Team Leaders, here are some late details on the 10K Lakes and North Start Regional events.
General Food considerations
The 10,000 Lakes and North Star competitions are held in Univ of MN arenas which have vendor contracts that prohibit the public from bringing their own food and drinks into an event. This applies to all teams and spectators. Please don’t try to “sneak in” food or drinks. To enforce this rule, robot inspectors will be monitoring load in. Please have your students bring empty water bottles. There will be beverage coolers placed around the venue for refilling bottles. Concessions will be open. Please review event rules with your team members:
https://firstfrc.blob.core.win
Note that this document does not specifically say ‘food’ because the rules apply also to district events.
Team Seminars
These seminars are hosted by teams and, as you can see, cover a variety of topics. They are usually quite informative. The location is the Williams Club Room on Thursday. The Club Room is on the 3rd floor above the Oak Street Lobby and is accessed by the elevator inside the lobby door.
12:00pm – 12:45pm Event Ambassador training
This is for students who sign up to be event tour guides
1:00pm – 1:45pm Core Values (Team 1816, 2177, 2239 and 5172)
This presentation will discuss core values, describe a student-driven process for developing your own team’s set, and provide a perspective from several team that have done this exercise.
2:00pm – 2:45pm Diversity and Inclusion (Team 2500 ahd 2491)
Discuss ways for team to attract more students and understand the issues that may be preventing students from joining your team.
3:00pm – 3:45pm Mentor Roundtable and MN Robotics Coaches Assoc.
This is an informal session covering a variety of topics that are important to team mentors.
4:00pm – 4:45pm Dead Battery Project (Team 3313)
All women (students and mentors) are invited to have a conversation about the Dead Battery Project which focuses on sexual harassment.
5:00pm – 5:45pm Team Organization and Communication
They will give an overview of how KnightKrawler is organized including our meeting schedule, use of Scrum, and full team meeting agendas. In addition, they will talk about how they use Slack as our primary way of communication with email used for large announcements.
SWEet Eats
The Robettes (2177) are teaming up with the U of M – Twin Cities chapter of Society of Women Engineers (SWE) to host this FIRST Ladies networking luncheon. Female students and mentors can relax, meet other women in FIRST & STEM, and chat with the SWE members about what it’s like in STEM fields beyond high school
When: Friday, March 29th, 12pm noon
Where: Mariucci Arena Concourse
RSVP by March 22 by emailing SWEetEats@therobettes.com with the following info:
• Team Name
• # of Ladies Attending (student/mentor)
• Any dietary restrictions we should be aware of
For more info, please see (https://mnfirst.org/wp-conten
Space is limited, so RSVP soon!
Thank you,
Mary and Fae
Outreach Leads
Team 2177 The Robettes
SCOUTING FOR ALL!
For teams looking to be competitive, scouting is a key part of their strategy. Last year, Falcon Robotics (5434) piloted sharing our scouting information with all teams at the competition. Overwhelmingly teams were supportive of our efforts. At NORTHERN LIGHTS and 10000 LAKES this year we’d like to take SCOUTING FOR ALL! to another level by engaging other teams in our efforts. It is our hope that this will reduce the strain on any one team for scouting, increase the accuracy of information, and make the competition more fun for everyone. We are looking for teams interested in helping us scout using a system integrated with google forms. Teams that participate will have access to the raw spreadsheet of all scouting information in realtime at the event. On Saturday of the event we’ll be sharing a filtered version of this scouting with all teams. To participate teams will need 3-6 students able to scout every match with smartphones. For more details, contact Jason Engbrecht at engbrech@stolaf.edu.
Notes from our Control Systems Advisors
Teams are encouraged to share their Chairman’s presentations and discuss
Below are some required updates and recommendations made based on the lessons learned from the Week 2 Duluth Regionals and Week 3 Great Northern Regional. While not required, it is advisable to follow the recommendations to avoid delays in competition and to minimize the number of bypasses and technical issues during competition. Thanks and best of luck in your next competition!
Required
* Update roboRio to 2019 v14 image. There will be time after your robot is unbagged at the competition. DO NOT unbag your robot to complete this update before the next competition. If you competed during either week 2 or week 3 regional and are using the same roboRio, your team should have already been updated. If not, the CSAs and Robot Inspectors will help you update after your robot is unbagged if you are attending a MN regional. 2019 v14 image is included in the FRC update suite 2019.2 below.
Recommended
* Bring a copy of your robot source code or LabView robot project, you will need to re-deploy it after you update your roboRio to the 2019 v14 image.
* Update to FRC update suite 2019.2: https://wpilib.screenstepslive
* Update wpilib to 4.1: https://github.com/wpilibsuite
* Update CTRE Phoenix Framework to 5.14.1.2: CTRE Phoenix Framework Installer 5.14.1.2 then run Phoenix Tuner and install the latest libraries to the roboRIo
* For all camera sources, we recommend setting the camera to 10-15 FPS at 320×240 with a compression of 30 if using a single camera, if using two cameras drop to 7-10 FPS and 320×240 with a compression of 30 on both cameras, to reduce latency and bandwidth: Contact a CSA at firstmn.csa@gmail.com if you need any assistance with this. The goal is to stay below 3Mb/s of total traffic between your roboRio and the drivers station.
* To reduce the workload on the roboRio, use frcvision on a raspberry pi instead of using cameras on a roboRio: https://github.com/wpilibsuite
* Use a limelight for vision tracking only, and / or consider using the bandwidth recommendation here: http://docs.limelightvision.io
* If using a limelight and / or frcvision on Raspberry PI, consider adding an ethernet switch to your toolbox or to the robot in order to assist troubleshooting and configure settings without the use of Wifi, these are 12 volt switches and can be wired directly to the PDP / VRM, if connecting through the PDP, consider using a 1 or 2 amp inline fuse: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR
* Turn off firewall: https://wpilib.screenstepslive
* Bring at least 2 USB-ethernet adaptors if your team is using one for your driver’s station: https://www.amazon.com/Anker-P
* If using “Default” or “LabView” Dashboards, install this update: https://knowledge.ni.com/Knowl
* Teams should ensure that networking configurations on all devices, eg; drivers station, roboRio, limelight, frcvision, jetson, etc…, should be either set to DHCP or static but not a mix, further recommendations here: https://wpilib.screenstepslive
If you have any questions on any of these items, please feel free to contact us or stay in touch using the links below.
CSA Blog: https://firstmncsa.org
CSA Email support: firstmn.csa@gmail.com
CSA Contact info: https://mnfirst.org/first-comm
Regards, Mark Lawrence
Chairman, MN FRIST Regional Planning Committee