[apalrd]

Just a bit of sponsorship advice:

-Start by saying who you are. Make it reasonably personable

-Then describe your team. What does your team do? They are a robotics team, yes? They compete in FRC, what is special about your team? What good things do they do? Awards are always nice to add.

-Now tell them what you would like for them, and what you do in return. Be clear about this. For engineering companies, make sure to talk about how you're teaching STEM and inspiring students to become engineers (something they NEED).

-Finish it nicely

Nowhere in that is anything technical. You are trying to convince them that your organization is worth donating money into, because you will spread their name via your publicity, and you will assist in inspiring students to become engineers (both are things they usually like). Don't ask them for money so you can spend a few hundred $$ on a CAN system, ask them for money so they can invest up to few thousand $$ on your team.

In general, never ask for specific items unless you are asking the company that produces/sells them to give them to you directly.



Now, for the technical evaluation:
-Encoders add no extra load to the cRio. The crio contains a PowerPC processor running at 400mhz and an FPGA running at significantly slower speed (not quite sure). The FPGA deals directly with all IO. The FPGA is already running 8x counter (single-line edge detection) and 4x encoder (dual-line edge detection), because FPGA code describes logic, and dosen't execute like a normal processor. The only additional load to the PowerPC would be whatever control loop you're running.
-Encoders are square waves. Two of them, A and B. You need only one to determine speed, both to determine direction.

-CAN is used to send messages. It has no real specific purpose defined other than getting a message of an ID and 8 data bytes from point A to everyone else, and validating that the data arrived safely (no retransmission). Many cars use CAN to send messages from distant ECU's, to save wiring costs. Sometimes windows are on the bus, sometimes they aren't.

-Standard cruise control actually involves the CAN bus less than you would expect - Wheel speed data comes from the ABS module via the bus, and the button states come from the bus, but that's about it. The engine does everything else on it's own, except possibly sending gear requests to a separate transmission (sometimes the PCM handles engine and trans, sometimes there's a separate TCM for the trans).

-Due to the fault-intolerant nature of airbags, they rarely use the CAN bus. To my knowledge, the safety ECU communicates directly with everything it requires (although some satellite sensors use a dedicated sensor bus).