[BB]: Beta Hardware
 

For those that want a look at Gen 2 of the control system driver's station: http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2009...-shipping.html

It goes to some of the beta teams almost at once.

And there are some other items of interest, too.

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Is that a USB E-stop button?

(Anyone notice "Team 111" on the driver station? Peculiar.)

Excited to test new shiny equipment with what looks like live camera feedback.

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I just hope that's not an app running inside an OS...

We're getting a bit far from KISS ifi interface I loved so much.

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Interesting to us too. We weren't involved in the new DS (this picture is the first we've seen of it), so I guess someone at FIRST randomly chose our team number for testing.
Looks like a labview app to me. There's no real way that you could run something as complicated as a Classmate without an OS. I certainly understand your concern though - a reboot of the Classmate could take longer than the whole match.

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OK electronics guys, whats the board hooked into the USB port?

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You mean the breadboard (white board) or the fancy board that is making us capable of using custom circuits?

I am happy to see the size is still manageable. I hope power is going to provided on the field as a standard in case someone doesn't charge their batteries.

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A guess only, but my assumption is that that's a board which allows you to hook up analog and digital signals, i.e. the equivalent of the analog and digital I/O on last year's DS.

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Can we have IFI back now?

This is the new driver station? Seriously?

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Seems kind of kludgy, not to mention bootup times on the Classmate.

What was wrong with the 09 Driver Station? It wasn't perfect, but it wouldn't have been that hard to fix.

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From the picture is seems to be a Intel Clamshell classmate so here are the specs for it:

http://www.classmatepc.com/where-to-...ll/tech-specs/

I also noticed that the Wifi indicator is lit, could this mean that we don't need to use a router any more?

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Oh, that's an interesting observation. If somehow the disable button, the circuitry on the right (which I assume is for custom inputs like pots), and the USB hub were all integrated together into one box, I would take back my previous post calling it "kludgy."

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I imagine the final version will at the very least have some kind of shiny enclosure. I edit:hope that the DS is not an application running on top of an OS either.

Can't say I don't miss IFI though...

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Doesn't LabView have to run on an OS though?
The screen in the picture looks similar to the "Dashboard" in 2009, but not quite, which is why I'm assuming its some sort of Driver Station code.

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I imagine FIRST isn't going to change the externals of the classmate at all.

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I don't see how, when we've already been told we're getting the classmate PC. There's no way this is getting repackaged into something less kludgy. Maybe they'll have all the accessories inside a project box or something. Hopefully this year they have the foresight to include some pullup resistors so we can use non USB joysticks without making everything even more kludgy...

Whatever though. I just hope it works. There's going to be a LOT of standing around for 3 minutes waiting for these to reboot so a match can start if it's anything like last year.

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Amen.

Significant advantages of this please? Thanks.

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I think you guys are jumping the gun big time. Assuming they put the USB hub, E stop, and I/O breakout into a single, well-designed enclosure, what's the big deal? How many teams don't mount the operator controls to a nice piece of lexan, plywood, or something else?

As far as startup time, the clamshell PC boots from a solid state flash disk and usually runs a stripped down Linux distribution - we're talking 15-20 seconds, tops. (Though if they make us run Windows XP, I will cry.)

So what are the advantages of this arrangement? To some extent, it all hinges on what aspects of the Classmate they let you utilize. But here's my stab:

1) The clamshell has built-in WiFi. We could potentially eliminate the need for a router.

2) The clamshell has a battery. Hauling AC adapters around to demos has gotten pretty old.

3) The clamshell has audio playback, a microphone, and an optional camera. There is opportunity for innovation here. Imagine a game where in "autonomous" mode you could talk to or gesture to your interface without touching buttons.

4) The clamshell is much more capable a computer than even the cRIO. If they let you write code for it, you can suddenly offload some complicated (computer vision) tasks.

5) Every team now has access to a sort of dashboard app without having to pony up their own laptop. This helps not only the teams, but also potentially FTAs and staff to troubleshoot problems from the driver stations.

6) Lastly, it says the clamshell has a water resistant keyboard. Perfect for dealing with all of the splashing from next years' water game.

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This is what I meant by shiny enclosure.

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Last year, many people had trouble updating the firmware on the DS (you needed a "magic" flash drive to get it to work). This year updating should be trivial.

Last year, many people had issues with ESD damaging the DS. As the classmate was designed as a consumer device, it shouldn't have any ESD issues. Hopefully the same can be said about the add-on boards.

Last year, the DS took time to boot. Since the classmate has a battery, you should be able to have it booted long before you reach the field.

Last year, you couldn't tether the robot on the field without access to AC power for the DS. Since the classmate has a battery, that shouldn't be an issue.

Last year, FIRST had to deal with Kwikbyte for firmware updates. Since it looks like a LabVIEW application, that shouldn't be an issue.

Last year, you couldn't use an Xbox 360 controller. Presumably, that wouldn't be an issue with the classmate.


Overall, I heard a lot of dissatisfaction with the DS last year. This is FIRST's way of addressing that dissatisfaction. If the DS wasn't really so bad last year, I hope that people will think twice about complaining about anything and everything, because the result might just be worse.

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I updated my Beta Test Team map to differentiate between teams that get the hardware to test. Overall, it looks like Geography and language choice played a large role. There are 6 teams getting hardware for each programming language. It also looks like they were spread out so that only one team in an area gets the hardware.

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Does the classmate have 802.11n 5GHZ?

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Thanks for suggesting people compare the ups and downs of last year to what we see in one photo of a beta system for this year. All too often forums such as this get off on a rant of dislikes.
What I hear that I like so far is quicker boot times, no need for an AC adapter, no wifi router, possible choice of USB joysticks, more internal control of updates ... MORE Robust without a significant increase in complexity. In fact it seems to have gotten less complex.

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I really like the potential for this, as a resource and mentor stretched team we could never develop a dashboard. It was just two years ago that 418 recieved an innovation award for a labview dashboard system. Now every rookie might have such a system.

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Jared and Joe:

I want to thank you guys for taking the high road and pointing out all the obvious advantages that this new DS system has over anything that has come before.

<soapbox>

It is amazing to me how some people on this thread are reacting so negatively to change. Not just this year, but even last year, where the benefits of the new control system were even more obvious, it was the same folks making the same complaints. And again, they were generally doing all their griping before all the details were known.

It is even more amazing to me that these people represent teams that have built their reputation on building state-of-the-art, cutting edge robots. Honestly, I really have to wonder how much better these teams might be if they didn't have to deal with so much negativity in their midst.

Sorry guys, but requiring today's students to have an understanding of assembly language, or knowing how to build their own outboard processor, much less how to cram an image processing algorithm into 4K of RAM, is just not going to cut it anymore. I applaud FIRST for making a such a valiant effort to provide us with the latest technology, and at a reasonable price.

</soapbox>

PS - I'm with Jared on the software - that picture doesn't look like LabView to me. I'm betting it's a simple window system running on some sort of stripped-down Linux distro. I'm also betting that for safety (as well as a bunch of other) reasons, we may not have a whole lot of leeway to modify the DS software itself. Possibly a binary library with a published API for panel customization. But we shall see soon enough...

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They're not the same complaints (e.g. last year they didn't go "but what if KwikByte makes an inferior DS that dies to static discharge that you have to void your warranty to fix?").

I think the success of such teams does more to say the benefits of "negativity" (e.g constructive criticism, an incredibly useful tool for any engineering project) rather than "wow the poofs would do so much better without that Negative Nancy!". I mean, if they weren't skeptical and negative, then teams would try to do ridiculous things that would never work because no one criticized them. Criticism is a GOOD thing, if it is constructive.

Hell, without criticism, we'd have the same static death boxes with unreliable pins and Ethernet ports that we do now. And no free laptop in the KoP :D

From an engineering standpoint, if you can get away with a cheaper, more ancient solution then it's inefficient to go with a more expensive one that effectively does the same thing... and I think that's what a lot of IFI fans think, that the current system, while it has its benefits, isn't so much better that it can outdo IFI for FIRST (not to mention basic stuff like reliability, which since you're paying for a product you should complain about when stuff doesn't work).

Sorry for soapboxing as well, but I think to certain extents criticism should be encouraged so that FIRST can make a better product, and your post made it seem like ALL criticism is bad, which is not the right approach.

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And without politics, we would still have a bulletproof IFI solution.

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The way I see it, there's constructive criticism (good) and then there's just b*tching, which is how I would classify much of the complaining here (and last year as well). They don't want to improve the situation, they just want to keep the status quo that they are comfortable with, and the h*ll with the rest.

As for the Kwikbyte experiment, one poor implementation should not cause us to stifle all innovation. I wish you could see my response to the KOP survey from last year - the Kwikbyte DS was a real piece of cr*p, and I let them know it. But I also made sure to include some comments about what was wrong with it, and how they might be able to make it better. I applauded the initiative to give us something better, but roundly booed the implementation. Time will tell, but so far it looks like DS v2.0 has a much better chance of success.

Most of the IFI lovers seem to be multi-year veterans who most likely had good, knowledgeable mentors who could teach them the mysteries of that system and how to maximize its potential. They came to know it and love it and still wonder why anyone would need anything else. They may think it was "bulletproof", but what they often forget is that it was a very daunting platform for most kids who were probably encountering their first embedded programming platform, usually without any kind of expert guidance, and certainly with very little entry-level documentation. Until Kevin Watson came along and cleaned up the code and wrote a little documentation, most ordinary teams were lucky to just get a drivable platform working. And forget about a mere mortal getting any kind of camera image processing working!

If we really want to grow the FIRST experience, we need to make the steps to success as easy as possible for teams that don't have a full staff of experienced engineers from a large corporation at their beck and call. To my reckoning, the new control system (plus the vastly improved software libraries) is a good step toward that, plus it gives the veteran teams lots of room to expand and stretch the limits of what is possible. The best of both worlds! :)

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I think that the new DS works well, but I'm not holding my breath for Xbox 360 support.
Last year's DS ran Linux. Linux has support for Xbox 360 drivers (I use 360 controllers under linux fairly often). Last year's DS didn't have 360 support. So, even though the DS was capable of supporting 360 controllers, it didn't. If this year's DS runs Linux, it'll be in exactly the same boat. Capable of supporting them, but not required.

On a separate note, I'm hoping that they enable Force Feedback on the joysticks. For example, it would have been useful to use force feedback to tell when the wheels were slipping, or the hopper was jammed, or use a force feedback steering wheel and have it tell the driver something about how easy it is to turn, or ... The possibilities are endless.

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Yeah, but there's nothing we can do about that now :( (Man, politics ruins everything. FTC, our control systems... guess it's a microcosm of the real world :rolleyes:)

Presumably if this DS runs a Linux variant, one could install 360 drivers. I don't like driving with gamepads anyway but whatever floats your boat.

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You know, as a software engineer I have to comment on this one. Sure, technology has moved a long way from these things, but I can tell you with certainty that the best software engineers that I personally work with all know how to work with assembly language. Saying that we shouldn't bother with teaching that any more because technology has moved on is just as short-sighted as saying that there's no point in teaching kids how to do arithmetic or calculus by hand since there's calculators available that can do the work for them.

Having said that, you're exaggerating the difficulty of working with the IFI system dramatically. I consider my team to be one of the most advanced users of the control system, and we never wrote a single line of assembly code. I know many powerhouse teams that have never built an offboard processor. You're just making stuff up to make your own position sound better.
I'm amazed that you'd try to use this as an argument. You must not have gone through the unbelievable hassle and headache that was the process of setting up WindRiver for the new control system last year. Our team has experts who work with VxWorks, WindRiver, and various RTOSes and debuggers every day, and yet it still took us hours to get things installed and configured correctly. And even then, WindRiver would randomly not work at times, or lose the connection to the target, etc. Comparing the approachability of the IFI system versus the new control system is probably not a good idea if you're trying to make a case that the new one is better. Just go look at the numerous threads from last year around kickoff of all the people that had issues setting up their system, getting software installed, etc.

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FRC is the a varsity level robotics competition... What I hear from your post equates to you wanting a sixth grader to step on to the football field and be competitive with high school upper class men. Please don't encourage the dumbing down of this competition, keeping it at a high level is what makes it relevant.

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What are you talking about? The 2004 IFI control control system documentation was absolutely amazing. It gave nearly perfect instructions for exactly how to set things up from a starting point of zero knowledge. It came with well-documented default code and a comprehensive guide to how -- and why -- that code worked. There were no mysteries (except perhaps for the existence of the LimitMix() function).

I had extensive email conversations a few years ago with a mentor who was frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of information on how to use the IFI system. The true problem was that he didn't know where to find it, as it wasn't obvious to him that prior years' documentation was still valid. As soon as he started asking questions that made it clear he hadn't read what was available, I pointed him to it and he got much happier.

Kevin created very nice drop-in modules with complete instructions for how to add them to the default code and how to use them. He eventually wrote his own powerful framework around which to build a sophisticated robot-controlling program. But the default code would do a great job of running a driveable platform, and it would even run pneumatics and limit-switch-controlled motors without modification. All the "ordinary team" needed to do was read the instructions describing which joystick inputs controlled which RC outputs.

The CMUcam did its own image processing. The only programming required on the IFI system was for communicating with the camera...and it was in the default code that year.

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I agree, we can't shoot the messenger. Let's work with the classmate to improve it's functionality so we can achieve the robustness of the 2004 IFI driver station. Let's start with supporting all the basic functionality including in previous years systems (I/O, E-stop, USB Hub). Then let's try to optimize boot load time to less than 1 minute.

Is there anyway to put the classmate in standby mode so the time to start is less than 5 seconds ?

I'm not too worried about microphones or cameras, but audio playback would be useful.

Off-loading processing to a remote driver station seems inefficient for a real-time OS on a robot.

Having basic terminal access would be nice so we can monitor the system processes. I would trade all dashboard visuals for reliability and speed.

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This is probably why the Classmate was picked; you could potentially just throw open the screen and you're good. I'm really excited for the Classmate DS this year and think it's a great solution to a lot of complaints a lot of FIRST had.

My memory's fuzzy, but I don't remember getting a plastic "stop" button in the beta test kit last year...

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That all depends. There is enough bandwidth available (in the WiFi specs, but not in the current FIRST packet restrictions) to go around for 6 robots to send small, compressed images in full duplex and still have quite a bit of safety factor.

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Why do the goals of ease of accessibility for inexperienced teams and advanced capabilities for veteran teams have to be mutually exclusive? Doesn't having more "out of the box" functionality elevate the level of competition rather than dumb it down?

Reliability, elegance, and better documentation will come with time. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

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I agree with Jared.....as a mentor, I enjoy letting the students put the system together and getting it working. The sense of achievement is part of what we must have the students experience. But, then, the fun starts..."wait, there's more...." And with the cRio, there is always another level of complexity for the students to master.

The power of this system is that it is easily introduced, yet allows unparalleled challenges. And by using an industrial grade controller and software (whether C++ or LabVIEW or Java), the students feel an enormous level of confidence and are inspired to do more.

That's what FIRST is all about.

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Whoa, such negative vibes in this post. A net book being a commercially mass produced and Supported product makes a whole lot of sense. May be First should be praised for this move. Intel is the 800 Lb gorilla in the semi conductor world and now they will be supporting First. Is this a bad thing?
One concern I have is the custom IO beak out board. Is it full protected so that students can't do some thing stupid and fry the netbook? Is it capable of being a conduit of static into the net book?
I like the big E-stop button. For to many years the enable - disable and E-stop implementation has been less than ideal. These robots are dangerous and there has to be a quick reliable method for killing them. How is the E-stop implemented? Is it fault tolerant. What happens if the USB cable is pulled out? What if the switch in the E-button is defective or fails? I still have the vivid memory from 2 years ago when the robot went berserk and the fumbling of the kludged up dongle all most resulted in what could have been a serious mangling.
Scared the hell out of me. For 2010 let the E-stop be done write.

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My negativity comes from the increasing complication of our control system.

When I programmed in high school, we only "needed" two programs. MpLab, and ifiLoader. Neither were hard to setup or took long to install. Radios were configured logically by a manual entering of the team number.

Yesterday, I attempted to help my new programmer make some changes to our practice bot so we can use both this weekend. There's just so much you have to do, to so many different things, with so many different pieces of software.

The techie in me loves getting more sophisticated equipment, but the engineering student in me disagrees. If a simple solution works just as well, adding more complexity (which comes with decreased reliability) is just not a good idea.

Compound this with the fact that it is related to and/or has caused a restructuring of entry fee and what we are given in the KOP, and I am rather dissatisfied.

Call me negative if you like, but I feel I have valid points. All of you have valid points about the Pros of this system, I'm just stating the cons. We'll find out down the road who is more right (but as I'm "disagreeing" with Joe... I think my odds of being right are slim).

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How has the current e-Stop implementation been less than ideal? Are you talking about the competition e-Stops or the little dongles included with the DS last year?

Either way, I don't see how this is an improvement. You cant get much more fault tolerant than a mechanical switch that shorts two pins together. This new solution (a USB switch) seems much more prone to failure.

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The competition E-stop button wasn't that much smaller than this and was clearly visible and labeled. The toggle switch for enable-disable was completely "quick and reliable" this year off field. If it was too small or something you could always just attach a handle to it or something (there's a 6 inch piece of polycord attached to my team's 09 switch). If anything this stop button is slightly more prone to failure, but I imagine the robot would be auto disabled if it could not detect the E-stop.

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My point exactly. How fault tolerant is the USB switch? Having a big button with STOP on it included in the kit is a step forward. As long as it works when needed period.

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What difference does it make if it's a little gray dongle or a big red stop button. If you wanted a big red stop button instead of a gray dongle you could've gone to DigiKey or Mouser and bought all the parts to make your own for less than $10.

I don't see how this is a step forward. Replacing a reliable, elegant, mechanical switch with an over sized, ugly, USB switch...

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The benefits of the control system were obvious? Maybe to you, but not to a lot of other people. I value reliability over everything else, and the initial release was anything but reliable. Contrast that with a system that had been bulletproof for nearly a decade, which we actually received new hardware for every single year, and I'm still convinced that no matter how superior the technology may be, the IFI system is superior in usability. We're still paying $6000 every year, and now we're getting $1000 less in electronics than before. That's a huge negative.

In short, I don't like change, just for change's sake, or change forced by politics. Let's not kid ourselves. FIRST did not switch to the cRIO because it is superior. They switched because of politics.

P.S. As you may have noticed by our results on the field, 254 seems to be doing just fine.

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Ugly is in the eyes of the beholder.

Folks, this is what you will have to work with. Get over it.

With all the whining about IFI and KwikByte, you'd think we should revert to timing motors and cam-operated sequence switches for goodness sake. Who needs a CPU?

Sure, IFI was wunnerful and all, but it's can't cast a shadow on the cRio for versatility and power and ribustness and... well, almost everything but weight. Oh, don't get me wrong - The IFI team was just great, but how many of you still use DOS on your x86??

If the technology is overwhelming, try FTC. <sheesh>. (In other words: Who wants some lemonade?)

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Don did a better job explaining it than I did:

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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.

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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.

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

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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?

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

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

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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.

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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.

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[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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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?

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The difference being the new system is far from plug and play, and currently the software has shown some quirks.

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I'd have to disagree with those who say it's running some Linux and not a LabVIEW app on top of something; the screenshot has what the default LabVIEW dashboard was last year on top, and at least the button controls on the bottom part look like LV components.

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The idea is that the LabVIEW app is running on top of an operating system.

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Would a computer running Linux really be a better solution than one running XP? I base this purely on the experience level of most students and mentors participating in FIRST. Users will very likely be more familiar with XP and more adept at troubleshooting any possible issues on XP than than they would be even with the most common Linux distribution.

Re: [BB]: Beta Hardware
 

The reason I was saying Linux would be better I outlined in my post (onsite licensing / legality of reimaging at events). As for interface / ease of use, Ubuntu is pretty simple to use... Regardless the Classmate's going to be running the Dashboard almost all of the time anyway.

We'll find out in a matter of days.

*insert quip at XP's reliability here*

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I cetainly hope no one has to reimage any laptop at an event due to software problems. At the few regionals I attended and the World Championship I didn't know of any team that had to do this. But this brings up a good question for everyone:

How often have you had to reinstall the Development tools, Drivers (NI-RIO, Ethernet, etc) or the whole OS on a laptop during the build season or at events during the 2009 season?

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Keep in mind that "any possible issues on XP" would include much greater exposure to malware. Some such issues defy troubleshooting to the point of requiring a total reinstall of the OS.

It also seems to be the case that Windows has much more complexity, with two seemingly identical computers displaying subtly different behavior. The Windows registry in particular is a repository of much mysteriousness.

I won't dismiss the power of enthusiastic computer users to bring chaos to any flavor of system, however. :P

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Keep in mind this isn't the programming laptop (we don't know if you can write code on it or if it's just a Driver Station), but it's a Driver Station. DSes failed all the time last year, as I fondly remember running around with the "magic stick" at the 10,000 Lakes Regional.

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I saw only one laptop OS rebuild (by a team) during the season as I recall, but that was necessary due to a virus infection. I heard some events had a problem with virus propagation via thumb drives used to install the WindRiver/LabVIEW updates (no first hand knowledge though).

The installation disks I carried with me saw quite a bit of use at Regionals (including one of the teams with us in NYC) and the Championship.
Most of those were due to original installation mistakes, such as, installing FRC updates over the wrong LabVIEW version. At the Championship, a team left their programming laptop at home by accident and had to install everything on another laptop.

The Classmate shouldn't get mishandled as much as a standard team laptop would normally be though. It "shouldn't" be used for casual web browsing and filled up with virus infected casual downloads. We'll just have to see how fast and furious software updates come during this season.

If Spare Parts carries a limited number of Classmates for emergency use, I think the danger will be minimized. Field crew can keep a couple hot at the Scorers table to keep matches moving.

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Chris,
How many of those DS failures do you think were due to static discharge? There certainly weren't many other ways that the integrity of the firmware could have been compromised, seeing as how we couldn't really "program" the thing. (Bugs in the firmware due to random keypresses or program commands, etc., however, are another matter, and we can't rule those out altogether either...)

I think you are correct when you conjecture that we probably will not be able to write code on the DS. In fact, I personally would bet that FIRST will follow a software model similar to last year's: Linux as the base OS, with the DS software autostarting on boot. Customization of the UI could possibly be done via an XML file (or equivalent) that is loaded via a flash memory stick, or via a programming API like we had last year for the "second" LCD screen. No command line or windowing GUI would be accessible. In other words, there would be very tight control over what could be done with it.

I worked on a similar "instant on" clamshell device for a well-known smartphone maker that was (unfortunately) never released. It ran Linux as the base OS, and had a preset menu of applications (email, WP, browser, etc.) that came up on waking. The apps all had a GUI, with complete keyboard and mouse control available. Access to a Linux terminal screen for debugging was only available via a "secret" hot key, and even that was disabled for final manufacturing. New apps could be installed only via complete firmware updates, but limited configuration of those apps could be done either via XML or via special UI options built into the base apps themselves.

The point is that the integrity of the DS software needs to be protected at all costs, and that may mean that the 2010 DS will be much closer to an "appliance" than a "laptop". You would still need another computer for programming the robot via WindRiver and/or LabView.

But again, we shall see...

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Linux is free, is orders of magnitude more secure than Windows, and can more easily be scaled to run extremely lightweight. It would be perfect for this task. Besides, within a year or two Windows XP will be dead.

Learning a new, non-Windows OS isn't that scary, especially if the only thing really necessary is the knowledge on how to create a dashboard app.

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I have been following this thread and felt compelled to add my opinion (Note:opinion).

I was concerned that the 2009 control system would introduce so much new complexity and potential bugs that our team would suffer. Instead, the programming team jumped from 2 members to 10 members and our robot control was better than ever. I attribute this to several things:

1. We had excellant support for the new hardware. The web based videos and resouces from NI were very helpful. Team 16 (one of the beta testers) did a local seminar which helped a lot.
2. We standardized on Labview. This made it much less intimidating for the new programmers in the group. Again, the NI online material was excellant.
3. We had several laptops for development. Each was able to work independently on one aspect of the programming (PID contol steering, vision, autonomous).
4. There were continuous updates from FIRST, NI and on CD. When we encountered an ethernet port outtage on the DS, we knew what it was.

I'm excited to see all of the new capabilities teams will incorporate into their robots in coming years. I want to see robots that sense and react to the game itself. I feel this new control system is a big step towards achieving that.

We are engineers after all so I say "Bring on the technology"!:yikes:

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That wouldn't be the Palm Foleo, would it?