community service
Event Management
Changing the way that FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) events are run
Year
2022-PRESENT
Role
A/V
Duration
4 months every year
Overview
When I competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) while in middle school, I was exposed to the operational complexity involved in running a large-scale robotics competition. I gained an appreciation for how challenging it is to coordinate scoring, scheduling, and event accessibility across multiple events in a limited time frame. When I later transitioned to the high school level through FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), I saw an opportunity to contribute at a higher level by applying my team’s technical skills, organizational capacity, and manpower to support these events. After collaborating with competition organizers and venue coordinators, I led a student volunteer team responsible for deploying and operating event A/V setups. I designed and implemented software-assisted workflows that integrated scoring displays, match timing, and live video feeds, which resulted in a smoother event flow and consistent real-time information for teams and spectators. I also established a remote viewing stream setup so matches could be viewed by parents and other spectators who weren't at the event. Building on this work, I expanded these A/V systems to FIRST Lego League (FLL) competitions for elementary school students, adapting the setups for smaller venues and younger audiences while maintaining reliability. In total, the A/V systems and processes I developed have supported over 15 competitions, reaching more than 5,500 students and nearly 10,000 remote viewers.
Exostream
While expanding our setup, I started discovering hardware limitations with the number of 1080p USB Webcams that a PC could handle. To resolve this, I developed a custom streaming software for a Raspberry Pi that offloaded the processing of one camera to a Pi and stream the unencoded video over the network to the PC. This solution allowed our setup to expand to 9 cameras while maintaing near-perfect reliability. Exostrem was also submitted as my Internal Assessment for my IB Diploma Computer Science class.