So much cheeto dust on the field at Kettering Week 0. Who gave the robots food!?
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In seriousness the lines on the field are a result from bots dragging the note across the field.
The piles of dust are from kitbot style intakes grinding the wheel against the note while it is already held in place.
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I think robots that are doing that technically violating G410. It’s going to be hard to enforce that this year, since the main option refs/LRIs have under the rules is to tell a team to stop scoring entirely. I’m quite worried about this for our team, since the first version of our intake has this problem, so if anyone has tips on how to prevent it that would be great (we’ve lowered compression in version 2).
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One wonders what FIRST’s true supply of pristine notes is this season and how many they’ve allocated to late season events. One also wonders what protections are in place to ensure earlier events don’t rob stock from later ones.
I would certainly HOPE officials are holding teams to a higher standard per game piece damage rules - especially in any season where game piece supply could be limited.
If substandard game pieces end up being deployed more frequently at late-season events like so many worn-out charge stations, I imagine the feedback from teams competing in said events will not be very enthusiastic. 
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I’m a Field Supervisor that’ll be at a Week 1 event. My team also hosts an AndyMark practice field for the community. On our field we have yet to break a NOTE, though some are looking rough. I’d say total field usage is about equal to one day at an event. That’s encouraging for their durability. FIRST has packed a certain number of extra NOTES per event on each truck. Only an FTA is allowed to break into a future event’s stash, and they’ll report that to HQ.
I was pleasantly surprised at how strong the CUBES were last year. Based on what I’ve seen at our community field I think the shipped number of NOTES will last, although a single rogue robot could chew through a bunch very quickly. Don’t be that robot.
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It seems like a subjective measure as of now. FIRST could change the rule to be more clear by making it “damaging to the point of unusable” and then use the NOTE chart they made in update 14 to determine unusable.
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I think the big challenge this year is going to be that the foam takes abuse in the same areas every time the note is interacted with.
There was the yellow dust problem in 2020 but because all sides of the ball could be contacted it likely distributed the wear across all sides during handling so they would last longer.
It also seems like the notes wear faster on just one side. It’s almost like the outer paint layer doesn’t adhere as well on one side vs the other.
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Well, of our 48 notes, we have 34 remaining that are still whole notes. 14 are ripped in two pieces or broken. The remaining intact notes are quite dinged up.
Over the past five weeks, we have fifty team practice days on the field with many of those days four or five hours of continuous cycling. How that compares to 28 practice matches plus 92 qualification matches plus 15 to 20 playoff matches I couldn’t say. NLR and LSR will each have about 2000 minutes of aggressive cycling. Fifty, five hour days equates to 15,000 field minutes.
Good grief, it’s s possible my notes have endured at least a regional’s worth of use already.
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This could entirely depend on which robots show up on our fields. In either case, if 14 NOTES is the burn rate per event we’re going to be fine. Looking forward to Duluth, as always we learn something Week 1.
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Speaking of food here’s some food for thought, or calculations. I’m the person responsible for loading the consumables for the PNW district. What I’ve been told and sent by FIRST is a full set + 20 for week 1 and 20 for each additional event. It is my understanding that each regional truck is loaded with full set + 20x number of events.
Those cases are marked with a PO # Case ____ of 625 and 24 per case. So FIRST purchased 15,000. No idea if any of those were earmarked for AM’s FIRST Choice and store stock or not.
I’ll leave the math to CD to crunch.
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We had a similar issue at a CHS Week 0. We had note bits everywhere that were more the texture of fish flakes (think the kind you would feed to a pet fish). Not so much dust or streaks over here.
I was by the field for the majority of the day, and it looks like the biggest shreds came from intaking and shooting the note. The speaker and amp had the biggest concentration. We probably lost 10 or more notes that were severed in half, and most definitely came out of the match worse for wear.
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Sounds like we need to bring back the roombas from 2012.
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At least they won’t be able to hide under a bridge…
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But they were just shy. The crowds can get wild at those events. It’s a lot of pressure.
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The new ones have Lidar which won’t like the perimeter walls, but would be great at being able to drive in specific zones and truly clean out the field and avoid dangerous areas.
Add a small camera to do game piece herding after the matches end?
what about a choreographed roomba dance after every match?
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Not quite. In the first match that a team damages a Note, they are given a warning. If they damage Notes in subsequent matches, they get a Tech Foul for Repeated, meaning the first Note in that match is another warning, but damaged Notes 2 through X are Tech Fouls. The robot could be Disabled if the ref feels that further damage will occur in the match.
Sure but there’s not many levers a team can turn if they’re given a verbal warning. Perhaps slowing down the speed of the intake, but that can lead to issues, and also a large portion of damage may be unrelated to intake speed.
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Agreed, a lot of teams may have set positions for shooting that would be changed and mess up their drivers until they get readjusted which would be a huge loss in scoring.
But in the last 2 pictures where the note was moved by dragging it across the floor teams may be able to lift their intake more or prepare the note in the shooter before they start moving.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see refs consistently calling penalties on this “dragging” style of play.
After attending a week 1, there was surprisingly little forbidden cheeto dust on the field or robots. It remains to be seen whether that holds up for future weeks or not…
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