The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I was especially looking forward to FIRST Choice this year because I was intrigued with the fact that the retail (or perceived) dollar value vs point cost of items varied greatly. Needless to say, other teams catch on to this and the products with the highest value-to-cost items are sold out first.

This intrigued me to assign a FIRST Choice Value Coefficient (FCVC) to know which items to spring for first. On the other hand, even with a high FCVC some of the products wouldn't come as in handy as others (ie if you already have a part and don't need multiples).

In your opinion, which products this year had the highest FCVC?

For example:
Talon SC $59 / 9 points = 6.56
Geforce GTX 560: $190 / 5 points = 38.8
Rubber Latex Tube 5': $2 / 3 points = 0.67
Foam Basketballs $7.99 / 8 points = 1
12V Battery: $40 / 10 points = 4

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

cRIO must be pretty high up there - however, I don't know what the true value of the 8-slot unit is. The 4 slot is $285 by itself from NI.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

The 8-slot cRio also has a slightly older processor, just a bit slower (this is a factor for image processing). And it's chassis is of course heavier. HAving said that, its probably similar in value.

Playing by Moneyball rules, I wonder if anyone maximized their FCVC by seriously purchasing 20 Geforce GTX 560's.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Yeah I was a bit confused when a 20mm fan cost more than a GTX 560.

This is my first year so this is what we got (Hopefully they don't cancel our order)
1. 12v battery.
2. 2 Talons
3. 2 GTX 560's (Selling maybe)
4. One 3d printing voucher

Any comments we are new to this competition, still have ~50 credits left, anything else worth getting?

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

sanddrag over in the FIRST Choice thread ended up doing this because everything was out of stock at the time he ordered. I'm assuming to unlock the value the team will need to sell the cards, which, while feasible, is an extra hassle and not really the intention of how FIRST Choice is supposed to work.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I question your premise. The GeForce cards obviously have a very high FCVC, but what on earth would I do with 20 GeForce video cards? Sell them on eBay to raise funds for my team? If so, the FCVC is likely to be significantly lower.

This goes double for the cRIO, which is unlikely to be useful outside of the FRC context. So while there's probably some correlation between FCVC and items that sold out quickly, I think there's likely a better correlation between an items utility to a generic FRC team. In other words, teams likely would make a list of items useful to them, and then rank those useful items by their FCVC. Leaving a lot of high FCVC items with little interest.

At least, that's how I ranked things for our team.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Kevin -- I agree completely, there needs to be another normalizing factor involved.
Firstly, I wouldn't plan to use any of the equipment I get from FIRST Choice outside of FRC, so the cRio is back on the table wrt its usefulness. As you said, I wouldn't have much use for 20 video cards (or even 2), but I ordered 3 Talons since they have a decent FCVC and we always need more.

I asked the question because I was wondering if others saw something on the list that has more value than meets the eye. It's a bit of work to research the retail cost of every bearing, pneumatics, or motor part on the list, and most of these items are on an "as-needed" basis anyway.

Having said that, in all my excitement over the Talons, cRio, etc, I forgot about the 2x package of optical encoders on the list, and they are $40 each on AndyMark (with the wire and mount) before they sold out.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

While I cannot speak on his behalf, he is a teacher, and as most schools IT budgets are not the best, he could outfit an entire lab with much improved Graphics with those!

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

That would be pretty sweet (assuming the PSU's can all handle it). A full lab of capable CAD machines.

When NVidia handed out the GTX-480's a while back we put together a CAD machine for the classroom we work in, it was nice to have the most expensive component taken care of.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

The GTX 560 is a nice card, but not a CAD card and not certified for Inventor.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I've seen Inventor running smoothly on our GTX 480. For the uninformed (read: I'm a programmer, not a CAD guy), what qualifies a "certified" card for Inventor?

If it's anything like the Adobe products (Premiere, After Effects, CS6) they only certify a few cards but changing one line in a configuration file enables acceleration on most recent NVidia cards. .

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I sent an email out to a fellow mentor exactly about this.

The cRIO was certain high up on the list, but you were only allowed one.
The classmate (newer version) was high up on the list.
The right angle drill was also very high up on the list.

That's strictly efficiencies though. Or dollars / point if you like. As someone else in this thread already said, you also need to include the difficulty of getting rid of the items for said price if you don't intend to use them. The right angle drill will probably be much easier than the classmate, and will certainly hold it's value better.

Anyone want to create a weighted objective table for this?

My wife just looked over my shoulder, shook her head, and said "Only engineers...."

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Looks like Quadro and FirePro cards.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

For our team personally, the graphics card was a perfect item on our wishlist! In previous years we have run completely off of 5 or 6 year old dell laptops that have no battery life and take 10 minutes to boot.

We had just decided on building a basic desktop to handle tasks within the team, and FIRST Choice offering a decent graphics card was the perfect opportunity -- This goes to show that choice and value is team specific and I think is the purpose of FIRST Choice -- to put these donated things out there in case they match the specific needs of a team

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Does that mean that Inventor won't touch the GPU otherwise? I find that impossible to believe based on my own observations of it running on different systems.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Also -- Is it legal to resell things taken off of FIRST Choice? We had some friends that were willing to buy the graphics cards off of us at a reduced price, and we were contemplating making the deal because our team is very low on pure cash (especially useful because purchase orders from our school-run bank account are especially sluggish)

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I run Inventor fine on my 3 year old dell laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon. I think it is likely just approved vendors / specifically tested using those cards.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

AFAIK it's highly frowned upon, but I don't think there's an actual rule against it.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

This? (Granted, it uses Radeons instead.)

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Uh oh, Tristan just discovered the FIRST Pre-Kickoff Rules password cracking trick. Who knew you could buy an extra day of robot building on FIRST Choice?!

In regards to selling the video cards, I wouldn't do it myself, but it seems to me that selling robot components you own (in this case, 20 video cards) should be legal, and maybe not even frowned upon. The cards were donated to help teams, and the cash would be used to help that team as well. If this weren't the case, then selling ANY component your team received to another team should be in the same category.
As far as I know, many teams have fundraisers selling parts they own, or built using tools owned by the team. Business is a big part of FRC.

I've been trying to figure out a way to monetize the 3D printer I just bought anyway. So far, all I've done was made models for myself...

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

In addition to the dollar value, I see two other important considerations to look at:

1) Some parts are not available to purchase outside of FIRST Choice. I didn't see anything that I thought would end up being like last year's 290W Fisher Price motors, but that's the type of item that would be on top of my list if I was smart enough to identify it.

2) The more likely it is that a part will go on the robot, the more valuable that part is relative to its actual dollar cost. What's a more attractive choice: a $50 part that's 100% likely to go on your robot, or a $100 part that's 50% likely to go on the robot?

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Well Nemo, in my experience there's been a 50/50 chance that my robot uses pneumatics in a given year. By that logic, should I never get pneumatic hardware from FIRST Choice?

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

It's based on what your doing. Inventor won't touch the GPU regardless if you are actually CADding a part. Especially for inventor, only the CPU speed matters. However the GPU matters for renderings. Inventor will touch the GPU, however the GPU is not made for renderings. The GTX cards are for video games, which require high fps(frames per second). The quadro and firepro cards are oriented towards actual renderings, which don't need high fps.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

Were in the same situation here, we are very low and build cash and could easily double our amount by selling a few of the video cards. I can see it being frowned upon if it was for personal gain, but if the cash goes to the team for build I don't see that much of an issue. Anyone have any valid arguments against this?

Especially since the inventory bug, I'm left with 50 credits and nothing to spend them on. (Lost out on our order of batteries and talons...)

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

I call it entrepreneurial spirit and see no issues here. It's basically converting money between various forms of goods. Cash to FIRST Choice Credits to Video Cards back to cash, to purchase the things that went out of stock on FIRST Choice (assuming they're still available for sale later on). It all comes full circle. It's going to be a bit or work, but very worth it. Each team tries to gets what works best for them, and uses it to their advantage however they can creatively do so. I see it as a better option than setting them on a shelf, hanging them on my christmas tree, melting them down for raw metals, or milling them into not-very-good wheels. And who's to say the money raised from us selling video cards doesn't go straight into supporting robotics programs at elementary schools?

I'm glad to see many of you who are not quick to judge. Sometimes tensions on these boards run a little high this time of year, but I'm glad to see y'all are still thinking straight.

We either already have everything else on FIRST Choice, don't need it, or can easily purchase it later on. Once talons and classmates were out of stock, an order of 20 high-end video cards was a no-brainer.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

If it has a 50% chance of being used, then it has less expected value than a part of equal dollar value that has a 100% chance of being used. But I don't think I implied that it had an expected value of zero.

Re: The FIRST Choice Value Coefficient
 

What about a FIRST Choice Bandit Coefficient?

FCBC = [(total $ value of goods from FC) - ($ shipping)] / [points used]

Whoever has the highest FCBC value is king of the Bandits.
I think we'd be a top contender.

Of course, a high FCBC might earn you dirty looks from fellow CD members.