Discuss the duration, intensity, timing, virus safety and other considerations in putting on a 2020 version of CalGames.
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First consideration: Official field and FMS will not be available, and need to be replaced with some equivalent.
As far as virus safety, there’s been some previous discussion, but the general take is that you need to follow local regulations. I’m pretty sure the area around CalGames just barely started loosening restrictions, so my question is: what are the odds that the local regulations are opened up enough to host an event in the timeframe you’re thinking, even with all the precautions you’ll need to take?
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Could it be held outdoors?
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See:
Einstein 2017 Houston
SDR and DMR (same venue, skylight directly above the field)
TLDR inconsistency in sun light messes with vision processing.
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True, but if it is necessary to run a safe event, I would give up on the vision.
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ML should be more immune to vision discrepencies due to sunlight, but I assume most teams are not there yet (we certainly are not; also we are on the East Coast, so perhaps this is not my place. If so, sorry for butting in). I wonder, if this is the biggest hurdle, perhaps there could be an ML flavored cheescake initiative to help overcome that impediment.
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Restrictions are starting to lift, so hopefully there won’t be any legal angry messages to hosting a CalGames?
The 5-people-per-team rule that some events had before the shutdown seemed pretty effective - will be sad that there won’t be a cheering crowd, but you gotta work with what you get
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What is ML?
Machine learning. Does not use the retro reflective tape but instead analyzes similarities between labeled images and the camera feed to identify objects.
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At this point in time, for FRC, I would assume that given changing conditions even machine learning will have issues. Not as bad as vision/reflective, but still glitchy enough I’d be using with caution.
Particularly outdoors.
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I guess that is a good point especially considering that one consolation to make the event happen could be slightly different feild elements. That would absolutely wreak havoc on Machine Learning (If not destroy it all together). This is especially true if the data set of the actual elements used is not available early enough (which is likely). However, if it is and includes the acutal outdoor lighting conditions, it could be manageable. We are using the dataset that First published and annotated and we have high acuracy most of the time identifying power cells in our lab, the school’s cafe (think gym lighting) and my house. All with natural only, flourescent, and warm white led lighting. I know that is not direct sunlight.
This is still nowehere near the consistency of a limelight, but a neat learning potential for teams and better than no vision at all.
Glad to see that CalGames is finally asking for input outside of their random in-person meetings
that have 0 advertising. Having attended the event for the past several years, I’d like to bring up some points of note that I strongly believe should be fixed before all else.
2019 marked the first year that CalGames was able to boast an above-average number of matches for a Californian off-season. While I appreciate the effort CalGames has put in to improve, there are still a fair amount of issues to be addressed for the qualification rounds. Last season, the field fell apart ensuring that teams’ last qualification matches were canceled. CalGames is an offseason, so I don’t think the cancellations would be a big deal on their own. My major issue comes from the lack of a unified message coming from the WRRF staff. On Saturday night, we were provided contradictory information on whether our last qualification matches would be canceled or not. This led to a fair bit of confusion the next day as we were not sure what was actually going to happen regarding our last qualification matches.
Pits are another factor where CalGames seem to severely lack in comparison to the other California off-seasons. Currently, power tools are banned in pits. Instead of operating power tools in our pit where there is fixturing at comfortable heights and vacuums set up to clean, every time we have to drill or cut we have to exit pits. Right off the bat, there are a few issues with this. First of all, when people are clamping their material down, they are clamping to material that they don’t own. If they accidentally over tighten and dent the material, or scratch the material they’re not damaging their own property but the school’s property. Additionally, when teams are done drilling they often do not vacuum up the metal dust due to the difficulty of powering a vacuum in the middle of nowhere.
Finally, I would like to discuss the costs of the event. Here’s a table that I’ve been putting together that details the costs of various California offseason.
As we can see, CalGames is by far one of the most expensive events in California. Assuming a team does not have enough spare people to volunteer for CalGames and therefore qualify for early registration, they are spending $87.5 more than the average price for an offseason event. While this may not be a lot of money in the context of FRC registration, it’s just another small detail that demonstrates the bigger issue with CalGames. Are there resources available that show where this cost is going towards? Events like Chezy Champs and Beach blitz understandable have high production costs, and Beach Blitz is known to put extra funds towards team registration scholarships with the Orange County Robotics Alliance.
CalGames was probably a great event when it came out in 2008. 12 years later though, cheaper and better offseasons have been set up while CalGames has not improved to keep up with the times. Whether this is through getting sponsorships to reduce the costs, improving pits, or at the bare minimum ensuring that all the WRRF staff are on the same page, I think it is vital for CalGames to continue the improvements that they have begun in 2019.
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Any California offseason that tries to run this year will be a dumper fire.
- Cheesy Area, the FMS software California uses for offseasons is not completed.
- Both California Andymark fields are not available for rent.
- No Field elements, these would come from FIRST after Houston CMP.
- The California PLC is not available for rent.
- All the FTA’s who run California offseasons won’t be available.
- Official Fields, and FMS are not available.
- FMS Lite was not released this year.
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There’s two teams in SoCal with at least partial metal fields that I’m aware of. One of which last saw service as the practice field for the Los Angeles Regional, with a full team-version field setup. Add in at least one known wooden field border (full) and I’ve got a feeling that something might be able to be mustered up, IF it becomes plausible to host an event somewhere. FTAs may decide to show up (remember, they’re volunteers. FIRST can say “we won’t support an event”, but they can’t do anything if an FTA decides that they want to just so happen to walk into an event without the FTA shirt and help out.).
Whether an event can be held is going to depend more on the local politicians and health departments and schools than on FIRST–there’s ways to monkey with past seasons’ FMS Lite IIRC, and there’s ways to adapt a scoring system.
Demand will also be an issue, I suspect. I’m just not sure whether it’d be a low demand issue (not enough teams) or a high demand issue (not enough events for the teams).
Your underestimating the importance of FMS and the PLC to run a good event.
I think you’re both right. @EricH is pointing out that it’ll be possible to run an event without FIRST. @FletcherS7 is pointing out it’s impossible to run a good event without access to some official FMS and/or Cheesy Arena. The two are not mutually exclusive.
If we want to run hybrid wood/metal fields with outdated Offseason FMS and very few attendees, we could but the events will obviously suck.
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I’m not sure I’d say that the events would suck, per se, just because they happen to run on a field that isn’t an Official FIRST Field. Some folks might take that as an insult. I’ve had some bad experiences with events on an official FIRST field, AND I don’t trust the Offseason FMS–current or not–farther than I can throw it (being “vaporware”, it can’t be thrown at all), due to experience.
It’s harder to run a good event without FMS or Cheesy, yes… but those two aren’t the only FMS-like items out there (401 was developing one, I believe, and there was one that Rockwell was developing a couple years back if someone has $5k or more lying around for the matching hardware). I would say that as long as everybody knew going into the event that it was being run with X setup, and opted to play that way, they’d have fun, and it would generally be a good event.
The “Rockwell” FMS is the current FMS. That’s what the field runs on. Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley PLC’s.
and I don’t define “fun” as being 2 matches and connection problems that make Einstein 2012 look good.
That’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to one a couple years back that had things like 5-digit multicolor displays, and overall upgraded hardware IIRC from the current one. I’ll have to find the Chief thread. NOT repeat NOT repeat NOT repeat NOT (and just so I make myself 100% clear) repeat NOT the current field PLC box.
Edit: Automation Direct, not Rockwell Automation. O!FMS Full offseason FMS
And as I told Jared: Some folks might take that comment about “fun” as an insult. What we’ve ended up doing a lot of when Offseason FMS takes itself and Chuck Norrises itself in the head is to use Offseason as essentially field sounds and “here’s the score”, and everybody enables their robots in practice mode. It makes sure that you don’t lose more than a match or two in a 5-6 match schedule (for a 1-day event).
This photo is of the latest version of the SCC (also not seen is a new Case 33). This is the latest edition of the field hardware put into production in 2019.
6 robots with no bandwidth restrictions saturating the wifi spectrum, have fun with that.
IIRC this is not compatible with the 2015+ driver station software and was a proof of concept that FIRST rejected.