The Blue Alliance has set up an e-mail address for teams to submit photos of their 2008 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. This feature debuted for the Indiana Robotics Invitational last year, and you can see how easy it is to scout teams by viewing the 2007 IRI page on The Blue Alliance.

To submit a photo of your team or another team’s 2008 robot, send an email to photos+2008@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, attached “1.jpg”. Automated scripts handle downloading and processing the attachmenets, so it is important you stick to this convention!

Don’t forget to take a photo of your robot in the big rush to ship! Send it to photos+2008@thebluealliance.net and help scouts see just how great of a machine you’ve built!

In preparation for the 2008 Competition Season, The Blue Alliance is releasing The Blue Alliance API. The Blue Alliance API allows developers to integrate data from The Blue Alliance pertinent to teams, events, matches, and team attendance within their own applications. This presents the developer with an exciting opportunity to build systems that respond dynamically to team and event statistics, and more.

We hope that people are able to use this interface to display team statistics on their team websites, match information on regional websites, and maybe even roll this into some sort of scouting application! Read the documentation online. To apply for an API key, send a message to contact+apikey@thebluealliance.net.

So once you’re sick of writing C to do twelve laps in hybrid mode, consider breaking out some web development languages and have fun with our new API!

Well, we did it. We went to Manchester, and liveblogged the entire event. We ran into a few technical difficulties and learned some new things that will help us cover other events live, but in the end we consider what came out a great success!

Photos: Visit our Flickr photoset to see the photos that we took at the Kickoff. They include behind-the-scenes shots of the Kickoff setup at Manchester, NH, as well as close-up photos of the field and game elements!

Videos: Go to our Vimeo album to watch the different videos we produced at the Kickoff. First we talked to people about their predictions of the game (some were close!). Then, we interviewed Paul Gudonis, FIRST President, and Woodie Flowers about this year’s new game and their thoughts on the “hybrid” control element and Dean’s homework. Finally, we go hands-on with the game elements and field, even as FIRST deconstructed it around us! Watch the videos for the full coverage.

Text: Our Twitter feed gave text updates live during the entire Kickoff webcast. Check it out to see some of the exciting things that happened.

So what did everyone think of our coverage of the Kickoff? Any ways we can improve it next year? Any parts you find particularly useful? Let us know! We want to serve you, so tell us how we can be the most useful!

Photos

Be sure to visit our Flickr photoset. The flash player below shows the photos we took at today’s event!

Videos

Here are our videos with the game elements, Paul Gudonis (FIRST President) and Woodie Flowers. Be sure to check our Vimeo album for all the videos!

This year, The Blue Alliance is providing LIVE coverage of the Kickoff Event from Manchester. Tune into this thread before, during, and following the webcast to find up-to-the-minute information about what is going on in Manchester. We’ll be posting photos, videos, and descriptions of what’s going on at Kickoff. Be sure to check it out for high resolution photos of the game elements and field, as well as video showing how the game elements behave and our other coverage of the event!

LIVE Kickoff Dashboard

Our LIVE Kickoff Dashboard features the NASA TV Webcast, our LIVE Flickr Photos, our LIVE video clips we’ll be uploading from the event, and our LIVE Twitter commentary feed. Check out the Kickoff LIVE Dashboard for your one-stop site for Kickoff coverage.

Be sure to discuss the Kickoff as it happens on this Chief Delphi thread.

Courtesy of Boston University and Boston FIRST, The Blue Alliance is proud to present two more of Boston University’s FIRST workshops online! The first two videos we presented focused on Programming and Fund Raising. These next two are audio-only, and focus on Scholarships and Pneumatics!

Thanks again to Boston University and Boston FIRST for providing us with their workshops!

Scholarships

(download mp3)
Sharon Kuhn and Kristen Dorsey lead a presentation about FIRST Scholarships. Hear from Admissions Officers from schools that offer FIRST scholarships, and get tips about how to apply and write essays for FIRST Scholarships. For more information about FIRST scholarships, check out TBA’s Scholarship Episode as well as FIRST’s Scholarship Information.

Pneumatics

(download mp3)
Max and Steve lead a presentation about pneumatics covering much of the material in the FIRST pneumatics manual. Get a better understanding about how to plumb and use pneumatics on your robot.