Off-season FIRST comp help...

does anyone know how/where to get a field from. any information whatsoever on this would be spectacular…thanks

Well… you could try building one yourself. :rolleyes:

But seriously, contact FIRST and they will be able to provide you with one for a fee.

PM Andy Bakerand he can tell you exactly what to do. He reserved the field for the IRI this year so he’s probabally one of the best people to ask on how to do it.

You can get the field by contacting FIRST…they will give it to you rent-free, BUT, you must pay shipping costs. The field this year is a monster! Depending on where you live, it can cost a lot…like over $2000 for shipping.

My team volunteered to take the field down at Great Lakes, so we knew firsthand that it would take a very large semi to contain everything. Remember that you must have the electronics equipment, too. There is a VERY specific way to crate up everything. There are large shipping boxes made specially for all the equipment, and everything has a specific spot to be placed.

We run the Sweet Repeat, and have built our own field for the past four years, but decided to use one of FIRST’s field this year, due to the complexity and expense of the field. FIRST gave us the Einstein Field from the National Championship, including electronics and carpeting. We had to get it home, and we have to get it back. We made arrangements for a semi.

I’m lucky to have Ford sponsoring the Sweet Repeat each year - Joe Turckes of Ford made all the arrangements for the truck, so it cost Ford all the money.

Good luck. :yikes:

We will be the first team recieving an official field from FIRST this year. I do know that you will have to pay for lots of shipping.
You must also provide $20,000+ insurance on the field.

All you have to do is contact FIRST and they will set you up.

Be ready with your checkbook…

Good Luck

Contact Tammy Trimble at [email protected] (or might be [email protected]) to reserve the field. The required insurance on the field is $50,000.

Shipping all depends on where you live, and who you know :wink:

ByE

erin

try contacting NASA, since they distribute and transport the fields. we are having a comp in north brunswick in october, so talk to mr. cokeley (Wayne C.) if you need info on that

Acctually Mike and Pete from Goddard are the ones who build and run the “NASA Field” They are allowed to travel in a 250 mi radius of thier “home base” but yes to get in touch with Mike Wade, to inquire about use of their own field, you could Email Wanye Cokeley, John Larock and they could give you contact information to get in touch with Mike Wade

Or just look on the Chesapeake regional website: http://www.mitc.org/first/members.htm

does anyone know where the fields are distributed from…cause if they are from NH, then i could get our own shipping for it…and also, does anyone know if the electronics cost more??..thanks a lot

The fields rest in Manchester, NH (unless there is another nearby off-season event in which you could ship the field directly from). All Electronics are included, as well as software package… but you need to provide computers to run the software on.

Erin were you told that you needed your own computers to run the software on this year because they need a distinctive OS and this could cause it to problematic over the off season for some comps that just dont have the people with the know how to do this.

As Far as I was told, by the Scorekeeper at NJ as well as other people from FIRST, the OS is FreeBSD, its really not all that hard to find, and can be run on any MSDOS partion, more on the OS can be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/

Mike i know that the OS is FreeBSD but the problem that i would see is that ou need to configure the system personally to run with the PLC set up and the other hardware for the field. Plus it still would need to be configured also to work with the software. Currently this issue is being checked to see if the computer “crate” the USS Monitor will be shipped with the field or if computers will be needed to be supplied personally.

Personally, i dont see a problem, If it comes down to esentially building a computer just to run the field then that is what we will have to do, the show must go on.

I wonder why it needs a specific operating system, the scoring is flash based. It should run on any OS.

The flash is only for the clock and scoring that will show up on the screen that the audience will see. I dont know the TacOps (scoring system) was designed in, but it is something that would look like a Microsoft Access system. All I know is that it is a very easy system to use and it was ran on the FreeOS, or whatever it’s called. When we reserved our field we were told that it would come with everything that was present including the whole TacOps system, minus except the PDA’s or printer, which were provided by NASA. I’m not worried at this point for IRI, but I will be sure that we’re going to have everything that we need. :]

Maybe I will find time to create a white paper on field setup! Since we are the first team recieving a field from FIRST this year!

I am sure many teams would like to know exactly what they need to run their event!

I know that we at Team 1086 whom is running the 1st annunal ROSi(Richmond Off-Season Invitation) would really like to know what exactly comes with the FIELD and what we will need. We are getting our Field I believe from NASA, but we dont know exactly what we are getting. I think the guy that is letting us borrow it said that we will have everything but the scoring system. I could be wrong, but im not sure. I know that we would still like to know everything that would be needed for setting up the field and the TacOps, both hardware and software. If there is a white paper that would be nice, or if someone could tell me wut it is that would be great also. You can get to me at [email protected] or IM on AIM at IrishMan 4937 , thanks in advance.

Mike O’Brien
President Team 1086

A bunch of jigsaw pieces on really big boxes! LOL
You don’t get a BRB?