So to confirm I understand, there’s just no spending money at all in the month of June? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Wild.
I know sometimes folks go on vacation and POs can be harder to come by, but I’ve never heard of a budget needing to be spent by the end of May and then not restarting until July. Wow.
Yep that about sums it up, like I said maybe we’re in a unique position, I’m no expert in school budgets, specially outside of our own district.
Also to be clear, this isn’t a hill I’m willing to die on, specially if we’re in the minority here. If this happened I’m sure we could figure some workaround.
That’s how our school does it as well. Use it or lose it.
Use it or lose it is normal.
Not being allowed to spend money in the month of June isn’t.
I don’t know the exact month (pretty sure it was July) but when the budget is moving to the next fiscal year we can’t order. We had to get new badges even though we got new ones like a couple weeks before that.
Ok so I just clarified with our other lead and I misspoke, we’re technically allowed to buy in June, but the pool of money we pull from is “first come first serve”, even though we have a fixed line item just for us. We’ve apparently had incidences were our money gets spent where it was “needed more”/to account for other peoples overages from June-July. So our rule is finish it out by the end of May.
My school closes purchasing in April, and we don’t get our budget until September at the earliest. In fact this year my department STILL has not received word on how much funding we will be given, so all school expenses have come from my pocket. This is why our robotics team now has a 501c3.
You were hinting at this, but probably good to make it clear: It would be GREAT if WCPWest Coast Products had a warehouse full of Krakens right now, and REV had a warehouse full of Venoms (or whatever their holey motor is called). But, that’s a lot of cash to have tied up in inventory. If your manufacturer orders come in in December, you might be able to sell those to teams before you have to pay your manufacturer. But, that doesn’t work if the stock arrives in September and teams don’t order until January.
NEO Vortexes.
The start of build season needs to be earlier and teams and vendors should get the game earlier.
I’m not dying on this hill though. Getting the bag to die took it out of me. The rest of you can fight this one. I’ve got a Rolodex of möbius strip people who don’t like me because I said mean things about the bag. I’m done. Y’all keep on keepin’ on though.
Also, the development timeline for FRC software needs to shift a lot.
I’d be fine with dramatically earlier – like the early fall. Maybe even happy with it. Make build season long enough that time is no longer a major limiting factor, sure.
I think pushing build season back to ~November 15 through the end of December would be bad news. Folks get a break with the holiday season right now. A build season starting a month or two earlier would probably lead to people working right through the holidays which I think is unhealthy.
I ain’t dying on this hill. Don’t care one iota.
While it would be really nice to have the new radio for the upcoming season, the way it is being rolled out there should be plenty when it becomes legal. And, it’s getting a good amount of soak/testing time, and there’s maybe even a window where suggested improvements can be seriously considered. So, overall good – it would have been great if the development had started a year sooner, but no complaints!
There are some newly announced products like sensors that are maybe going to be a bit on the edge in terms of availability. But, these often go onto the robot late, and the costs are not so great that one couldn’t order an alternative to de-risk things. So, not a huge pain point. There are many items that fall into this category. And, the needs depend on the game, robot design, etc.
Not yet being able to order the Power Hub yet is somewhat unnerving, but I expect REV to have these in soon. So, no major issue if these do come in within the next few weeks, but it is cutting it close. If they don’t come in, it could be kind of tough. Anything that’s in the core control system falls into this bin – it really, really needs to be in for kickoff, if not at least a few weeks ahead of time (see radio, above).
Motors are in a class by themselves for the most part – especially ones that include the motor controller. Ordering a robot’s worth (or more) of these is a big-ticket item, and most teams can’t afford to order two sets of these to de-risk things. If there’s a worry about scarcity, it can make things even tougher, as it becomes risky to put off ordering something to put on the robot. Plus, there are pinions, different swerve module ordering options, maybe what to do with CAN, S/W choices, etc. all tied up with the motors. Add in recent history in this area, and it’s understandable why this is a worry.
The question is, what to do about it? A lot of it is supply chain/quality/shipping, which can be very hard to control, especially at the scale of FRC parts. I believe the vendors are doing their level best, so there’s no blame here. I am sure they had commitments on dates and that they have every incentive to have had things in by now. I don’t think releasing game info would help here, nor do I imagine motor legality rulings are holding things up.
Ultimately, I don’t have better than the vendors need to start sooner, maybe find an onshore/alternate supplier (lining up two suppliers for custom items is hard at the scale of FRC parts), or make the call to defer something for a year by a certain date that would prevent teams from expecting things that get to the point they may not get in time. It’s just a difficult problem to sort out.
As someone who is from this Era it was a battle worth fighting and I gladly appreciate it. Just that alone meant stuff arriving late isn’t a total killer now. Imagine a part shows up in mid February and you can’t test it til you get to the pits because you bagged the robot.
Our team has a boneyard full of parts that we would love to share with others. They may not be state of the art, but most are legal and if I had them in my rookie mentor season, it would have made a difference.
I don’t have time at the moment, but would support someone that would champion an online “FRCFIRST Robotics Competition Swap Meet”.
As a side note, I amAndyMark wondering if there has ever been a discussion about simply releasing the game pieces early. Say November, so that teams could play with them while not knowing what they will have to do.
Gamepieces are not obscure enough for that imo.
Yeah, the pesky thing with gamepieces is that they fall into two broad categories: Spherical Game Object (shooting game of some sort, especially lately), and FIRST Custom Item (pick-and-place).
Now, in 2009, it might have been useful… but that’s hindsight.
I will happily revis this concept of a month or two of gamepiece availability when the actual game allows me to shoot full field milk crates. That’ll be fun 
We had an automode that could potentially hit the opposing switch from null that year… at least for offseasons.
If I were a member of the GDC, I would advocate to break that paradigm… Nothing like having to place a ball on top of a post or shoot a short pool noodle at a target.