[Jon Stratis]

I'm surprised this wasn't up yet...

Blog Date:
Thursday, October 25, 2012 - 15:21

I’ve got some news I think many teams will be happy with.

As more Kit of Parts items shift from the Kickoff Kit to FIRST® Choice and the Virtual Kit (e.g. Product Donation Vouchers, PDVs), teams will receive fewer items in the Kickoff Kit each year, but have a wider variety and volume of items from which to choose that may meet their specific needs better. However, the added flexibility of FIRST Choice and PDV’s mean that teams may need to plan a little extra time for part selection and shipping.

To help teams plan and prepare for the season, FIRST Choice and select Virtual Kit items will be available before Kickoff. Some items in FIRST Choice are game specific, so those will only be available after Kickoff.

Release details for this early release plan are as follows:

November 12

FIRST Choice opens for “window shopping”

December 10

FIRST Choice opens for orders
Altium Designer software download active
Autodesk Inventor software download active
PTC creo software download active
AndyMark PDV active (voucher is for $450 and active only for those Teams that opted out of the drive base kit for 2013)
BaneBots PDV active (voucher is for $35 for specific items to be revealed on December 10)
DigiKey PDV active (voucher is for $25 for any DigiKey item)
Inventables PDV active (voucher is for $20 for any Inventables item)
Innovation First PDV active (voucher is for the items listed below)

two motor controllers (Jaguar and/or Victor),
one 2-Wire Motor 393,
one Motor Controller 29, and
one 2-Wire Extension F/F cable.

Early FIRST Choice and Virtual Kit orders are only available to 2013 FRC Teams that have registered and paid. Team specific access codes will be made live available in the team’s TIMS account on December 10. If a team registers and/or pays after this date, the codes will become live in the team’s TIMS account once payment is confirmed.

I’ll blog again soon.

Frank

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...log-10-25-2012