What to do with old control equipment?
 

What are other teams doing with their now outdated control hardware (CRIO, digital sidecar, etc.)? Have other teams had luck selling this equipment to raise funds, and if so where? I see there are several FRC CRIO's for sale on ebay. We have considered keeping some of the equipment to use for training and a test platform, but will probably want to purge some of it.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

We have not done anything useful with the cRIO or digital sidecar since shortly after we received the roboRIO. We have reused an old PDB on our air cannon. I suspect that our old cRIO hardware will be used for a robotics class Jesse (our head coach) is teaching separately from the team. We have parts going both ways from time to time.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

We let the underclassmen lead their own teams, constructing their own 'legacy robots' that are practice bots based off of past competitions. Currently we have two bots with 4-slot cRIOs up and running.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

The first crio chassis is FRC specific. You would have to update the FPGA program for it to be useful in other applications. So I don't see them having much value outside a FRC team. The IO cards are standard NI cards. Some one makes a arduino shield for the digital side car.

We have most of the old crios doing something. Java is little wonky because you have to use the 2014 plugins & a old version of Java. Might be a little confusing to new programmers going back & forth that & the roborio Java. The 2104 season Labview works. The new labview apparently also works with some contortions.

If nothing else, make a demo board on how a digital control system works and give it to a high school or something like that.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

In other applications, modifying the FPGA image is an expected procedure anyway.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

The version of labview that teams have does not have the programming tool to modify the FPGA. I get the impression that there is sort of a standard FPGA program for the other crio (industrial) chassis for routine applications. If not it adds a level of complexity & cost that NIs competitors don't have.

In any case the FRC controllers have been cost optimized for FRC. If I had paid for the tools to program the NI controllers & FPGA, I would not put an FRC controller in an industrial application. For replacement & support issues than anything else. [edit] It would have value for someone with access to the tools & wanted an inexpensive test bed to develop their skills.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

This is probably a "Hey Greg".

I have access to (well, actually, support) the Xilinx tool chain, and Synopsys FPGA synthesis tools. What more might I need to repurpose our old cRIO's?

TIA,
Tim

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

Way beyond my level of knowledge. The Crio is in the Compact Rio family. There is lot of documentation on NI's web site for these.

Keep in mind while there is probably nothing legal stopping you, NI provided these for educational purposes. They did not intend that they be used for profit. Disclaimer: I am in no way connected with NI. I do not actually speak for them.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

Would any teams want to donate there old controls systems to young teams? Being able to keep driving last years robots is very useful when presenting to principals and potential sponsors.

If anybody is interested I will pay the shipping.

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

I absolutely intend to honor NI's conditions on the wonderful contributions they make to FIRST. We will only use the cRIO in efforts by the robotics team and engineering class. And we've honored their ulterior motive by training people on LabView. One of our kids got a part time job because of his LV experience.

Tim

Re: What to do with old control equipment?
 

The cRIO that was used for FIRST is pretty similar to the units used to monitor bearings of power generation turbines along the east coast. Those units will probably remain installed for many years to come. So there is nothing inherently wrong with the FIRST cRIOs. But they aren't the latest/greatest either.

This is, it seems, often how technology works. Our test computers at work are yesterday's dev computers -- repurposed. They aren't ready for recycle or land-fill, but the developer can be more effective with a newer one. So in with the new, and, errr, do something with the not-so-old.

I think that it would be great for the controllers to be used for older robots, training stations, non-robotics projects such that would benefit from automation or monitoring. Perhaps the noise at an event or air temperature in the shop, or automating a robot test system for the new competition.

I'd hope that teams wouldn't sell it on EBay, and I'd hope that companies wouldn't go there either.

The cRIO can be highly customized by reprogramming at the RT level. Further customization is accomplished by changing the fpga or the I/O modules. The FPGA tools were not given in the KOP, but if a team were to write up a request explaining why it would be beneficial, who knows.

As for LabVIEW being an ulterior motive, I'd think it is pretty obvious that NI wants to give students and mentors the chance to use our products -- same as other sponsors. I didn't think it was cloaked or indirect.

I'd love to hear about some of the projects. Please do a write-up or post photos.

Greg McKaskle