The final 1 match at St Joseph IN team 5502 received a yellow card for electronic communication with driver station.
Can anyone explain what happen?
Wireless communication to the driver station? The announcer could’ve worded that a bit better.
I wasn’t watching and didn’t hear the announcement, but my guess is they either tethered on the field between matches without clearing it with the head ref or they connected wirelessly instead of through a tether.
Could also be an H02 violation. I think the reported wording fits that one a bit better. (No wireless electronic communication use by drive teams.)
G06 is a possibility (tethering without permission is a yellow card), but doing it wirelessly would be a verbal warning to start with under S10.
supposedly a driver was on their phone texting during a match
Note: I was not involved in the situation so may be entirely wrong
I can confirm that a member of the 5502 drive team was texting a member of their team who was not able to attend the event. He himself admitted to this and will be using it as a learning experience in their next competition. Let it be an example of what not to do for everyone else as we progress into competition season
Who is going to be first in producing a PSA video?
Too risky, someone may watch it during a match;)
We were wondering what happened but thought it best not to question something that went in our favor.
Some great matches though this weekend. The alliance selections were so interesting. Rank meant very little with lower ranked teams picked before higher ranked teams.
The use of the cell phone was just a yellow card. Unfortunately the alliance got another yellow card for strategic possession of two gears.
Are yellow cards issued to members using a cell phone only during a match or could yellow cards be called for using a cell phone between finals matches?
Just want to know so nobody makes this mistake in the future. Thanks.
Only during a match.
IMO the rule is there to prevent another drive coach from sitting somewhere with a better view and relaying what’s going on or directing driver movement via phone. Of course, the rule is the rule, so communicating with anyone electronically is prohibited, even if not for competitive advantage.
Last year I saw one robot who couldn’t make it to the field so they sent their human player in order to not get DQ’ed for that match. The human player was on his phone talking to the pits while the match started, and he got a yellow card on a similar rule. That was disappointing to have to explain that you got a yellow card despite not even fielding a robot.
This does show how strong of a grip social media has on us.:eek:
I noticed that there was a lot of confusion in this thread. I’m the driver for team 4580, which was on the mentioned alliance in finals (and the team out of the three that didn’t get yellow carded). Yes, a member of our alliance was on his cell phone and was texting. For the second yellow card, it was not really strategic possession of two gears afaik. As far as I understand it, (the ref didn’t explain much), it was due to the gear that got wedged under their bot. My team tried to get it off of them, but it was really wedged, and they delivered with it stuck. Really sucks that we get ended up getting red carded, but lessons were learned, and it was still a fun finals match. Not a big deal.
Am I the only baffled about how a driver could text during a match? Every second requires the utmost concentration, and somehow he found the time to text his teammate that wasn’t at the event?
Lets not be too hard on the student. He feels awful about it and learned a valuable lesson from this situation. We all did.
My understanding is he was a pilot/human player with no job for the match. This game makes it so one pilot has absolutely nothing to do most matches. I’m sure he just thought he could send a quick update to his friend back home. I doubt he was staring at his phone the whole match.
Nothing to do? That extra set of eyes are invaluable for a coach. I know my pilot hates not being on the airship but I love it when he’s not.
This is true. My pilot being out of the airship was invaluable when our gyro was out. But every team is different.
I’m just pointing out that the student made a mistake and made it clear he feels awful about it at the event.
Lets all just learn from it, as this student did 
Hi, I was the lead announcer for this event and was the voice of all elims matches. I’m in a rough spot when cards are issued - there is a very specific amount of information I’m at liberty to share, and the head ref for this event and I have worked previous events together (and are friends off the field), and thus have a system figured out as far as what should/should not be broadcast at events. Out of respect to the drive teams involved, I stick to the wording of the rule in the manual, which is roughly, “electronic communications are not allowed while in the driver station”. The HR then discusses the cards with the drive team(s) involved with more verbose explanations of what the infraction was, but that is only the business of the HR and affected drive team(s), not the entire 3000+ person audience of this event (rough guesstimate, don’t fact-check that).
However, I will still ask (because I do have some wiggle room, or could discuss this with the IN HRs at the remaining events this season in the event of cards issued there), what do you wish I would have said instead?