March 2012
1 post
Tell us about YouTube videos →
This year, you can help us out by telling us about YouTube videos of matches. We’ll pull the videos from this spreadsheet and put them on The Blue Alliance. If you’re recording matches, stick them on YouTube, then tell us about them. If you find matches we’re missing, tell us about them.
Thanks to your help, we’ve posted almost 500 videos this way so far this year!
May 2011
1 post
Unanticipated Maintainance
Video playback is disabled while we debug a flaky hard drive. Sorry for the inconvenience :(
April 2011
1 post
2011 Boston Regional Webcast →
Opening ceremonies for the 2011 Boston Regional start in seven minutes! The Blue Alliance is there webcasting and archiving all of the action so you can follow along even if you aren’t there. Check it out on our UStream.tv channel, and special thanks to Brittany Strachota and Daniel Bathgate for their help in getting it running.
Check out the link above!
March 2011
1 post
Logomotion Videos Online!
As week 3 of Logomotion is wrapping up, we’ve got our first batch of videos online! Check out these competitions and get your scouting on for the rest of the season!
Traverse City
Granite State
San Diego
If you have more videos from 2011 events, please reach out to us and we’ll coordinate getting them online.
Go Teams!
February 2011
2 posts
Learning from the Past
One of The Blue Alliance’s goals is to help teams relive past competitions. It’s great to go back and watch your teams’ successes or to share videos with parents and sponsors. However, what about other teams?
It looks like a lot of folks are coming to The Blue Alliance to scout out ideas for their 2011 robots. Since Logomotion involves handling inflatable tubes, people are...
Site Redesign Beta
We’ve launched a beta test of the new The Blue Alliance site. The old site (“dot net”) is still right where it always was, but the new site (“dot com”) is up and running.
www.thebluealliance.com
In the next week or two, we’ll be tightening up issues we find with the new site, then phasing out the old one. We’ve still got some work to do to keep some...
January 2011
2 posts
Redesign Sneak Peak
While you’ve been busy designing robots to play the Logomotion game, we’ve been busy redesign The Blue Alliance website for 2011. The new website is entirely rebuilt from the ground up, making it easier to maintain and add new features. We’re moving into the cloud, powering our site with Google App Engine, and relying on hosting from DotBlock Cloud VPS to host our video files...
Logomotion 2011 FIRST Robotics Game Animation
We look forward to seeing what teams come up with to play the 2011 FIRST Robotics Competition game, Logomotion.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank DotBlock Cloud Hosting for generously hosting The Blue Alliance’s website. Without them, we would not be able to bring you the match videos we do every year. If you are looking for a virtual private server host, give DotBlock a...
September 2010
1 post
TBA on Github
As The Blue Alliance moves forward with TBAv4, we have decided to do our development out of a public source code repository. You can check out the current version of the TBAv4 source on the Github page for The Blue Alliance.
The way Github works, you can pull down a copy of the code, and send back patches to be integrated with the master copy. For more information about Git and Github, visit...
May 2010
2 posts
Beantown Blitz 2010 Webcast →
Check out the Beantown Blitz online on Saturday, May 22nd!
Brainstorm - The Blue Alliance v4
Hi all,
The Blue Alliance team is working over the summer on the next version of The Blue Alliance site, which will be the forth major revision to the codebase. This update, if things go as planned, will be a near complete rewrite of the site, incorporating what we’ve learned about providing high quality up to the minute data and scaling to tens of thousands of videos of FIRST Robotics...
April 2010
3 posts
2010 Einstein Videos
We hope you’ve all gotten a chance to relax after an exciting weekend in Atlanta! The Blue Alliance now has footage of the 2010 Championship Einstein Field matches online! If you click the “downloadable” version, you can watch in even higher quality. We’re still working on getting the rest of the Championship online, but hopefully this will tide you over until then!
Comprehensive Video Archiving
It’s clear that this year The Blue Alliance has been unable to provide match archives for as many matches as we have in previous years. In particular, the dissolution of SOAP has removed much of the organizing drive behind video archiving at events. Perhaps less teams are recording events because they assume someone else will be and the matches will be available online, but if no one records...
Video Scouting for the Championship
Hello Teams!
With only a week left until the Championship in Atlanta, everyone must be busy making last minute preparations. Whether you’re squeezing the most out of your withholding allowance or trying to figure out what the best restaurants in the CNN Center are, you want to make sure you’ve scoped out your competition at the Championship!
Based on The Blue Alliance’s...
March 2010
4 posts
Boston Regional Webcast
The Blue Alliance is at the Boston Regional providing a live webcast of the event this weekend! Tune in on Saturday to watch the elimination matches and see the excitement that makes Boston such a great event!
To watch the webcast, visit our Live Webcast page or check out the UStream player below!
2010 Match Videos Online!
Hello teams!
We’re sorry there hasn’t been much video of Breakaway posted on The Blue Alliance. We rely entirely on volunteers sending us video, so if you’re going to a future event and want to archive the video, check out our Video Archiving Instructions.
Luckily, thanks to some awesome help, we’ve gotten videos for two events online so far!
San Diego Regional
...
Week 1 Webcasts
Hello teams! Competition season is here! As was announced on Bill’s Blog, some events are webcasting their competitions this weekend. If you want to tune in, here are some links:
Webcasts
Washington DC Regional
Peachtree Regional
Greater Kansas City Regional
Finger Lakes Regional
Autodesk Oregon Regional
Traverse City District Competition
Kettering University District...
Webcasts of 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition
Hello Teams!
Regionals are just days away, and if you can’t wait to see how Breakaway is going to play, you’re going to want to watch webcasts of Week 1 events!
Check out the list of 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition Webcasts. More webcasts will be added as things are figured out, so check back!
Also, if you’re going to be archiving match videos at Regional competitions this...
February 2010
1 post
2010 Robot Photos
Show Your Bot Off on TBA!
The Blue Alliance has set up an e-mail address for teams to submit photos of their 2010 robots. By building a complete set of robot photos, The Blue Alliance hopes to make pre-scouting for regionals much easier and more efficient for teams.
To submit a photo of your team or another team’s 2010 robot, send an email to photos+2010@thebluealliance.net. Attach a...
January 2010
3 posts
TBA Site Improvements
We’ve rolled out a few site improvements today that ought to help you use The Blue Alliance this season. Nothing is major, but hopefully you’ll like the changes!
Google Custom Search lets you search The Blue Alliance for teams, events, and matches.
Now tell you dates on which future events occur if no matches available.
Sidebar reorganization.
Redone META description tags should...
Breakaway 2010 FIRST Robotics Game Animation
Breakaway is upon us! We look forward to seeing what teams come up with to play 2010’s FIRST Robotics Competition game. We’ll be making some improvements around The Blue Alliance site over the next few weeks in preparation for competition season. See you at the competitions!
Competition Manual Password →
The password to the encrypted FRC Breakaway manual PDFs is ‘Breakaway4FRC!’ Unencrypted ones ought to be released soon, but enjoy these for now.
December 2009
1 post
Team Data Updated for 2010
Hope everyone has had happy holidays! It’s always a nice time of year to relax with the people who are special to you. Now that you’re all rested up, only a few days left until the Kickoff Event!
We just finished off importing FIRST’s 2010 team data. Now when you look up your team or another team on The Blue Alliance, you’ll see their Team Name and Nickname from this...
November 2009
1 post
2010 Events posted on TBA!
After a bit of a delay caused by some changes FIRST made to the layout of their site, The Blue Alliance has posted all of the 2010 FRC Regional events, along with the current list of teams attending each one. The team attendance lists on TBA will update daily, but FIRST is still the definitive source for attendees.
Check them out at http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/?year=2010 .
If anyone...
July 2009
1 post
2003, 2004 match results on The Blue Alliance
We just added 2003 and 2004 match results to The Blue Alliance! That brings the total number of match results online to 24,599! Thanks to Nick Galotti for his help retrieving these old results!
Check them out!
2003 Match Results
2004 Match Results
April 2009
3 posts
Championship Video Online
Now that we’re all back from Atlanta, it might be time to take it easy on robotics for a while. Then again, you might want to relive all the action that went down this weekend. Courtesy of SOAP, we’ve got video from all four divisions online. We’re still waiting on Einstein, but here are the other four fields:
Archimedes Division
Curie Division
Galileo Division
Newton...
5th Gear at the FIRST Championship
We have an announcement about 5th Gear at the FIRST Championship in Atlanta!
After appearing at 13 FRC Regionals, Lockheed Martin is sponsoring the 3d Lunacy Match Simulator 5th Gear at the 2009 FIRST Championships. Using 5th Gear, 6 players use XBox controllers to collect Lunacy moon rocks, charge Lunacy super cells, and shoot or dump both into their opponents’ trailers!
Make sure to...
Championship Division Predictions
The FIRST Robotics Competition Championship Event in Atlanta, Georgia is coming up quickly! Every year, FIRST divides the hundreds of teams attending into four divisions: Archimedes, Curio, Galileo, and Newton, where teams duke it out for a chance to play on the World Championship field - Einstein.
The Blue Alliance has brought back out our Championship division prediction generator for the 2009...
March 2009
6 posts
Twitter Changes
The Blue Alliance has been posting match results since last year on Twitter. Previously, we have used the username @thebluealliance to tweet these match results. We also used this username to tweet when we were liveblogging events and to make announcements.
The volume of tweets for match results completely ruins the signal to noise ratio for those non-match result posts. From today onward, match...
Watch This Year's Matches!
With 4 weeks behind us, competition is really starting to heat up with Lunacy! If you want to scout for an upcoming competition or recap your team’s performance, check out these events with video currently online:
Week 1
BAE Systems Granite State Regional
Midwest Regional
Oklahoma City Regional
Week 2
Boston Regional
Finger Lakes Regional
San Diego Regional
Week 3
Florida Regional
Easy URLs for The Blue Alliance
You no longer need to see internal database “eventid”s and “matchid”s floating around on The Blue Alliance anymore. You can access events and matches directly by using logically constructed names for them:
Team 177: thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team/177
Boston Regional 2009 Event: thebluealliance.net/tbatv/event/2009ma
Boston Regional 2009 Qualifications Match 1:...
MAKE Magazine Fundraising Program
MAKE magazine has launched a new fundraising program for FIRST Robotics teams. Learn more about it on their blog.
Here’s how it works:
At the NYC FIRST Robotics Competition this past weekend, we launched an exciting new program to allow FIRST robot teams, and any other group or club, to raise funds by selling subscriptions to MAKE. Here’s how it works:
You email your contact...
Text Message Match Results
Ever wished you could stay on top of your favorite teams’ performances at Regionals, but had to go to work or class? Been stuck back in the pits, and wished there was an easier way to keep up with match results than going up to the scoring screen every few minutes?
The Blue Alliance is debuting a text message match notification system that will automatically text you match results for your...
Week One Match Videos
It was an exciting start to competitions last week! We saw some great robots and some great strategies as everyone got their first taste of Lunacy. Some events ran into electrostatic discharge issues, but some solutions were found.
Here is some archived video from Week One events currently up on The Blue Alliance:
BAE Systems Granite State Regional (New Hampshire)
Oklahoma City Regional
...
February 2009
3 posts
2009 Webcasts and Online Resources
It’s almost time for the 2009 competition season. Are you aware of all the great online resources teams and community members have assembled? Here’s a brief guide to how to stay up to date before, during, and after Regionals!
Scout
CD-Media - Find photos of teams’ robots.
The Blue Alliance - Watch teams’ previous events and find links to content about them elsewhere...
5th Gear Simulation
We have some news from the 5th Gear Simulation team to announce to you:
The 5th Gear FIRST Robotics Simulation tool has been released to FRC teams (http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/141), and there are plans underway to present it at multiple regionals (http://forums.usfirst.org/forumdisplay.php?f=1091).
The 5th Gear team hopes that through continued development, this simulation could be a...
Submit 2009 Robot Photos!
The Blue Alliance has set up an e-mail address for teams to submit photos of their 2009 robots. By building a complete set of robot photos, The Blue Alliance hopes to make pre-scouting for regionals much easier and more efficient for teams.
To submit a photo of your team or another team’s 2009 robot, send an email to photos+2009@thebluealliance.net. Attach a horizontally oriented photo of...
January 2009
8 posts
Autonomous Vision Tracking and Helix Hoppers
In this post, we bring you videos from Team 2702 and Team 1726. Team 2702 shows off their slick autonomous vision tracking of opponents’ trailers, and its looking pretty good! Team 1726 shows off a good system for getting balls to the top of a helix-style hopper. Great work guys!
Team 2702 - Autonomous Vision Tracking
Team 1726 - Helix Hopper
Video Roundup
In this post, we’re bringing you videos from Team 2775, Team 1629, and Team 1458. There are some great progress and ideas coming out of teams, and we hope to see more videos as build season draws on! If you want to see your team’s video featured here, send tips to contact@thebluealliance.net.
Team 2775 - Scoring Test
Team 1629 - Ball Gathering
Team 1458 - Camera Tracking
...
Orbit Ball Shooter Video
Chief Delphi is down for server maintenance right now, but to keep you satiated, we’re going to feature a video posted by FRC Team 1646 showing off some shooter prototypes. It seems like most teams are still trying out ideas, as this is the only shooter video we’ve seen so far, but hopefully it can give your team some ideas!
FRC1646 2009 Shooter Prototypes Video from Ryan...
How to get Orbit Balls
This year’s FIRST Robotics Competition game uses the “Orbit Ball” as the game piece. With most teams unable to find additional Orbit Balls at Wal-Mart, FIRST has released official word on how teams can obtain Orbit Balls:
Game pieces for the 2009 FRC Game were chosen with the expectation/understanding that they would be readily available to teams from WalMart. Unfortunately, we...
"Regolith" Driving Videos
We’ve gotten tipped off to some spy videos of robots outfitted with Rover Wheels driving on this year’s field material. Thanks to The Nutrons - Team 125 and The Beachbots - Team 330 for posting these videos!
The Nutrons - Team 125
The Beachbots - Team 330
Lunacy Game Animation
The Lunacy game animation has been posted by FIRST. Visit the NASA Robotics Webcasts page to view or download it in a variety of formats!
Good luck teams!
Hands-On with Lunacy Field Elements
We managed to get on the field after today’s Kickoff in Manchester, NH to check out what this year’s game pieces are like hands-on. In this video, we look at the Moon Rocks, Trailers, Payload Specialist Stations, and the slick playing field. Check out how all of these pieces interact and get a better idea of what this year’s game will be like!
Also, be sure to check out the...
Kickoff 2009 - Behind the Scenes
The Blue Alliance just wrapped up our trip to Manchester, NH for the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff Event, where we learned about this year’s game - Lunacy. We’ll be posting our hands-on video with this year’s field and game elements in a little while (transcoding HD video is slow going!). Here are some other videos and photos we produced today during our live...
December 2008
2 posts
LIVE COVERAGE - Kickoff 2009
The Blue Alliance is heading North for the 2009 FRC Kickoff. We’ll be bringing you live video, photos, and updates from behind the scenes in Manchester, NH!
Bookmark http://www.thebluealliance.net/kickoff09/ to get all the behind-the-scenes LIVE coverage!
Blog Coming Soon
Maintaining Wordpress on thebluealliance.net was turning out to be too large of a hassle, and exposed us to security vulnerabilities. Google temporarily delisted us from search results because a hacker exploited our out-of-date version of Wordpress, and upgrading took too long and created too many headaches.
Here’s to hosted services!