For those were at a week 1 event what was your inspection experience this year? Now is the time to try and address any systemic issues from the additional guidance implemented this year.
Did the new guidance work? Do you think there are things that could still be improved?
Our inspection went amazingly. I thought the inspectors did a fantastic job all around at both Minnesota events so far this season. I want to say our inspection took around 40 minutes with ~10 minutes of that being our fault. It was done efficiently with a rookie inspector getting trained in at the same time. Thanks to @Jon_Stratis @zeta and others who inspected at the event this week, you guys killed it!
Thanks Ryan! There was one inspection issue on the Northern Lights side that we had to address, but overall our inspectors were great at the event, even the rookies.
This was the smoothest inspection we’ve ever had, and the only holdups were broken parts on our bot. We took maybe 20 minutes to go through everything except pneumatics and code since we didn’t have our compressor hooked up and we had broken a wire the previous night. After fixing those, we had the inspector come back and we finished in less than 10 minutes.
Things seemed quick for us. General note that it seems some inspectors aren’t up to speed on the new pneumatics control components and how to test them. Nothing too major.
Overall a great experience at our first event.
Inspection was smooth.
Took a little while because there appeared to be an inspector shortage. I suppose that should be encouragement to volunteer as an inspector.
Ours at Lake Superior was great. Inspector was obviously very experienced.
Might be some good feedback to let @ChuckDickerson know. This is something I’m hoping we don’t run into trouble with.
I concur, our inspector had not seen the analog sensor used for control before (he knew about it, just hadn’t seen it done) and I taught him how to hold the Mode button to force the compressor to run. Tip for teams/inspectors: have a pointy object/bent paper clip handy for button pushing.
Inspection was efficient and without issue, though. Kudos.
Our inspector was great and quickly got us through the abbreviated inspection used for single day events. I’m not sure the same could be said for all the inspections at our event though.
There were multiple teams that missed their first matches due to lengthy inspections. I’m not sure if this was a training issue and inspectors didn’t understand that the inspection process - like the checklist they’re using - has to be abbreviated for single day events. It was week 1 so maybe teams did have severe enough issues that such long inspections were necessary, but I hope something changes for future weeks.
There also appeared to be communication issues related to ensuring teams completed and brought full self-inspection checklists, the inspection checklist linked on the district event page is the abbreviated checklist when teams were supposed to complete a full inspection checklist. And I’m not sure some teams brought any completed self-inspection sheet.
While our inspector was great and our inspection went smoothly, it was not abbreviated in any way. It felt like just a normal inspection from any other year. We did turn in a full self-inspection sheet prior to the match, which wasn’t really looked at, so I’m not sure what the purpose was.
But I want to reiterate that our inspector was really good! He made my students feel at ease and comfortable. I also noticed that he implemented a lot of the suggestions that were brought up in the other inspection thread and that Chuck sent out, so it was nice to see that happening.
I’m not an inspector, but I wonder if the self inspection is like Van Halen asking for a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. They didn’t care about the candy, they wanted to know if the staff had actually read the contract. Teams with a complete checklist probably already addressed most concerns.
The inspectors at Northern Lights did a great job, easily the best experience I’ve had with an LRI in my 10 years of FIRST. Our inspector took a little longer, but just seemed to be getting in the swing of things, since it was early in the day. Barely had any issues. Thank you to everybody at the Minnesota regionals, we had an amazing time!
Our inspection tonight at ISR1 was totally fine. The inspector immediately called over an LRI when they (correctly) identified an issue.
From this and other inspections I saw (the inspection area is in a very open part of the arena) it would appear that failed inspections (both on the scale of our minor bumper issue and especially at need-to-rewire-the-bot scales) are elevated to an LRI who calmly explains to the team what the problem is and suggests solutions if relevant.
I will add that all the talk about inspections on CD recently really helps raise awareness of options such as partial inspections done by different inspections: knowing this will make it much easier to get reinspected tomorrow once we fix that small issue.
Boom.
Going through the list and taking it seriously has value all to itself.
Now you have to explain to the students what a Van Halen is 
We had a great experience with inspection, although it took about a hour and a half which we found very surprising. All the while we only had a single issue near the end of the inspection with our pressure release. They were incredibly chill and nice people though!
Edit: at NLR
Inspection went really smooth for us at GSD, our inspector didn’t completely understand the new REV control system over the old CTR one but we got through it just fine.
That was the same for us, the only issue they found they were not 100% sure and asked the LRI at NLR
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I am encouraged by the positive reports so far. The new REV components are new to us all, including the RIs and LRIs, so if your team has used the new components and are more familiar with them than the RI is please be patient and take the opportunity to help educate the RI so they can be more knowledgeable when inspecting other teams later. The RIs will appreciate your assistance. We are all in this together.
I’m going to be inspecting for the first time at week 2, so if theres anything that teams felt went well from week 1 inspections I’d love to hear about them so I can be sure to implement them for myself! I’ve been reading the threads and taking everything to heart, and I really want teams to have a smooth time. Tbh, my biggest anxieties are the new control system, and the fact that its been a few years (for both me and teams) so everyone’s trying to clean the rust off all at once. I’m still exited, and feel free to say hi if you’re going to be at Pinetree!