FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

Chairman’s Award Finalists – Slots to Next Year’s FIRST Championship

In this blog, we announced that we would be recognizing three Chairman’s Award Finalists at each FIRST Championship location. Talking through this in more detail yesterday at HQ, about the importance of this recognition, we noticed a bit of a discrepancy. Engineering Inspiration Award winners on each Division get an automatic invitation to the following year’s FIRST Championship, along with, thanks to the tremendous generosity of NASA, payment of their FIRST Championship registration fees. This seems to be unbalanced compared to Chairman’s Award Finalists. So, we are making a change. All Chairman’s Award Finalists at the 2017 FIRST Championship will be offered slots at the 2018 FIRST Championship.

This does not mean they will automatically be considered for Chairman’s Award at that later Championship – they still need to earn that award sometime during the season to be considered – but they will at least automatically be able to attend. What about that registration fee coverage? I hope we can find a sponsor for that eventually, but I can’t make any promises, and it may take some time to sort through.

Some Totally Sweet HD Video Goodness for FIRST Championship Pits

Check it out – at both FIRST Championship locations, all individual team pits will have a cable* drop that teams can use to watch any of 12 HD channels right there. 6 channels will be broadcasting the live feeds from fields (one per subdivision), the other 6 channels will show continuously updated rankings (again, one per subdivision). So, you can keep up with any subdivision you like, in addition to your own.

To take advantage, you will need to have some kind of receiver in your pit that can decode the signal. Reasonably-priced options are available, either in the form of actual TV sets, or adapters for equipment you may already have. With the proper equipment, you can watch, and maybe even record, to your heart’s content!

Each Championship location will also have two sets of large monitors strategically placed in case you are interested in keeping up with the action that way.

More detail, including technical specs, here.

Yay, HD!

Frank

*Cable is how your parents used to watch a medium they called ‘Television’ before streaming was invented. It may be old school, but it has the distinct advantage of working well.