Fleex's Lab: Robotics - The Qualifier, Take 1

Today was the first (of two) FTC qualifiers in which my team is enrolled. We woke up around 5 AM to drive for an hour and a half over to Mount Vernon, which contained the hosting school. For the first few hours, all we needed to do was walk around to the inspection stations, where volunteers looked at checklists and made sure our robots didn't have illegal component on them. I expected the software inspection to actually look at the code, but all they did was see that we were using a compatible firmware version on the NXT and that we had used the Program Chooser. Once all the inspections and judge interviews were complete, we walked around the maintenance area to see if other teams needed assistance - "gracious professionalism" as they say.

After a quick set of rules on what is allowed during the stages of tele-op mode, the matches began. Each team competed in six rounds, of which there were in total 36. Each round had two alliances, each composed of two teams, competing to score the most points. The team captain and I were drivers, he controlled mobility and I was at ops.

We got to be in the first round of the day! Our partner didn't have an autonomous, so there were no collisions to worry about. However, when we went to raise the flag in the endgame, the motor simply did not run. I pressed all the buttons near there, including the reverse, but it failed. We lost.
This time, our partner team did have an autonomous. Fortunately, they had an alternate version which didn't take them anywhere near us on the field. Between this and the last match, we made sure the flag raiser was working after recompiling. It worked great... and flew right out. So, we were again unable to raise the flag. It was close, but we lost.
The autonomous situation was similar to that of our second match, which executed perfectly. Well, it actually collided with a member of the other alliance, but it didn't cause a problem. Later in the match, an axle in one of our wheels derailed, rendering us immobile and unable to raise the flag. We lost by a lot.
Finally, we were put with a team that was very prepared. Both autonomous programs executed flawlessly, scoring a total of 80 points. The endgame plan was for us to raise the flag and our partner to pull up onto the bar. With around 40 seconds to go, one of our belts broke, rendering us unable to move blocks. As we approached the flag, that same belt broke into three pieces and fell off the robot, scattering fragments about. A few moments later, our robot tripped on one of those fragments and fell backwards, rendering it immobile. However, in a glorious sequence of events, our partner both raised the flag and performed a pull-up. Our first win was a total disaster!
In this match, we were playing against the other team from our school. They had a great partner, but ours was not so well equipped. Things got even worse when our autonomous failed to execute. The disaster index continued to rise when the Samantha network got clogged, lagging all the robots at least a little but rendering ours uncontrollable. We scored essentially zero points, considering our partner had no autonomous anyway.
After checking our Samantha and NXT connections, we were feeling a little better about our last match. Unfortunately, the controllers that we were supposed to pick up after the autonomous period ended were not placed correctly. So, our alliance's controllers were mixed up, resulting in chaos. Even once we got that sorted out, the lag and the lack of time remaining destroyed our chances. The other alliance won handily.

It was, in summary, a disaster. On the good side, we learned what's going to go on when we actually get serious for the February qualifier. Stay tuned for The Qualifier, Take 2!