Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

Don did a better job explaining it than I did:

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

This really made me think.

Many teams have great results with simple and effective mechanical designs... They would understandably be very upset if FIRST forced them to do the same thing with more complicated equipment. This is analogous to what is happening with the control system, more capability is being forced onto many people who were happy with what they had. The capability is nice for those who choose to use it, but for a good deal, it is simply not needed nor worth the hassle.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that I'm happy with FIRST moving to newer, better things. Here's the reasons.

1. IFI was going downhill fast from the 2005 to the 2008 season, and hit rock bottom in 2008 with their flaky, bulky radios that did not improve anything.

2. The IFI Radios. The change to the crappy radios was due to the parts being used being too old. So they created something bigger? Umm... bad design flaw to have technology get bigger. The radios that year were also dangerous. Remember when there was a brief delay when you would disable the robot, and before it would actually disable itself? Yea, we hit a few walls pretty bad. That wall could have been some kids at a demonstration.

2. IFI's Victors seemed to be crappy out a lot more often than in previous years. We're still rocking hard with the old old 883's but hardly have any 884's because they all self destruct. Yea... metal shavings will do that, but still, they should have more protection like the Jaguars. (and yea, the Jaguars this were weren't that great, but I liked them better than the 884's.

3. The IFI RC has no real world application. The cRIO does.

4. The cRIO is so much faster, has so much more memory, and does so much more than the IFI RC. It's new and it's going to take some time to get used to, but once we release its full potential, we will have some really complex and amazing machines. The limits of the IFI RC were far exceeded and teams struggled with things such as using the camera, PID loops, and floating point. That's not so much of an issue now.

5. LabVIEW. I have come to love LabVIEW. It really does make things so much faster to get working right the first time. It's also really easy to follow and understand.

2009 was really a beta year for the new system. Nothing really complex was needed from the robots this year. FIRST and its teams were able to tread into uncharted waters to learn new things. Wait until 2010!

There is so much potential for this new system. It's reliability should be really high. We're using the cRIO which is used pretty much everywhere in industry as a reliable controller. We're using IEEE approved wireless interfaces, and also industry trusts this in offices and everyone knows that servers talk through the same stuff that were using to talk to our robots.

I say give it a few years, and we'll all never want to go back to IFI. New things need some time to adjust to. We just have so much change that it may take a while longer.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

Ah, but without the 884's we wouldn't have had reason to name our 2007 robot "Sparky" :p

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

Excuse me? 883's aren't legal, and haven't been for years.

The IFI system was practically plug-and-play. The main disadvantage was that it didn't have USB, and only supported one language off-the-shelf. This year's system was more like having to load up half of the Windows XP operating system (or OSX, for you Mac dudes) before you could really use the computer--and that's annoying, isn't it?

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

NASA disagrees with you. Might take you a while to find it though. (Reference: this post).

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

There's a quick link to it on the "snapshots" under the main gigapan.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

IFI is gone. I'm not going to pine over them going. However, I will point out as others have before me that the difficulty of using and setting up that control system is being vasty over-stated. As a rookie team in 2006, our control system worked just fine. As a 2nd year team, we utilized the camera quite well. With 1 mechanical engineer who hadn't programmed in 10 years and 3 students who had never had a formal programming class.

As a comparison, we missed a portion of our first competition because the labview installation on our computer corrupted itself and C-Rio wouldn't accept an image. 4 hours of the labview technician working on it while talking to tech support didn't fix it - a new computer did. That never happened with that antiquated old IFI system - it just 'worked'.

That said, I'm both excited and concerned about the new system.

Excitement:
1. The battery will be an incredibly welcome addition.
2. More durable ethernet ports (cost us matches last year) is wonderful
3. Static discharge protection
4. It's a laptop - the feedback will be wonderful on the screen for programming, and the input opportunities may be endless.

Concerns:
1. Potential to run XP: what could one trojan or virus do the network?
2. Durability
3. If it's running linux, and a drive goes bad... how many teams are going to be able to get a new drive, reinstall?
4. Cost. Stolen, stepped on, broken hinges, etc etc etc. Laptops get beat up. What is the cost, since I can almost guarantee this will be one of the future items we're expect to 'keep' for the control system. I just checked online and the classmate costs $500.
5. Complexity. How many things can go wrong with a computer? 'nuff said.

Of all these, Cost is probably my biggest worry. This laptop is going to get the snot kicked out of it (literally). Ethernet port, usb ports, screen hinges, powersupply port (big one).

We'll see. I think this has the potential for being an improvement over last year's system, even if it doesn't beat IFI hands down.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

I was a fan of the IFI system since it was running Pbasic. However I am sure that we will eventually see the benifits of the new system. I am just waiting for the day when are team can say "We could not have done that with the IFI controller." That day may come sooner or later only time will tell.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

[raises hand]Me.

I designed an automated test system for automotive electronics some twenty years ago, using a PC running DOS at the core. Touch screen MMI, network-based file distribution and data sharing, high-speed signal generation and measurement, multiple product data communication protocols, capable of testing thousands of part numbers...More than a hundred of them were built. Dozens are still in use and supported today.

For web browsing and word processing and video production and presentations, something more powerful is welcome. But for reading sensors and controlling hardware, DOS 6.22 running on a 33 MHz 80386 can be more than enough.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

Let me clarify the 883 thing. No, they're not legal, and we do not use them on competition bots, but all of our projects use 883's and we often swap out 884's from old competition bots for 883's so we have some spares.

I think we have been given amazing technology and a great opportunity to work with it. I have not complained a bit and I love the change.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

The Classmate has an SSD, so it is very unlikely that the drive will fail.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

I'm sure this would be no harder than if it was running XP. In fact, I hope that it's running Linux, as then Pit Admin could just have a Classmate image and mysteriously dead computers could be reimaged without worrying about all that pesky licensing and IP rights.

Regardless, Classmate PCs have solid state drives. No moving parts make them robot-friendly (and with all of the wall crashing that happens in FIRST, this is good).

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

I guess I can question my own judgment on this after reading over a design presentation by JVN which was assigned for robotics homework (Double Block Honors Robotics Seminar & Independent Study classes are actually difficult....). He states that you should never start off anything by ruling out design possibility or shooting down an idea from the get go.

I'm sure this principal can apply to things other than robot design.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

An excellent reason to impart the valuable lesson of handling something carefully so it doesn't break.
I disagree with that analogy. Using the basic code, you have all the capabilities you need without really knowing anything about programming. That is, you are welcome to not use the advanced capabilities of the system, no forcing is going on here. Other than some code downloads (necessary for IFI too) you are basically plug&play.
Well, yeah, me too :o , but on a '486. But the point was that almost nobody uses that technology as their primary computer today, since it's capabilities no longer meet one's needs. Why is that? I mean, it met my needs when I bought it, what changed?