I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Starting in 2004, I was on the TechnoKats in high school then mentored team 1646 in 2007 while I was a freshman at Purdue. That was my last involvement with FIRST. I moved out of state to Dayton, OH and got into contact with a mentor of one of the teams here. This kind of got me thinking...I've been out of it for years, what has changed? Now normally, I would look through the CD forums for posts, but four years is A LOT of time (and a lot of changes that could be made). Last I heard, The Black Eyed Peas somehow got involved...what's that about?

Please help me catch up. Last I knew, robots were being programmed in C...and I KNOW that's changed.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

What can YOU do with Labview?

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

When I was a co-op with the Air Force Research Laboratory, I designed and "wrote" the underlying software for the Turbine Research Facility's data acquisition system in LabVIEW...It's a mixed blessing. It's fast to create software, but executes very slowly. It does make troubleshooting a breeze though.

Oh...and I hate National Instruments tech support :D

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

The two other "official" options are C++ and Java. There are other unofficial languages supported such as Python, LUA.

Other than that, we are given a Ferrari as the processor.
64MB of Ram. With a 32bit PowerPC core running at 400MHz.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

It looks like a nice change to get rid of PWM and Victors. Unfortunately, you replace all that with what looks like a cRIO brick...and if it's of good quality, it'll be about as heavy as a brick too. It's nice to see 500 kS AIs. Are other I/O modules allowed to be purchased and used? or are we restricted to those?

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Careful about that optimism--we've had an outsize number of Jaguar failures, enough so that we stay with Victors in spite of the potential benefits of CAN.

The cRIO isn't obnoxiously heavy--and the cRIO-FRC II that comes in the rookie kits next year (and is available to everyone else for around $300) will make that less of an issue still. Other IO modules haven't been allowed so far...but 2012 is another day.

Oh, and bumpers are now mandatory--in 2010 and 2011, the whole way around. Keep that in mind.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Back in MY day, we had full metal to metal contact. Not any of this wussy bumper stuff! :D

So you have the option to not use the cRIO (at least so far)? Does IFI still offer controllers to use?

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

No and yes...but not the one you remember. Innovation First folded what we knew as IFI Robotics into their Vex division and rebranded it VexPro. Along the way, they discontinued the old RCs to focus on Vex. That said, there are many folks who've operated prototypes and off-season robots on the Cortex controller (and the older PIC controller, which has some familial relations with the old IFI RCs) just fine.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

I think the Michigan district system would be entirely new since 2007.

Summary:
Instead of regionals, Michigan events are called "district events". They're smaller-scale than regionals, held in smaller areas, and only last two day (generally the friday and saturday of the week). A michigan team's entry fee gets them entered into 2 district events, and they can buy a 3rd one cheaply.
In order to qualify for championships, a michigan team must first earn enough points (via awards or competition successes) to qualify for the michigan state championships, and then some amount of teams (I don't know how many) go from the state champs to championships. In general you'll see a smaller percentage of MI teams at championships than you used to, but they'll be very, very good. I'm not actually in Michigan, so some or all of this summary may be incorrect.

FIRST decisions seem to have become a little more politicized. For an example of that, search for the many threads about the minibot and FTC parts, starting with the mid-January team updates of this year.

Excepting Lunacy, the games have been pretty excellent from 2008 onwards. Overdrive, Breakaway, and Logomotion were pretty fun to play and watch.

There is a trend towards build season effectively being continuous from kickoff until your last competition. At first with "fix-it windows" and then with withholding limits, you're now allowed you to keep a substantial fraction of your robot at home and bring it to competition, meaning that build meetings don't just stop when [most of] the robot ships, they just keep on going. This has positives and negatives:
Positives: It acknowledges that rules against continuing to build/upgrade are pretty much unenforceable, and so you might as well allow all the teams to keep working. Plus it levels the field between teams who have early competitions and get 2-3 days of robot access at their event, and teams who don't.
Negatives: If it is a late championships and you qualify, 4 months is a very long time to be at the school every day.

The last few years, FIRST has made a big effort towards having more matches per team at each event. Events like GTR where 7-8 matches per team were common are now 10-match affairs.

Championships is now in St Louis, rather than Atlanta.

The control system is bigger, heavier, and harder to set up, but also far more powerful than the old one. And since it is connected via ethernet to your control computer, it makes possible some really cool offseason projects.

That's all I can think of for now.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Amen, Brother!

And, sorry, no, you have to use the cRIO (one of the versions) to control your robot. And, it takes a while to boot up the control system. Just a heads-up on that front--FRC rules the last couple of years.

BEP, or more correctly, will.i.am, sought out Dean Kamen and what eventually happened was:
-will.i.am appeared at Kickoff (the other special guests were the author and the primary subject of a book called The New Cool, about FRC1717).
-The BEP gave a concert at the Championship, moving 2 fields to the pits (causing a bit of annoyance--until it was discovered what the real purpose was. Keep reading.)
-8/14: An ABC special called i.am.FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll showed for the first time. Filmed at the Championship, it used the concert as a hook to get people interested in the show, then told them about the robots, teams, and people behind them. (If that purpose had been mentioned in March/April, the aforementioned annoyance would have been much less voiced.)

Oh, and Chief Delphi is no more. They joined forces with the Husky Brigade to form the Wings of Fire a couple years back. (47+65=51) This would explain the purple logo at the top left of each page instead of the old logo. They did leave the coloring of the site the same, and the team still helps run it.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Wow, I just found the I.am.FIRST thing on Youtube. Watching it right now. I remember Dean Kamen wanting a lot more publicity. Looks like he got it.

Regarding Chief Delphi, I assume that has to do with Delphi cutting funding? My dad (somehow) still works at Delphi in Kokomo. They've been reduced from a large complex full of offices and fabrication labs to two buildings (one of which looks like a large shed). GM now owns most of what used to be the Delphi complex. So I can see if it's because of funding...gotta take care of your own company first.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Incorrect, actually.

Pontiac School District combined the Pontiac North and Pontiac Central high schools. I think funding was an issue, but I'm not certain. There was thread about it.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

65 and 47 combined when their two schools combined, due to declining enrollment and funding.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

One thing that hasn't changed is that team 45 is still up and running.

Re: I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.
 

Are you still in the Dayton area?