xkcd

by **Ender** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 4:08 am UTC

Hello,
I hope this thread kicks off well. I've been looking around and found no sign of anyone putting up a FIRST thread, so I thought I would. Seeing how a new year is upon us in the FRC world it would be no better time to do so... So, I guess this is the place to discuss the present game of "Lunacy", as well as if you participated in the past. I know there are other websites like chiefdelphi.com, but I thought that it would be pretty neat to know how big a percentage of XKCD readers also participate in FIRST!

So, without further ado let us begin!

I'm from 1712 and I hope that the new control system operates well during the regionals when six robots are sliding across the field! who wants to go next?

by **SPsnow02** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:37 am UTC

I did FIRST last year, team 830, but I was too busy this year to do it. Whats this year's game about?

by **Mr. Freeman** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:53 am UTC

I was on team #1552 for the last for years. I'm now up at the Colorado School of Mines mentoring team #2859.

I'm glad they decided to change the floor surface this year, I'm not glad that they didn't send so much as a small sample of the floor material with the kit, FIRST really dropped the ball on this one, practice field time is going to be booked solid at regionals, good luck getting a slot.

by **Ender** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:26 pm UTC

Just a summery of this year:
Right, so this years competition is called "lunacy", The game is suppose to mimic some aspects of the moon since its the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. What happens is your robot is carrying the trailer of the other alliance, and so the other alliance has to throw balls called "moon rocks" into your trailer. The floor is covered in a slick surface so robots get very little friction so everyone will collide into everyone. You can also exchange balls called "empty cells" with "super cells" which are a greater amount of point.

the annimation is here which does a better job explaining :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW0eCFPDoxc

edit: Mr. Freeman the floor we found could be mimicked with a type of insulator in walls I think. I'll tell as soon as I find out more, but thats what we found. You can get it at home depot like stores. But yeah it does suck.

by **Sasha** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 1:45 am UTC

I am on team 2846(FRC) or team 529(FTC), The Coconuts.
I am currently trying to find out how to make the Lego brick brain work as well as make the controller interface with the robot- wirelessly.
My wall has dents.

by **Glade** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 3:22 am UTC

Team 1714, More Robotics.

The only thing I'm confused about for this year's challenge is the trailer indicator- Is it a half-cylinder or a full cylinder? Some documents say one and some say the other.

by **Ender** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:49 am UTC

so hows everyone after week one of build season? we've gotten most of the chassis done

Glade wrote:Team 1714, More Robotics.

The only thing I'm confused about for this year's challenge is the trailer indicator- Is it a half-cylinder or a full cylinder? Some documents say one and some say the other.

I cant seem to find anything about the shape of the trailer indicator, sorry.

by **TheQntty** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:55 am UTC

I'd like to do FIRST, but there are no teams near me (that I know of). I'm thinking of starting a team at my school next year (depending on how practical it is to do so), so I'm interested in what tasks are required of the team. What kinds of parts are typically made from scratch? What kinds of parts are provided? I'm assuming that the robot is controlled by a controller that is provided as a part, so how hard is it to program that? (I'm referring to FIRST robotics, not the lego one or FTC).

Edit: it seems that starting a team is more a lot difficult than I had imagined (after reading the usfirst website), so that probably won't happen, but I'm still interested in what is done to build the robots

by **Figment** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 3:45 am UTC

team 1706.....until recently

I had to drop it because our school's DI team needed another member to compete and that happened to be me...and my school wouldn't let me compete in both.
makes me sad, but there's nothing I can do...
anyway, good luck to all! (the game this year sounds...fun...good luck with the floor!)

by **Ender** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:22 pm UTC

TheQntty wrote:What kinds of parts are typically made from scratch? What kinds of parts are provided? I'm assuming that the robot is controlled by a controller that is provided as a part, so how hard is it to program that?

Programming is pretty easy for most of it in the way of controls, Autonomous is a bit harder. We use LabView for programming which is basically drag and drop, much like easyC. Parts provided vary year to year. You can get parts in the kits given out, this year it were the orbit balls, wheels, and some electronics that are new. Everything is built together using aluminum extrusion and other parts from Andy Mark and McMaster. It really depends on what you define 'Scratch'.

Making a FIRST team is incredibly difficult as you've seen. It took my friend in NC about a year paper work and fundraising to get the school to do it, but its well worth it.

by **Orca** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:54 am UTC

Team 10__..something I kind of forget >.>;
Anyway, our team is incompetent, we've had a team for awhile and we can never agree on anything and get the work done. Not to mention we just killed our motors during our second test run because someone attached them *very* wrongly. Great going so far... lol

by **rath358** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 6:50 am UTC

im with team 93. i think this year's challenge is pretty cool, but i dont have to figure out how to make the robot work on the slippery surface, im software. =p

by **serpentwind** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:40 pm UTC

I'm with 233. I think my team is pretty well known. Lunacy looks to be ridiculous. Is our team the only one having severe trouble finding the Moon Rocks? We can't get them anywhere! Regardless, I'm a scout, so it'll be wonderfully hard to keep track of everything this year...

by **Ender** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:11 pm UTC

serpentwind wrote:I'm with 233. I think my team is pretty well known. Lunacy looks to be ridiculous. Is our team the only one having severe trouble finding the Moon Rocks? We can't get them anywhere!

Your not the only team having trouble. Right now we have about seven moon rocks. The only way we got the additional three was from begging the Walmart near PennState

We are thinking of doing the template for the moon rocks on chief delphi, it seems easy enough:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2187

by **Ben_** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 7:07 am UTC

Hey, I'm from team 148

Fun game this year in my opinion, although I really really hated it during the first week.

I'm a pit member, so it'll be a whole lot easier on us I think.

No such luck for drivers!

by **Ender** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:52 am UTC

ship day in less than two weeks!
hows everyone doing so far? we've got autonomous going for our camera finally

by **Ben_** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:18 am UTC

Ugh... Scary!

Looks like we'll be done with all the kinks next week, with auton and everything.

which regionals are you going to be at

by **Ender** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:42 am UTC

Ben_ wrote:Ugh... Scary!

Looks like we'll be done with all the kinks next week, with auton and everything.

which regionals are you going to be at

my school is going to the D.C. Regional. 60 teams in one spot, yey claustrophobia!

by **Actaeus** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:01 am UTC

Our team has a mascot, and it's a glove full of water, and his name is Mr. Wibbles.

More importantly, we're using the Archimedes Screw approach. It's pretty badass.

by **serpentwind** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 12:46 am UTC

233 will be at Central Florida, Colorado and in all likelyhood, Atlanta. See you there!

by **femtometer** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:21 pm UTC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCVLZFyEI1Y

hope ya like it.

Cheers, Ben_ on his sister's computer

by **Vault** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:57 pm UTC

I'm on team 1769. This is my first year doing it and it's been really fun so far. My school doesn't have a team, so I joined a team for another school in my district. My job is programming, and it's a bit daunting since I'm the only programmer. We've gotten everything to work so far, but we didn't do anything too complicated. We went with a shooter-type approach that launches the ball by spinning two cylinders in opposite directions. I'm just glad I got my autonomous camera code done. LabView makes things easier but also it's a bit of a pain.

I'll be at the Kansas City regionals, anyone else?

by **PeculiarKid** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 12:07 am UTC

Team 2357 here. We'll be at the KCMO regionals. I think our team is doing okay, apart from slight drama between members. It really doesn't help when two of the most active members are dating, and sometimes fight. >.>

by **Ender** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 4:41 am UTC

femtometer wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCVLZFyEI1Y

hope ya like it.

That is awesome. Our mentor has been obsessed with showing that video during classes for the last several days. Also about showing the tumbleweed video from last year... How long did it take you to build the duplicate tornado? And how fast does the archimedes screw turn? I guess we will see you guys in atlanta

by **Ben_** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 5:48 am UTC

I don't blame him,

Hell, I'm obsessed with playing our video, haha

And I can't tell ya the specs on our spiral, sorry :cry:

by **Actaeus** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 7:48 pm UTC

PeculiarKid wrote:Team 2357 here. We'll be at the KCMO regionals. I think our team is doing okay, apart from slight drama between members. It really doesn't help when two of the most active members are dating, and sometimes fight. >.>

The most drama our team gets is when the janitor tries to steal/destroy Mr. Wibbles.
Not that I'm necessarily envious...

by **Numquam** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:39 am UTC

I was considering doing it, but honestly the game looks stupid and looks like a waste of time.

by **PeculiarKid** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 5:47 pm UTC

Numquam wrote:I was considering doing it, but honestly the game looks stupid and looks like a waste of time.

For me it wasn't about the game, it was about the learning experience of working with a fairly large team and learning design concepts and brainstorming techniques to meet an objective. And bonding with my team.

by **serpentwind** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 1:45 am UTC

The Pink Team in itself is my reason for joining.

It's really been so fun. It has kept me sane (somehow) throughout all of high school.

I don't know what I'd do without it.

((For those who didn't know... 233 is the Pink Team. 3rd in World last year, 2nd two years ago!))

by **Ben_** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 4:23 pm UTC

Yeah I know whacha mean. 148 has been great to me.

Hopefully we'll be on Einstein again for another win

by **Ender** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:16 am UTC

Hey guys.
first week of regionals is over and second week is almost starting! My team just got back from the D.C. one, and had to be the best one i've every been to! How has everyone else's been if you guys have done them yet?

by **AverellTorrent** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 3:22 am UTC

I'm with team 2393. I'm particularly frustrated with the game this year. It doesn't leave much room for being creative with the design. I'm sure some teams have come up with some interesting stuff, but all-in-all I think all the robots will have the same basic design this year. It seems like all the good ideas we could come up with were shot down by the rules somehow. If it wasn't shot down by the rules, it was shot down by research we did that showed it was impractical. It's like they're making it a competition about how good your drivers are and how good your teammates are at throwing a ball instead of how good your robot is.

by **Ender** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 12:50 pm UTC

AverellTorrent wrote:I'm with team 2393. I'm particularly frustrated with the game this year. It doesn't leave much room for being creative with the design. I'm sure some teams have come up with some interesting stuff, but all-in-all I think all the robots will have the same basic design this year. It seems like all the good ideas we could come up with were shot down by the rules somehow. If it wasn't shot down by the rules, it was shot down by research we did that showed it was impractical. It's like they're making it a competition about how good your drivers are and how good your teammates are at throwing a ball instead of how good your robot is.

There did seem to be some constraint on design creativity this year, most of the robots at DC held a bunch of similarities on design. But i wouldn't go all out in saying that it was only driver practice that got you to the top. Several teams did have really awesome out-of-the-box designs. I mean 45 had a GIANT FAN! thats awesome. But most teams did have a similar type of manipulator using polycord. and a lot of teams didn't have much of a autonomous period and relied heavily on human players. So it was show to be a game were you needed a strategy to succeed, which happens in every game

by **AverellTorrent** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 10:23 pm UTC

Ender wrote:
AverellTorrent wrote:I'm with team 2393. I'm particularly frustrated with the game this year. It doesn't leave much room for being creative with the design. I'm sure some teams have come up with some interesting stuff, but all-in-all I think all the robots will have the same basic design this year. It seems like all the good ideas we could come up with were shot down by the rules somehow. If it wasn't shot down by the rules, it was shot down by research we did that showed it was impractical. It's like they're making it a competition about how good your drivers are and how good your teammates are at throwing a ball instead of how good your robot is.

There did seem to be some constraint on design creativity this year, most of the robots at DC held a bunch of similarities on design. But i wouldn't go all out in saying that it was only driver practice that got you to the top. Several teams did have really awesome out-of-the-box designs. I mean 45 had a GIANT FAN! thats awesome. But most teams did have a similar type of manipulator using polycord. and a lot of teams didn't have much of a autonomous period and relied heavily on human players. So it was show to be a game were you needed a strategy to succeed, which happens in every game

What was the fan for? Down force? Did it help much? I thought of doing that, but we did the math and it turns out we would've added only a couple of pounds worth of force...

It's just more restraining than the previous games I've done/watched. With the other games I was having a bunch of ideas, but with this I had only two legal ideas and only one of them was practical. It's disappointing. At least I still have one more year before I graduate, though. I'm glad this competition isn't my last.

by **rath358** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:29 am UTC

im not sure about that particular fan, but I saw a couple on chiefdelphi that were being used for extra momentum.

this year looks exciting. I CANT WAIT NEXT WEEK IS WISCONSIN REGIONAL. ill be there with NEW Apple Corps =]

by **Actaeus** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:27 pm UTC

ZOMG Boston regionals today-Saturday :mrgreen:

EDIT: We're going to Atlanta, baby!

It just takes some time,
Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine,
Everything, everything will be alright.
(they were playing that at Boston regionals during the award ceremony and now it's stuck in my head. That song will always remind me of this epic FRC year

)

by **rath358** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 12:01 pm UTC

nice. i think ill be at Atlanta too. Im HP for 93. =]

just realized that raptor awareness day is the Friday over Atlanta.lol.

EDIT: I apparently may not be human player... oh well

and Glade, congrats on Chairmans at Wisconsin Regional.

by **Actaeus** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:20 pm UTC

rath358 wrote:nice. i think ill be at Atlanta too. Im HP for 93. =]

just realized that raptor awareness day is the Friday over Atlanta.¡This cheese is burning me!.

Nice.

It looks like my team will be sponsored by xkcd, or at least be selling xkcd t-shirts at the competition

by **serpentwind** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:31 am UTC

HEELS YES!

233 is Florida Regional Champions!

See ya in Atlanta.

And for those of you going...

SEE YA IN DENVER!

by **10nitro** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 8:55 pm UTC

Programmer on Team 1024.

Going to Atlanta!
Anyone interested in a LAN party in Atlanta?

Anyone going to IRI?

Who is online