The Blue Alliance Blog

Championship Video Online

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:26:27 -0400

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:

Video from the Einstein field will be online here once we have it.

Another competition season is now behind us! There were some amazing robots in Atlanta; everyone should be proud of what they have learned and accomplished this year! Go teams!

5th Gear at the FIRST Championship

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:49:35 -0400

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 stop by the 5th Gear exhibit, which will located north of the FTC pit area, near the FRC Pits, on the north side of GWCC Hall C. Take a turn just for fun, or compete in one of our tournaments to see if you will be the 2009 5th Gear virtual champions (and win prizes)! Also, make sure to participate in the survey put out for the WPI Virtual Competition study to help shape the future of 5th Gear offerings.

If you aren’t attending the championships, never fear: 5th Gear is available as a free download. See the link below.

5th Gear – What is it?

An analysis and training tool useful throughout your entire FRC season.

Available to the students as a free download.

Interactively learn and analyze each year’s FRC challenge.

Test and refine your strategies before your robot is completed.

Practice driving and coaching; analyze technique by watching replays.

Convey FRC’s excitement and fun during recruiting.

Reach a broad audience during community outreach.

See the flyer: http://5thgearsim.googlegroups.com/web/5th+Gear+Flyer.pdf
See 5th Gear in action:
http://www.youtube.com/lachoneus21

Download 5th Gear:
http://thinktank.wpi.edu/articles/141

Discuss 5th Gear:
http://forums.usfirst.org/forumdisplay.php?f=1091

Championship Division Predictions

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:35:40 -0400

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 FIRST Robotics Championship. While these are not the official divisions, FIRST has used the same sorting algorithm to divide the teams attending the Championship into divisions for the last few years. If you want to try to get a head start on scouting before FIRST officially announces the divisions, check out the link below

2009 Championship Division Predictions

As long as you’re at it, don’t forget to check out archived video from regional competitions. Only two weeks to go! Go teams!

Twitter Changes

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:43:14 -0400

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 results will be tweeted as @tbamatchresults. If you want news about The Blue Alliance, follow @thebluealliance. If you want match results, follow @tbamatchresults.

We hope this will make everything a bit more organized!

Watch This Year's Matches!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:39:11 -0400

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

Week 2

Week 3

Florida Regional

Easy URLs for The Blue Alliance

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:56:10 -0400

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:
thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2009ma_qm1
Boston Regional 2009 Finals 1 Match 1:
thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2009ma_f1m1
(ok, so I know there’s only 1 set of finals, but currently you specify the set number to keep it consistent with everything else.)

Now you can guess the URL for any page on The Blue Alliance! The error pages if you guess wrong need some work, but that’ll get improved. Old URLs work as well, so any links you had from before will still work.

Please let us know if you run into any errors or have any ideas on how to improve this!

MAKE Magazine Fundraising Program

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:32:10 -0400

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 information to makemoney@makezine.com (see details on the card above).

We send your group a fundraising kit with subscription forms.

You return the forms and subscription payments to us.

We send you back a monthly check for 50% of all your sales.

Your team or club gets $17 for every subscription sold! And as an added incentive, the top team salesperson gets a $50 Maker Shed Gift Certificate!

We’re really excited by this. We think it’s a great way to capitalize worthy tech, science, civic, and social organizations, while expanding our subscriber base. If you participate, please tell us about your team/club/group in the comments and how much money you were able to raise.

Check out MAKE’s page about this fundraiser, and see if it’s a good fit for your team!

Also, don’t forget about IFI’s Hexbug fundraiser program!

Text Message Match Results

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:15:34 -0500

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 favorite teams. Go to The Blue Alliance Notifications page, and sign up with either an e-mail address, or your phone’s e-mail to sms gateway address. The Blue Alliance updates match information every several minutes, and when we learn about match results for a team you care about, we’ll send you a text message or e-mail!

Take caution - if something breaks on FIRST or TBA’s end, you could get a lot of these notifications. It hasn’t happened before, but be aware.

If you want ongoing match results, check out TBA Notifications.

Week One Match Videos

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:43:23 -0500

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:

We can’t wait to see what Week Two has in store!

2009 Webcasts and Online Resources

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:16:11 -0500

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 online.
YouTube - Search “frc###”. Many teams uploaded videos to YouTube this year.

Watch Webcasts

FIRST Wiki - Webcast List - Links to webcast pages for 2009 regionals.
SOAP - GameDay - Webcast streams, chat rooms, and real time match results during regionals.
NASA FRC Webcasts - Links to webcasts from NASA.

Get Match Results

The Blue Alliance - Real time match results.
Regional Twitter Accounts - Follow a specific regional on Twitter to get match results and commentary.
USFIRST.org Match Results - The official source for match results.

Watch Recorded Videos

SOAP - Directories full of recorded match videos organized by event.
The Blue Alliance - Recorded videos and match results organized by event or by team.
FIRST Wiki - Video Archiving - Find out if your regional will be recorded, or how to record one.

Get Fast Info

FRC Links - URL shortcuts to get straight to the information you want. TBA pages for teams, USFIRST results for events, CD-Media photos, and more.
The Blue Alliance Mobile - Keep up to date from your phone.

5th Gear Simulation

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:58:20 -0500

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 great help to teams during their build and post-build seasons as a strategy formulation, driver training, and design aid. In order to reach this goal, a great help would be for FIRST students and mentors to express their interest in seeing future development. As they participate in Regional exhibits, and fill out surveys which study the usefulness of simulation for FRC, they will help the 5th Gear team prioritize development and meet student needs.

Here is a video showing the latest version of 5th Gear (to be released soon) being tested by FRC team 2068 from Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, VA:

The 5th Gear simulation is an exciting new tools for teams to use to try out their ideas and practice the game before their robots are finished. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to try it out at your Regional, and can give feedback to the 5th Gear team about what parts you liked and what parts could be better!

Submit 2009 Robot Photos!

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:08:00 -0500

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 your robot named ###.jpg where ### is your team’s number. For instance, if you are team 5462, attach “5462.jpg”, and if you are team 1, attach “1.jpg”. Automated scripts handle downloading and processing the attachments, so it is important you stick to this convention!

Send a photo of your bot to photos+2009@thebluealliance.net and help scouts see just how great of a machine you’ve built!

Discuss this post on Chief Delphi

Autonomous Vision Tracking and Helix Hoppers

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:54:27 -0500

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

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:13:15 -0500

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

These are all great videos! Keep up the good work, teams!

Orbit Ball Shooter Video

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:40:34 -0500

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 Dognaux on Vimeo.

How to get Orbit Balls

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:54:49 -0500

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 recently learned that WalMart decided to discontinue this item. Remaining Orbit Balls are only available through WalMart stores in the US and are not available online.

FIRST will make our surplus of Orbit Balls available for sale to teams through www.logoloc.com/first/ starting noon Eastern Time on Friday, January 9th, 2009.

Orbit Balls will be sold as a set of 3 for $27.00 per set plus shipping and handling. Each team may purchase only one set. (We have limited quantities available. FIRST may allow teams to purchase additional sets in the future, depending on inventory levels. We will notify teams if additional sets become available.) The only color available is orange/purple (moon rocks).

Order soon, when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Make your own!

However, while you may not be able to obtain more than 4 official Orbit Balls from FIRST, Team 228 has come up with a clever way to make your own nearly perfect replicas. The have posted a whitepaper on Chief Delphi describing how to make your own “Gus Balls”. Check out the video below, which shows hands on just how good of replicas these Gus Balls are, and how you can make them yourself for less than $10 each.

How to make a “Gus Ball” for the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition from Arthur Dutra on Vimeo.

Awesome. Thanks to Art and Team 228!

"Regolith" Driving Videos

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:53:00 -0500

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

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:46:42 -0500

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

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:39:00 -0500

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 photos of this year’s game elements we’ve posted on Flickr

Kickoff 09 - Field Elements Hands-On from The Blue Alliance on Vimeo.

Kickoff 2009 - Behind the Scenes

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:07:49 -0500

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 coverage!