previous post, actually), and yes they are doing something about it for my team, as I’m sure they’ve done for others. I just want to publicly thank FIRST and AndyMark for their professional response to a tough situation. Just one of many reasons I love working with this organization.
Really? My Spanish teacher let me out 10 minutes early, and by the time I got to my Robotics teacher, it was 5 min. before 12. The teacher let me into TIMS, and I had the password 30 seconds after 12. (Not too bad).
By the time I had logged onto First Choice(which took several tries), 5 minutes later, the Talons, Sidecars, Classmates(which we needed - ours bit the dust), were gone. 12:15 Eastern. Thankfully we ordered a cRIO and a pair of batteries (ours was having problems last year), and some other components.
Apart from the mad grab for components, and the login issues, which have pretty much been covered, the only other thing I would change is to improve the cart. For one, the cRIO would not stay in our cart. Teams should be allowed to keep a hold of items in cart or allow the PDV to be used for shipping. We lost our talons and sidecar because I had to find someone with a credit card to pay shipping!