It has been noted that a decent amount of teams appear to be firing their endgame as the buzzer goes off, which leads to the actual mechanism firing after the match has ended and the robots have been disabled. It was brought to my attention that some teams have a section in their code that when their controller is turned off or goes into the disabled state it can trigger their pneumatics to fire their endgame mechanism. This was tested by two people I know from across the state and it does work.
For example: A team had a radio drop at my previous event multiple qualification matches, and each time it occurred their endgame immediately fired.
Yes, this was due to a radio drop causing the robot to lose connection, but it follows the same logic as turning off the controller after the match to cause the pneumatics to fire. (If robot loses radio signal, robot shoots)
How should instances like this be looked at by the referees? From my perspective, it is a violation of < G8 > due to the violation notes talking about how it is meant to ensure that the robots abide by the commands sent by the field controller.
When using the V5 brains to run the fields, there is nothing that shows how long a controller has been connected to the field or if it was turned off or on. We can view radio drops, which is how I made note of my example above, but what action should be taken on this, if any? It appears as if some teams are trying to find a way to launch their endgame after the match so that they have more time to work on rollers or play defense.
Thank you for your time,
Cowboy Chris