Just a few days away from the first ever Peachtree District Event! 1648 is excited to start off the Stronghold season with a bang. Columbus is the largest 2016 Georgia district, with the full 40 teams attending. Pits will be open starting at 5:00pm on Thursday and lasting until 10pm. Friday will open at 8am, with Qualification Matches starting at 11am.
Here is the link to the event’s TBA page:
We can’t wait to see everyone there!
Looking forward to it here! I know a LOT of work has gone into the events surrounding the competition! Be sure to check out the Maker Faire and Drone racing also going on Saturday. Columbus Space Program and ColumbusMakesIT have been putting in a ton of effort in making it the best event they can. Come say Hi to me if your near the field, I’ll be one of the FTAAs.
I’m also going to try and take a timelapse from field unboxing to teardown, here’s hoping it works!
Check out everything else happening here:
http://steamul8.com/
Look forward to seeing all the Georgia teams in Columbus there, and good luck to all the teams. Safe travels to Columbus.
Is there any word about a stream for the event?
Thanks,
Congrats to 4468, 4188, and 5074 for the win, as well as 1648 for DCA. Looking forward to seeing a lot of the teams in person for the first time next week in Albany.
Wow, what a roller coaster of emotions this event was for our team! We went from being nervous, to excited, to upset, and finally overjoyed! We’ve only played one district event, but I’m loving the 12 qualification matches, smaller competition size, unbag window before competition, and the more relaxed feel at competition. We’ve already played 2/3 the amount of matches we played in 2014, and we’ve still got 2 competitions to go before worlds. I’m looking forward to seeing how the season progresses and how much better teams will be by the time we get to state championships!
As per tradition, I’d like to list some of my positive experiences at the event:
Reffing: Reffing was on point. The ref crew did an amazing job, didn’t miss too many defensive crossings, and if they did they admitted it and changed the score. I saw all of the proper penalties and fouls being called, and I hope the ref team keeps up the good work!
The seating: I absolutely LOOOOVED the style of seating in the venue. The raised arena-style seating really added to the event. It’s inspiring to the kids and mentors on the field when they look up and see everyone looking onto the field, and it’s incredibly inspiring for the kids to see their robots down on the floor, and the seating really allowed that to happen.
Pit space: The pits were pretty comfy. We had a lot of space to spread out and stretch our legs while not working on the robot. Being in the pit felt less stressful, less cramped, and it helped us stay organized when we needed to do crucial repairs.
So while our team is very happy with the hardware we took home from the event, there were some serious issues at the event. I’m hoping the issues that can get ironed out will, but the other issues need to be addressed.
The field carpet: Putting the official field carpet over an astro-turf layer is absolutely unacceptable. The field was almost un-drivable by most teams at the event. Everyone was getting brown-outs at the end of every match, with many teams dying on the field during the beginning and middle of the match. When our robot is on a carpet on top of a solid surface, we can glide around the field. At this event, the robot could barely turn and drove like it was driving through sand. When we’re having to spray compressed air to cool our breakers and motors when we didn’t encounter any defense, you know there’s an issue. I sincerely hope that this will never happen again, because it’s really awful to see kids upset when their robot browns out in a match.
The field: There was something going on with the communication system, as the teams in the same driver station during quarter finals kept dying in the matches. I don’t know what was up, but there has to have been something. It’s not inspiring to see multiple dead robots on the field during the elimination tournament.
The venue’s food policy: I couldn’t bring in a fun sized bag of doritos or a bottle of water into the venue. That’s just plain ridiculous. I understand not bringing outside food like pizza and such, but if I can’t even bring a snack or bottled water for the pit crew and scouts, there’s something wrong.
Finally, I’d like to extend my congratulations and thank some teams we had the pleasure of working with at the event.
Congrats to 4468 for their first event win. This has been a long time coming, and I’m excited that your hard work paid off! I’m looking forward to seeing how you guys improve in time for state championships.
Congrats and thanks to 1746. That quality award was well deserved; you guys build amazing robots and have some of the best design solutions around. You couldn’t believe how much it meant to our team that our robot was the first overall selection of the eliminations draft, and I’m really sorry that our comms issues kept us from playing to our full strength. While it will always be a “what if” scenario, I feel that our alliance would’ve won the event had everything gone to plan. Thanks again, and I’m really looking forward to seeing you guys improve and play at States!
Congrats and thanks to 3091. What your team does with the Destination Einstein practice field is truly one of the best practices of coopertition that I know of. I know for a fact that being able to practice on the field has helped us so many times over the years. Working with your team during the eliminations was a great experience, and I hope to see you guys shine at the State Championship!
Looking forward to playing the rest of the district season and competing alongside the best in the state at the State Championship!
-Anupam Goli
The first ever Georgia district event turned out to be a good one. While there were plenty of positives to the event, there were a few negatives to go with them. Hopefully this feedback can be used to improve future events.
Seeding first. This was awesome validation for my team’s design and strategy decisions. Focusing on breaching allowed us to wrap up qualifications with only one loss and one missed breach. This put us in the tough position to pick from a large group of robots that proved to be effective, but also came with a significant amount of risk due to communications issues, and consistency in the performance of their bot. Given the information on hand at the time, I believe we made the best selections possible in attempting to build an alliance capable of capturing.
Picking 1648. It was awesome to play with you guys. You presented one of the most consistent scoring options at the event and those skills lead us to believe that you were the bot that would best allow our alliance to complete a capture as well as a breach. Get those comms issues figured out and have a good time next week at your 2nd event! And congrats on winning the Chairman’s award!
Picking 3091. Your team and robot filled out our alliance just as we hoped you would. Your consistent autonomous, great defense in the semi-finals, and ceaseless effort put our alliance in the right spot to make a run deep into eliminations. And congrats on winning the Engineering Inspiration award! We’ll plan on seeing your team again at state champs!
Our robot. While we managed to throw a few chains and lose our intake axle a couple of times, our robot held up really well for a game that is so rough on robots. This is largely in part to designing and building our robot with our brand new sheet metal sponsor Metcam along with the amazing continued support of our founding sponsor Automation Direct. We even improvised a passive portcullis wedge at the event to guarantee a solo breach. We have a few things to work on, but it was gratifying to win the Motorola Quality award for a robot we worked so hard on.
To the winning alliance. 4468, 4188, & 5074. Consistency is always something to brag about in FRC, and your alliance is the one that best met that goal through eliminations. It was fun playing against you and I look forward to seeing you all on the field later this season.
Venue input.
Positives: Seating was great, Pit layout was great, loved playing with and against new and old friends throughout the event, 12 qualification matches!!!, match turnaround times worked out pretty well.
Negatives: No practice field elements and only 1 or 2 practice matches was rough. We had no way of testing improvements to the bot without trying them out in an actual match. Putting the field on astro-turf wasn’t the best idea.
I’m excited to see the progression of Georgia teams throughout the year due to the newly implemented district system. I look forward to playing with and against teams as they make design changes throughout the season to improve their bot. I know we already have some improvements to our bot in mind.
I was slightly hesitant about Georgia’s transition to districts, but after this weekend, I believe that going to districts is one of the best thing to happen to Georgia!
**Shoutouts: **
Thank you to 4188 and 5074 for joining us and helping us win! You guys were fantastic alliance partners and complimented our abilities perfectly! We hope to play with both of you again in the future!
HUGE congratulations to 1648 on their long awaited chairmans win! You guys always amaze me with all of the work that you do to get kids involved in STEM and I cannot think of a more deserving team to win!
Good job to the second seed alliance of 2415, 4193, and 2974 for putting up a great fight in the finals! You gave us two great matches that were extremely close in score and really forced us to stay on top of our game!
Highlights of event:
The floor of the pits were carpet covered astroturf which made them very cushiony and were incredible on the feet for everyone of their feet all day.
The arena seating was plentiful and gave everyone a good view of the field and what was going on no matter where you sat.
The refs did an incredible job scoring the field and admitted when they made mistakes, and scored were updated almost instantly so you always knew where you stood in the ranks.
You never quite realize how nice 12 qualification matches are until you get the chance to play them in at an event. While we were running slightly behind schedule, I was glad to see that every team got to play their full 12 matches.
Lows of event:
While the cushiony carpet in the pit was fantastic, it kept many teams from preforming to their full potential and caused too many brownouts especially in elims.
No outside food or drinks were allowed in the building and everyone was getting very dehydrated from lack of water (and water fountains). The arena and vending machines sold water and soda for $3 a bottle, but were sold out very quickly. Also, due to the slight delay in seeding rounds, drive teams only had 20 minutes or so to get lunch before elims and had to waste time leaving the building to get lunch instead of being able to have it brought to them in the stands.
There was no practice field so if you wanted to modify and test out your robot, you were doing it during matches. I hope to see even a partial practice field at future GA district events because teams need to be able to test modifications
Overall I am very pleased with how the first district event went! Thank you to the Georgia FIRST planning committee and everyone involved who helped make the event run so smoothly! I cannot wait to attend the KSU event and state champs later this spring!
Wow! This past weekend is a great example of why I love FIRST so much. We have had so many people and teams help us out throughout this season.
2415 You guys are truly awesome. If it wasn’t for your help scouting we wouldn’t have been able to win our first blue banner. We can’t wait to work with you again at KSU and State Champs!
1648 Congrats on your first Chairmans win you guys deserve it! Thanks for all the help throughout this season with parts and advice. Hope we can set a higher high score at State Champs with you.
4188 It was great working with you guys this year. Your consistency carried us through eliminations. I hope we get to work with you again sometime this year!
5074 You guys filled out the alliance perfectly and did a great job adapting to our unusual strategy. If it wasn’t for your quick coding during semi-finals we might not have won the finals! (PS: we have 2 of your batteries… PM me)
4026 I love you guys. Thanks for all the help through the build season and congrats on the Creativity Award!
3091 Congrats on Engineering Inspiration! If it wasn’t for your team Fernbank LINKS would not have been able to do anywhere near as well for the last two years. We are proud to be a part of the JRD Alliance!
Positive:
Seating This was one of the first FRC events where seating was not a major issue or scary (GSCR). Our team was easily able to sit together and have a good view without staking out seats early in the morning.
The Voulenteers As always the volunteers were amazing and put in tons of work to run the event.
Matches 12 qualification matches really allowed all of the teams to get their robots working. With only 8 qualification matches the eliminations would have looked completely different.
Negitive:
Practice Field Not having a practice field meant that autonomous was just guess, code and hope it works. This meant that many teams were running straight into the drivers station wall.
No Outside Food I would go as far to say that this was a safety or health issue. Drive teams and pit crews were running around constantly focused on competition. When these students don’t have water easily accessible they are not going to focus on finding water. I know that many people in the pits were dehydrated by the end of the day.This needs to be fixed next year.
During the Columbus event, we noticed that a chain had broken inside one of the rails of our drivetrain. We used some of our unbag time to figure out what exactly happened, and the damage was far greater than any of us expected (sprockets had all of their teeth sheared off). Although the exact cause of the damage is uncertain, we are sure that the extra load on the drivetrain due to the field carpet not being on a solid surface had something to do with it. I’m interested to see if any other teams at the event had similar issues.
Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/SBt8m
yea the field was brutal
we were down in quals after a match cause a 14tooth vexpro gear stripped completely, but we fixed that and replaced the transmission. Then the next match we had our vexpro belt snap, which took us some time to replace. And then we were down in finals because the other 14 tooth gear on the other transmission stripped, so we dropped the transmission and put on a different one in 5 minutes next to the field, but then we had some software/ code/ electrical issues with the different transmission, so we couldn’t drive properly in the finals match unfortunately.
But lesson learned that our robot needs to be a lot more robust lol the hard way. The game is brutal this year but we’ll make sure to get steel gears instead of aluminum and different new belt on by Kennesaw, so we can go in fighting.