Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Most important questions for me:
Cost? For those of us that run 2 robots how much is this going to set us back?
Availability of both hardware and software? I don't like getting a new system on kickoff, and shipping it to me early December doesn't help much either.
Yes, I know it's over a year and a half out but it's never too early to make a plan of attack for utilizing new technology.
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Here are my thoughts on your concerns:
This thing is going to be cheaper than the cRIO. A current dev board (
here) with a quad core ARM is $180. The plastic case and added pins doesn't add much to the cost. I would expect this to be priced under $250, but $300 would not be too far-fetched if I missed some components. I would be highly disappointed if this was anywhere close to the current $525 for the present cRIO.
LabVIEW won't change much between now and then. The target device may have some different setup requirements in the code (header files, target device settings). I would be surprised if the workflow was any different. The target device shouldn't matter much when it comes to the code - the compiler will do the work for you. The current cRIO is running a Real Time Operating System (RTOS) and I expect the roboRIO to also run a RTOS variant of Linux.
I am curious if NI will support the present cRIOs to allow us to continue to use them in the future for various other projects/classroom activities since we have four of them.