SourceBots 2018 Competition Retro
We ran a good competition!
Carpet tile alignment
- Tiles aren't actually square
- Rolls might work?
- Place boards underneath tiles
- Double sided tape?
Seat Slats
- Potential safety hazard
- Look better
- Remember to do them next time
Arena Network Cables
Tape
- Ran out of coloured tape
- Keep a larger backlog
Kit storage
Team pits / fire exits
- Don't block fire exits
- There's a regulation for people per exits, which we were probably far from
Measing from sides is inaccurate
- Measure from absolutes
- Use chalk line like method for straight lines
Trolley Return
PXE boot
- Might be worth trying for comp system
Table for cutting wood
- We got moaned at a little for cutting on bar tables
- Get a workmate
Piza on signage
- Be more careful
- Better organisation
Columns falling over
- Better measurements would mean velcro made more contact with carpet than tape
Volunteer Scheduling
Hot mornings
- Fans worked well
- Turns fans on earlier
- Open door on balcony sooner to let air escape
Communicated well
- Dispite a lack of radios (or alike), there were no communication issues
Livestream was cool!
Cable through door
- Network cable to bar 2 screen was running through door, and got worn down
- Not very safe
- This was installed by crew
Team given red taped arduino
- Quality control
- Seemed to work fine for a while, was the tape right?
Timelapse obstructed
- SUSUtv obstructed timelapse camera when setting up rigging / livestream camera
- Plan better
Radios
- Radios would be nice, so we're not running around to find certain people
Network went down
- Firewall prevented DHCP connections
- Run DHCP ourselves, as we've done before
Nobody looked into socket issue in robotd
- Issue was known, but not reliably reproducable
- Should have been looked into before
- No issue tracker
- No one knew the correct place to log these issues
Wristbands tightening throughout the day
- Teams cut them off saturday night, and just walked into venue
- Use crimped ones
- Remind teams the wristband is required for entry
Sharp cable ties
- Point them down
- Cut closer
No score entry training
- Jobs didn't have a location
- Little to no documentation on some jobs
Overhead view
- Overhead view looked great
- Means those on balcony could see better
Teams seemed happy
- Besides some kit issues, teams looked to have fun
Bar 2 / Cube flow
- Cube wasnt crowded
- No rush moving between pits and arena
Issue handling
- Get a possible fix for an issue rather than trying to find the correct solution
- Teams missed some (league) matches
Zone sticks
- Teams claimed zone sticks were causing their robot to stop too early, and didnt want to use them
- Zone sticks should be mandatory in arena matches
- Investigate issues correctly, and announce to put teams minds at ease
rematch necessity
- Some volunteers were overworked
- Better efficiency
- Software has support for delays for exactly this reason
Handling of a rematch
- rematches are possible
- Don't go into a state of panic
- Calm teams as required
- Judges decision should be sought sooner
Volunteer parking
- Team parking was documented, volunteer was not
- Friday parking is hard to find
Match points vs league points
- Teams didnt understand the difference
- Teams should be given a briefing, ideally separate from the intro briefing
Packdown plan
- No plan for what needs doing during packdown
- Only 1 person knew what had to be done
- We need to plan this
Road closure
- Common road into university was closed for marathon
- Should have known and warned teams
Lighting
- Lighting caused some tokens to be too dark to be read
- Phones read fine, webcams didn't
- Test using actual kit
- Think more about possible lighting issues
- Be prepared to run matches with all lights on sooner
- Pi cams?
- Additional scaff lights to become part of standard setup
Practice carpet
- Teams wanted a place to test that isnt in the arena
- Give them a test area of carpet
Pi system clock
- Teams claimed issues with times on pis (match timeout)
- Research into
- Log times in logs?
- Network Pis, serve NTP?
Account for collisions
- Game mode was designed for all teams to get to other side of arena as quickly as possible
- 4 way collisions very likely
Cloth wrapping of scaff looked bad
- Cloth wrapping was done incorrectly, leaving large lumps and exposed scaff
- Installed by crew
- Meant to be looped around, rather than cable tied around
Kit owner
- Didnt keep separate kit which was personal, SB or SUSU
- Lead to confusion when packing down
- Only had 1 Socket wrench, which went missing during takedown
- Only 3 hammers
- Need more scaff tools to be more efficient
No music to motivate during takedown
- Audio kit was packed away early
- Keep an audio jack around so we're not working in silence