Thank you to everyone who applied to be a Beta Test Team. There were a lot of strong candidates; unfortunately, we weren’t able to accommodate all of you. Emails were sent this morning to everyone who applied, now I can share the list with you.
Testing C/C++
151 Tough Techs
179 The Children of the Swamp
188 Woburn Robotics
1158 Eagle Corps
1334 Red Devils
1511 Rolling Thunder
1714 MORE Robotics
1730 Team Driven
1816 The Green Machine
1946 AFR
Testing Java
20 The Rocketeers
67 HOT Team
294 Beach Cities Robotics
339 Kilroy
341 Miss Daisy
399 Eagle Robotics
624 CRyptonite
811 The Cardinals
957 SWARM
1073 The Force Team
1089 Team Mercury
1123 Autodidactic Intelligent Minors (AIM)
1160 FireBird Robotics
1279 ColdFusion
1421 Team Chaos
1557 12 Volt Bolt
1777 Viking Robotics
1852 Amore
2974 Team WALT
3006 West High FIRST Robotics
Testing LabVIEW
45 TechnoKats Robotics Team
103 Cybersonics
115 Monta Vista Robotics Team
122 Nasa Knights
330 BeachBot
441 Devil Dogs
488 Team Xbot
812 The Midnight Mechanics
1577 SteamPunk
1629 GaCo
1718 The Fighting Pi
1746 Forsyth Alliance
1912 Team Combustion
The Beta teams will receive directions and copies of the new software once they sign the 2010 Disclosure agreements. Some of these Beta teams will be tapped to test hardware as soon as the elements become available. You can follow the Beta Teams’ progress and ask questions here.
I created a map that shows the approximate location of all the beta test teams.
The closest teams seem to be 151, 811, and 1073. 330 and 294 are also very close, and there are 3 other beta test teams within a 2 hour drive. There are also 4 teams pretty close in eastern PA and NJ.
California has the most teams, 6, followed by New Hampshire and Virginia, 3.
Only 3 of the teams have won the championship chairmans award, down from 6 last year.
Joe, that map is really interesting. The “greens” (Java) seem to be east and west coast, while “blues” (C++) seem more concentrated in the upper mid-section (only US analysis). Wonder why that trend is? (I’m sure it’s based on who applied for what, but it’s interesting…)
How many devices will be distributed to the beta teams?
Probably a complete (beta) driver’s station / cRIO / etc, if it’s anything like last year. We didn’t get to keep them though (we even had to return the jumpers and Ethernet cables!) without paying for all of the non-FRC-legal beta parts.
I believe this will be different then last year. Teams already have a cRIO and all the required hardware. Some teams will be asked to test any new hardware (classmate PC, and anything else), and some will only be testing software. They have not said yet how the teams that will test hardware will be selected.
notes down that post as my Bi-Weekly Chief Delphi Mistake
I’m wondering exactly what software wise we could test without an (accurate) DS for C++ that we otherwise wouldn’t know from 2009 build. That is, unless they activate stuff we didn’t have access to on the cRIO last year…
I guess that means my team’s spare cRIO will be shared between a swerve chassis group and a beta group then.
The drivers station should not require a huge amount of change on the cRIO side, the change is hopefully transparent
if not, then a trip to the closest team with the new DS may be in order
A couple of thoughts:
This year Beta test teams won’t have much to test in the way of new hardware, and will be mostly concerned with making sure new and existing libraries work appropriately. I was a bit disappointed with the fact that FRC expects teams to recycle the cRIO–while understandable because of its enormous cost, it will incapacitate older robots which veteran teams like to maintain for demonstration purposes.
Also, unlike last year’s beta test, this year the Java Beta test involves software that is entirely opensource, and can actually be acquired by anyone at this point in time, should you know where to look. Sure they are prerelease, but I can confirm that they work.
At the very least having the documentation available to all teams as it is(once again, loook around carefully–its easier to find than the source), should give everyone interested in using java plenty of opportunity to train on the system.
I count 7 that are the same. It’s hard to know how many of those that aren’t back are because they didn’t apply or didn’t get selected. Here’s last year’s map
I would also like to see how they mapped out the teams. In Texas we have two teams from Houston as Beta testers.
**Has anyone made a map of all the different Beta teams ? **
Random sidenote:
The DiscoBots (2587) applied but were not accepted. I believe this is because the high # teams get much less respect in FIRST. I would be interested in the number of +2000 number teams that applied for Beta.
2974 Team WALT and 3006 West High FIRST Robotics were accepted as rookies. I do not think that FIRST discriminated against teams by number. 2753 were on Einstein this year and did great. Numerous teams under 500 did poorly this season. If a team is not selected they should be active on the First Forums and learn as much as they can about the system from the beta testers.
I doubt it is based on number, but a lot on notoriety and history with demonstrations, quality robots, reliability, etc. FIRST tends to know Hall of Fame teams, long standing veteran teams, etc. will be able to do this (not saying Disco Bots can’t, I’m sure FIRST just didn’t realize how you guys could help the beta test program). If there is someone with more notoriety in those areas very close to your team’s region then they were probably picked over you.
Pardon me for tooting my team’s horn, but my team has a long history of building reliably-programmed robots (not necessarily competitive :/) and does hundreds of demonstrations a year, plus my team had a successful year beta testing in 2008, so that’s probably why my “high number team” got picked. Other teams likely have much the same story; notoriety in these fields makes them more likely to be picked. It’s a shame as there are excellent teams that get overlooked (right off the bat I know team 2502 would be perfect for beta testing).
The short version is that teams don’t get respect by their number, but by their reputation. Low number teams just have had more time to establish themselves.
