Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

This is just so cool. Kudos to NI for letting the guys that make the calls interact with the users of the product. And for letting them have the power to make the call to immediately roll feedback into the product.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

Thanks

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

I had some time to kill backstage so I chatted with the AV crew about their setup. It really is impressive with multiple overlapping projectors and 5 distinct screens. The animation was rendered in 5 segments and then played back all together. Given the different paths the videos take to the projectors it is pretty impressive that they got all to synchronize so tightly that you can't tell.

The rendering was extremely intensive too - something like multiple days per keynote video on a large rendering farm.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

I found the Using Microsoft Kinect with myRIO whitepaper in the NI myRIO community. I assume the process of getting the kinect running with the roboRIO will be similar.

Other interesting papers:
Obstacle Avoidance with myRIO and Kinect
Color Following with myRIO and Kinect

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

OK, I know I'm a bit lazy and did not read all 14 pages, but at least I am willing to admit to my failure.

Here are my questions:
We have 3 cRio's. Will LabView still work with these older controllers as we move forward with the RobotRIO?
Will we still have access to tools to re-format the older controllers once this wonderful step forward takes place?

I believe these older controllers still have a huge value to them in terms of teaching potential.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

Plus a huge $ value as well. It would nice if we could use the cRIO as a BACKUP at an event in case the robotRIO gave up.

Of course another option is maybe NI would offer a trade in of cRIO hardware for robotRIO hardware. Now that would be a real win-win.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

This was a large point of concern during the final Alpha Q&A in New Hampshire. The teams all made it a point that even if the cRIO's are not supported for eternity, some allowance needed to be made to grant the teams longer than a 1 year license to the old versions of FRC software. A concrete plan hasn't been laid out yet but they (FIRST and NI) are aware of the concern.

We are meeting again June 8/9, so I'll make sure I ask for clarification to see if they've made a decision (if none of the FIRST / NI guys speak up here).

We have 5 cRIOs. There's always the option of installing the old software and using it in evaluation mode, but it's not one we like either!

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

Using the old Crio for 2015 will be a rules (First) decision. I don't see it interchanging with the roborio though. You will have to use the old supporting hardware.

Trading the First Crio for a roborio would not be win-win for NI since they cannot resale the First Crio to anybody. They were made specifically for First & not part of their commercial offering. The supporting hardware is not made by NI.

The Java plugins for the Crio will be archived. Since they are open source they will continue to work.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

cRIO's won't turn into bricks at the end of this season. There are a few things going on to continue support:

1) cRIO-FRC II (the 4-slots) are planned to be supported in the 2015 software release for teams who want to continue using cRIO's for demonstration, experimentation, etc.
2) cRIO-FRC (the 8-slot) will not be officially supported, but will be included in the software, and "should work".
3) Future support (2016 software and beyond) is TBD.
4) Check the NI license manager for the 2014 software :)

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

That is AWESOME! :D Thanks alot for doing that. I was worrying a little about programming our old robots. That helps.

1 question, will it be possible to activate again after kickoff, or are we going to have to make sure we keep an installed copy.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

I'm not aware of any restrictions in activation after kickoff and you shouldn't have to keep a copy installed to keep the license "active". You can always give us a shout if you get into trouble.

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

Also if anyone does something cool with their cRIO controllers (something like sending it up to space perhaps) please let me know :)

Re: NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel
 

I haven't read all 13 pages, but does anyone know the max speed (in terms of counts/sec) the robotRio could read for a quadrature encoder? It would be great if you also knew the specs for the C-Rio.