The first setup day has gone by and today again quite a lot has happened.

In particular the official game balls have been handed out and – surprisingly for all – its colour is kind of an orange-magenta (so it is quite similar to one of the team colours). This means that we have to adjust our colour calibration, which – at the moment – turns out to be quite time-consuming. But this is what setup days are meant for.

With 8 people and 5 robots it is quite cramped at our table, which is the reason why we went (together with the Fumanoids from Berlin) to the local hardware store and got a clickable shelf for extended storage space. At other tables they might think about german tidiness now.

Sitting directly beside us are the Bold Hearts from Great Britain, who we already know from the German Open. As they came only with 3 people, they did mind our space necessities less than what would be expected of other teams. The Bold Hearts are using the Darwin platform too, which has led to knowledge exchange before.

We were able to put up our big poster at a prominent place in the competition hall, thanks to an official who looked the other way. A great thing about the hall is the fact, that it has no windows at all which will probably mean a constant lighting during the day.

Today went by fast with the testing of our software and servicing of the hardware. The latter drove some workgroup members nearly crazy due to nerve-wracking, fiddly work on the cableconnectors. But at 22:30 a speaker message disturbed the bee hive of robocup teams: “30 minutes left, leave the Hall!” Similar to the opening of the hall they pay great attention to punctuality – and at 23:00 the electricity is shut down in the whole hall.

Now we are back to our accommodation and writing down the experiences of the day – if Martin allows it. Because as soon as he boots his (freshly installed!) Ubuntu, everyone else, except him, ist denied any further access to the WLAN. You’ve got to love technology.