Exactly.

hey at least someone agrees with me! LoL, well i just hope they leave it where you can program your own bot with your own code... So we all don't seem manufactured on an assembly line to where everyone has the same controls.
~Mike

Yea, i mean, it would be nice for newer teams or teams with less human resources to have drag and drop robot programming, but for everyone else, it would depreciate the entire value of prgramming the robot. Besides, it would cheat inexperienced/lacking teams out of an important learning experience.

On another note, wouldn't it be cool if instead of using the simple 900MHz RF RCs, we could choose our own "RC" CPU and our own prefered programming language as long as it complies with the FIRST standards. You know, like instead of low band RF, they use WiFi or Bluetooth or some other different RF type. If they allowed us that much freedom, we wouldn't even have to bother with the whole, "i hope they add/remove this..." thing.

There is a type of programming called lucky logic, its used with fisher technics and is a good starting programming tool, it lets you drag and drop pics of operations, it helps teach you what order things need to be done in...

The problem with this is that the frequency can be interrupted then by other people, they use the current system so they have control over the robots for if a problem arose, they can be shut down by the officials field side. Also they have it set up so you will not interrupt another robot in another places/on another field... Though it would be nice if we could pick our own language...
~Mike

Well, yea, i mean ofcourse they would come up with some sort of security, but it won't be any less secure than it currently is. What i mean is that they could basically network the robots as devices and they would have an "admin" control or something allowing them to read and send data and whatnot. It could even use a popular protocol such as IPX/SPX.

Well i really doubt the robots would ever be placed on a network type of set up because of the logistics of it, with the current set up any robot can be placed on any comp port and be ran and controlled with out individual set up based on that bot, but how your saying, this would need allot more individual set up and updating through out the event. with this not only would it cost more... but it would also go back to the basis of more volunteers/staff needed.
~Mike

Yea, i know, but it would be pretty cool.

OOOO My favorite topic. I just pray to we get something with interrupts, direct access to processor pins, a lot more speed, floating point math and a Real LCD would be nice. You know things are falling behind, when many teams simply have the RC acting as a slave to an outboard processor. I have said this many times before, but i would like either a BasicAtom, JStamp, OOPIC, or BASICX. Really i have even seen sub $100 386SX class embedded computers. (okay now im just dreaming i know first would never give us that much flexibility.)

Exactly, interrupts are a must. If we get something that has a word size greater than eight bits, floating point math shouldn't be necessary. An LCD would be so sweet, but would probably cost more than FIRST is willing to throughput. But yea, i will be somewhat saddened if the new RC doesn't have more speed and support for some kinda of multi-tasking, be it interrupts or a multi-threaded OS... Linux maybe?? Haha.

I was wondering about this I was reading through my book. Could Innovation First switch from the Basic Stamp quasi-interpretor system to a microcontroller that can use a compiler? That would make everyone happy in this forum. From the people who do not want to leave PBASIC to the people who want to program in something else. The only thing that is really bad about it is that the prices for some compilers are in the hundred of dollars.

Use .NET, doesn't FIRST get it for a fraction of the sales price? [I highly doubt Microsoft gives it away for free, but they might].

Well, if they use a mainstreamed language such as C, they could simply supply a compiler, IDE plugin or whatnot. There are uncountable freeware compilers and a decent selection of IDEs (MS Notepad is the best). They could easily create one, or distribute an OEM compiler made for the distributed hardware.

Actually I am going to use a free C compiler that I got from my book to program the Pic microprocessor. To be honest I know that .NET is a compiler but I thought microprocessors need specially designed compilers. I am pretty new to this though. Can anyone clarify this? I shall start a new thread.

If you want a REAL IDE, use Dev-C++ (REAL free IDE that is). I don't think they'll do that, it'd take away to much time just to get it basically working.

[edit]
Actually, to be on the techy side, .NET is an IDE, not a compiler. I forgot what the compiler is called (IDE just makes it easier to code, compile and such).

Actually the last couple of years Microsoft HAS given FIRST teams a free copy of Visual Studio.

And it's not all that expensive for schools anyway. With the MSDN AA for High Schools program a high school can get Visual Studio for $399 and install it on all the lab computers, all the faculty computers and all the students who are taking programming courses can install it on their home computers at no additional cost. http://www.msdnaa.net/hsmember/ for more information.

PS: Yes I do work for Microsoft but I thought this was a good deal when I was a high school computer teacher too.