WMRI comes to a close

Yesterday was the West Michigan Regional Invitational, hosted by four local FIRST Robotics Competition teams. Please take a minute and read some of my recent posts that describe in more detail the WMRI .

I got over to Grandville High School at about 7:45am on Saturday to get things rolling for the event. The opening ceremonies started shortly after 8am, featuring the Creston High School Jr ROTC color guard. After a few announcements, things got under way. It all started a little late, but things got back on schedule relatively quick.

Our team (904) was in the first match of the day. Our autonomous mode was doing goofy things, but we ended up winning our first match. We fired up the computer and made some quick changes to the autonomous mode code and had it working fairly well over the next couple matches.

After our first win, we lost a couple matches in a row and then scored a tie by mid-morning. I'm not sure what our record ended up being by the time we broke for lunch, but we were well below .500. It really didn't matter a lot to us, since we were not putting any pressure on ourselves to win, and we were letting any student drive the robot that wanted to. Every match we had someone different driving the robot, and that was the most fun; to see kids really getting excited about being more of a part of the team.

We broke for lunch at about 11:30 and had a couple slices of pizza. After we finished eating we discovered several of our wires that connect our sensors to the robot controller had pulled out. We hurried and carefully reconnected the wires in the proper spot, but that was the first little bit of pressure we had for the day. It got a little worse towards the end.

So, we finished up qualification matches; all the students were having a great time and I assumed that all teams would move into the elimination rounds since there were only 19 teams. Typically they take the top 8 teams, and let them pick 2 additional alliance partners to begin competing in the quarter final rounds. I wasn't worried since the top 24 teams would advance.

Then, the shocker... Since this was a smaller event, they decided to take only the top 4 teams which meant only 12 teams would compete in eliminations and the day would be over for the other 7. At the end of qualifications we were ranked 16th out of 19. Yikes!

Alliance selections began and with the top 4 teams. The top ranked team was from Swartz Creek MI, and they picked a team from Flint MI as their first alliance partner. They continued on with the next 2 teams and the fourth ranked team was a new team that is just getting started. In fact we let them borrow our backup robot so they could get some experience before the 2009 season started. I had my fingers crossed that they would pick us as one of their partners, but they had other plans. They picked two other teams, that were certainly good choices. Finally, the last selection would be made by the top rated alliance and they selected us! Whoo Hooo!! We made it into the big dance!

The top 4 alliances immediately began talking strategy and charging batteries. The semi-final rounds were scheduled and we were to be in the first match. The announcer called for our team and we began the march to the field. At that very moment I was told that one of our alliance partners wanted us to put a 3 second wait into our autonomous code. This would cause our robot to wait 3 seconds after the match started, giving our partner a better opportunity to knock a track ball off in autonomous mode which would give us 12 extra points. I grabbed my computer and we took off towards the field. I made the changes to the code as we walked out into the gym where the competition was taking place. With the computer connected to the robot, we tried downloading the new code, but were getting all kinds of errors. Little did I know that I made an error in the code and it prevented us from downloading the updates. The event officials told us we'd have to wait to solve our problems because that match had to start right then.

The first semi-final match started and our autonomous mode worked fine, even though we did take off immediately when it started. We won that match easily and with a little more time, we saw the coding error and made the necessary changes. We downloaded the updated code and our second semi-final match went in our favor again.

Now, with the coding changes behind us; our alliance partners were happy with us not getting in their way at the start, I thought we were in good shape. Little did we know that our sensor cables began to work their way out again. So, back into panic mode we fired up the computer to show us where the each sensor cable was supposed to be connected. We had plenty of time to work out those problems and were ready for our first final round match.

In the finals, we won the first match in a very close race. However, in the second match we weren't so lucky, losing in a close fight. This set us up for a 3rd tie-breaking race. In the final match we were out-played, but I saw the official issue 3 penalties to the blue alliance (we were red), which would have made the outcome very close. In the end they issued the 3 penalties to our alliance, and that gave our opponents the win. After looking at the score, even if the 3 penalties had been given to the proper alliance, we still would have lost, but it would have been very very close.

It really didn't matter, our team was very happy to have won second place, and to top it off, we were awarded the Gracious Professionalism award for letting the new team borrow our back-up robot. They also mentioned that Team 904 is always eager to help out in events like the WMRI, and I am very proud to be associated with this good group of students, teachers, engineers and parents.

Team 904 is looking forward to 2009, and I think we will be a force to be reckoned with this season.

WMRI Set Up

This afternoon I volunteered to help set up the official FIRST Overdrive competition field at Grandville High School for this weekends West Michigan Regional Invitational. Grandville has a beautiful school and they have ample room for the competition and pits. It will be a grand time!

When I left, the field was almost completely assembled. They still needed to inflate the track-balls (this years game pieces), but most everything else was complete. I helped assemble various parts of the field; it is utterly amazing the things that can be done with Velcro!

This event is going to be a bit more tame than the West Michigan Regional, however I'm very excited; this is going to be a lot of fun. The West Michigan Regional is an official FIRST event that is held in March (during the regular FIRST season). That event completely fills the field house at Grand Valley State University and has an incredible amount of energy.

Anyhow, this will be the last time we'll do "Overdrive" and that makes me a little sad. I have many fond memories of this year that I will never forget. Watching my daughter as she was a part of our "drive team"; she ran the robotic arm/claw mechanism. My younger son played an integral part of our 3D animation team. It was a great year for me and my family. We're looking forward to 2009, and it starts in just 70 days!

WMRI is this Saturday

WMRI - West Michigan Regional Invitational (website) will be this coming Saturday, October 25, 2008 at Grandville High School in Grandville Michigan (map). There are currently over 20 FIRST Robotics Competition teams that have entered the competition and it will certainly be a fun time. If you've never experienced a FIRST competition, and you are in the area, take the time to stop by and check it out. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Our team, 904, will be competing in and co-hosting this event. Other teams that will be also co-hosting are the teams from Grandville, Zeeland and Holland. Our team is providing many adult volunteers to help with the tournament and make sure that everything is run smooth and safe.

Last week we had a meeting and also again tonight; we had students driving the robot and also had some students and mentors looking over it's chassis and components. It seems to be making some funny sounds.

We will be meeting again on Thursday to finalize everything and pack up our tools. Another group will be meeting Friday evening to set up the field, and everything kicks off early on Saturday. The pits open at 7am with the opening ceremony at 8.

If you can't make it to the event, but are interested in how our invitational unfolds, check back here. I hope to add some blog entries throughout the coming days.

Inspirational Interlude

Yesterday I was reading through some of the blogs that I like and came across a video on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog.

It's about 8 minutes long and I thought it was amazing, and I'd like to share it here.

via videosift.com

In a time when it's tough to encourage kids to get excited about science and technology, this reminds me of why I enjoy science. Kids today have too many virtual distractions, through the use of computers and the Internet. Virtual worlds are fun and exciting, but they can't compare to the real world.

Watch the video and think about everything that went into making those 8 minutes happen. It took a ton of science, engineering and required technological advances that were ages ahead of their time. Also remember at the very top of that monster sat 3 Americans, going to a place that nobody had ever gone before. That's what makes me proud to be an American.

Wind River Workbench - Test Drive #1

Ever since April, when the announcement was made that FIRST Robotics Competition teams would be using a different robot controller and somewhat of a different programming environment, I've been anxious to try it out. FIRST announced that we would be using either LabVIEW from National Instruments, or the Wind River Workbench to program in C++. Me, being a little "old-school" and a bit anti-proprietary when it comes to developing software, I've been anxious to give the Wind River Workbench a whirl.

First of all, Wind River Workbench is a development environment based on the Eclipse platform. Eclipse is what our team used last year (with the appropriate toolchains) and I became quite fond of that environment. What I didn't know was if Wind River integrated somehow into your existing version of Eclipse, and if it did I wanted to work through all the problems before the FIRST kick-off in January. Hooking up Eclipse for FRC was a little tricky last year.

The good people at Wind River allow you to download a trial version of Workbench, after you fill out a form about a mile long and agree to give them your first born child. After all that, they'll let you use the software for 30 days! Yippee! So, I figured I could probably fudge a second download in 30 days and that would probably buy me enough time to sort out all the details before January.

This evening I proceeded to download the 637 MB file and install Workbench on my desktop computer. It took a while to download (through my cable modem) and it took another good chunk of time to install it, but when it was done, it was all completely configured. It may have helped that I already had other instances of Eclipse and CygWin on my computer, but everything just worked. I was amazed! Installing the Workbench gave me another version of Eclipse (specifically tailored to Workbench) and everything else that it needed was automatically installed.

Just before writing out this post I sat back down with Workbench; created a native application and just poked in the standard "Hello World" stuff; and it worked. Just like that. My code ran and I could run the debugger on it; it was painless.

I am very impressed. I am also ready to get my hands on the new WPILib. If you haven't seen the doxygen output yet, you can see it here.

The next season of FIRST will give us all lots of new challenges, and I'm very excited and ready. I can't wait for kick-off!

Update - October 8, 2008

Our FIRST Robotics Competition team has had a couple meetings already and a bigger one is planned for tomorrow evening. Hopefully we'll have a good turn out; we're planning on putting together details for the West Michigan Regional Invitational which will be held on October 25. We need lots of volunteers so that this event goes smoothly.

FRC registration began last week and being part of a Michigan team we are eligible to enter 2 "district" events. Officials from our team signed us up for the West Michigan district event and also the Traverse City district event. If we perform well at either of these events, we'll qualify for the State of Michigan Championship which will be in Ypsilanti toward the end of the season.

So, this leads me to my latest poll quest: Do you think FIRST in Michigan is a good step for FIRST? I had 2 responses; 1 yes, 1 no. I'd have to agree with both responses, as I think there is a great benefit for teams to compete more often at a cheaper price. However I fear that these events may be a bit more diluted than the old style "regionals" we've become acustomed to attending. Only time will tell if it is going to be a good thing.

If there are any facebook users that read my blog, I've written a facebook app that will display an analysis of any teams regional performaces for 2008. At this point it appears that my app is pending approval; I'm not sure how long that will take. Anyhow, if you use facebook, search in the applications for FIRST Overdrive if you'd like to check it out. As regional data begins to be generated for 2009, I'll be making a similar application and database.

Check back soon for an update on the proceedings for the first ever West Michigan Regional Invitational.