Any FTC members/alumni here?

Any FTC members/alumni here?

What is/was your favourite FTC team besides your own?

How far did/have you make/made it?

General FTC thread

Did FRC in high school, was one of 3 members who actually did anything. LabVIEW triggers me to this day.

I was on both FTC and FRC as lead programmer for both teams. We never used LabVIEW, always used Java.

Did you do any vision processing?

What makes labview so difficult ?

I really want to ask who you are but realize posting team numbers would be something I definitely wouldn't do. Do you know James?

Not OP but was in frc labview isn't that bad. We did vision processing. A lot of testing with reflector tape and a shitty webcam. We had a mentor who knew everything about labview and put in a ridiculous amount of time into it.

Oh nice, did you guys make it very far?

My FRC team never made it past our first regional unfortunately. But I was only on that team for a year

My team made it to world championships my last year. After that the whole team basically fell apart.

From Dallas and only ever went to the Dallas regional, wasn't good enough to move on.

LabVIEW was a terrible mess, I'm sure it's great for large industrial applications but I was the only one who had a decent enough grasp to make it work. We tried Java but it never ran correctly, eventually our LabVIEW code would lock up and robot would be stuck making a hard left turn and spin itself in circles until we hit the Estop.

Wow congrats.

Unfortunately that's how I hear most successful teams end up, they do well but fell to pieces pretty quickly from infighting or whatever.

The FTC team that I was on actually ended up winning an award last year, but luckily I graduated before I could witness the team burn down

An award at worlds, that is.

Ah rip. I guess it's not that unique of a situation. My teams programming mentor I think helped develop labview. So he taught us a lot about it. I can see how it can get confusing.

Never thought I'd see a thread about FIRST on here. I was in FRC and a little VEX

Yea same dude. I graduated the year we made it to worlds and got medals. Our team broke down due to not having enough kids serious about it to continue the team (most just went and fucked around, didn't actually contribute to building or programming). Also the mentors were mostly terrible so I can't blame them really. We had one amazing mentor but 3 others who were some of the meanest people I've met. After my year the head person left schools and I think there was a half assed year after but it's for sure dead now.

Continued..

Was honestly a pretty awful experience. I guess it was my life so I should be glad I got to go out and travel and experience things even if they were mostly bad. It really made me feel like shit when I saw so many genuinely happy people there and teams with great people and mentors. And then my team to compare it to was an absolute joke, even if we did do really well.

How good was your team? What did you think about the whole experience?

I guess it didn't help that I'm 90% sure I have very minor Aspergers. All my life I've been learning how to act normal and less like a creep. Experiencing events with so many people was good for me in the lo g run I think. Taught me what to do and not to do when dealing with those situations

It was fun I came on the 2nd year. During my years we went to worlds twice. I wish we had a programming mentor, the one we had left so it was a former team member doing that role while he went to college. In all we had three mentors and coach. One mentor is a old guy who's good at machining the other was a life long frc guy who came from a good team. The life long guy and the old guy argued about design, but it was ultimately left to the students. Personally I prefer the life long guy, he is really good at design and had his designs win at worlds before and helps other teams alot. Overall it was great

Mentors seem to be the major deciding factor in how teams go.

If you have a driven mentor that tries his best to make it fun and enjoyable for the team then you're gonna have a good time,

But if all the mentor really cares about is results I think it ruins the whole experience.

Plus, hands-off mentors that like to let you learn by trying it yourself and providing guidance when you inevitably fail are the ones I've taken a liking to.

That sounds nice. Was the life long guy named Dale?

No, his name is Stephen

Yea the one mentor who was really nice and helpful was quiet. The other mentors weren't really friends with him and they mostly cared about winning and going 110% on everything. It wasnt even so much they only cared about winning, just that they were very condescending and were smug as fuck. Also they could be really harsh on small, stupid things. They got way too into it I think. The one nice mentor is why I stuck around. He seemed to be one of the only sane adults there.

How was your mentor experience?

I keep trying to see if I might know anyone :/

I think I'm overestimating how unique my team was.

knew a guy who spent thousands of dollars every month on his robotics team when they could have been using school funding. He never really cared even after he lost his job, he just kept pouring his savings and shit into it. eventually he realized he had nothing left and he and his family moved. I also have volunteered in St.Louis a few times. I always cringe at the nerdy highschool kids that always have 1 female on their team that is way out of all their leagues. I mainly liked the after parties and german teams.

Yeah, same here. I know the "bigger" American teams and some other international. I'm from the west US so I know the Cali teams

>on Sup Forums
>volunteered at frc event
>cringing at nerdy high school kids
Really now

kek

Just to keep ball rolling here what would you guys rate your experience? Mentors, success rate, members, other teams, whatever.

It's cool seeing one of these threads. I haven't thought about frc at all after I left and kinda nice thinking back on it

wtf? Is it real?

I remember seeing how it seemed a ton of kids and mentors got really into the events. They would dress up and dance and everything. My friend and I were kind of shocked by that. Our whole team was not like that at all, just not dancing / happy people. I felt really out of place there. Was that just me?

only volunteered cuz gf at the time use to do it all the time and i had no idea wtf it was.

OMG guys it works! FREE watches!!!

>knew about a prominent frc guy in detail personally
>volunteered multiple times
>"I always cringe" -- multiple
>still on Sup Forums
Don't try to pretend you're not one of us

This was my small team. We did get more into it

>had no idea what it was
>knew a whole lot about some frc guy
>volunteers at site of the major events
>"I always cringe" implies it's still going on
Don't bullshit me user

Our two mentors for FTC were really just the funding administrators, they knew nothing about programming or anything so we just did it on our own.

I think I liked that a lot better than FRC, where they directed us constantly, even if we thought we should be doing it differently.

That's good. Our lead mentor just got pissed at us and tried to force us to be happy and dance and everything. Did not work and that person left shortly After, resulting in team ending soon after that too. It seemed like a great thing, just not for my town I guess. It's good to have people being happy

I was shocked by that too, I really didn't expect the atmosphere to be what it was at the large events.

I mean, our team was happy all the time, but we were happy the the robotics part of it, not the social/vibrant dancing scene with costumes and shit

That sounds like the frc mentors you had didn't try to help you understand enough or (more likely) just disregarded you guys. That happened with my team in a lot of areas too.

I think mentors really do make the experience. It doesn't matter if your team makes it to world championships if you aren't enjoying it. And good mentors can help educate and inspire people. Unfortunately those mentors are just people and there are a lot of shitty people in the world. It was always nice to see genuinely kind teams having fun though.

Yeah, I'm actually going back to mentor my FRC team next season, as I think they could really use a change in leadership.

Plus, I was the only person that was competent at programming, everyone else was on a different subteam, so they kind of need some help there too.

Good thread. Not a ton of posters but glad I was in it.

My mentors and coach were not into it like us

I gotta warn you user. If those mentors are still on the team they are probably still going to regard you as one of the kids and "outrank" you to do things their way still. It's a noble goal but is it worth to put in so much time into something that could be so toxic? I don't understand your situation very well so maybe I'm making it sound ridiculously worse than it is, but my one nice mentor had to step up to leader role and was constantly dealing with shit from the asshole other mentors and was just too much. Best of luck to you tho.

Glad to see thread still alive. I'm bailing to get some sleep for work tomorrow. Nice talking to you guys

worlds 3 years running bitches!
fuck your java/labview shit, real human beans use li-dar and self built cpp libs.
PS. Its a water game this year

Major doubt, I don't think FIRST has the balls to do anything involving water.
Also, FTC or FRC?

Spill the beans, boi. I know some people get to know the game way early