Quote:
Originally Posted by magnets
The roborio is only $435. That's really nice, but is this a once per year deal like the cRIO is?
Also, the chart has some errors. They list the number of cRIO Digital I/O incorrectly.
The power distribution board at $200 is pretty ridiculous. The current monitoring features are great and all, but I don't think most teams will be taking advantage of them.
My biggest dislike is the lack of relay ports. We usually don't use pneumatics besides for shifting, so we never have a compressor on board. If we use one spike for shifting drive (so we don't have to buy a $90 board that is way more complicated than it needs to be), then we only have three spikes left for motors. We usually use at least that many.
This has the potential to be a really awesome control system, but these people really need to be more open with us. If they showed us what WPIlib and the driver station looked like now, then there wouldn't be such a shock in December, when we buy the systems, and we don't know what we're doing.
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There have been Alpha test teams working on this since September of last year, and per the last post from FIRST they plan on starting a wide-ranging Beta test this year 2 months early and getting stuff to folks in July.
The Alpha test teams working on the system (and let's exclude mine for a moment) include some absolutely top level programmers from World Champion teams - folks who have had working relationships with NI and FIRST, and many of whom have done Beta testing every year it's been offered.
Hardware details are quite literally, released as soon as they have them. In many cases they are still ironing things out and making changes. In fact, we were given Rev C roboRios at Champs that we are now shipping back from some improvements.
Alpha Teams are traveling back to New Hampshire with our robots in a little less than a month after just having finished champs. New software updates were just release a short time ago. We'll be spending every weekend between now and then testing all the new changes. It would be pointless to release a WPILIB to the community that isn't even completed yet and still has bugs.
I don't mean to be snarky, but there are a whole lot of people working with this stuff since last September non-stop, including setting up demos, bringing it to competitions, and holding a seminar with NI folks who took their personal time to fly up to Michigan and put it on, etc.
FIRST, NI, and CTRE and the other Alpha testers are doing a phenomenal job testing a product and getting information out to testers as fast as possible. They won't stick up for themselves out of professionalism, but I've got no problem saying flat out that they're doing a great job.
For anyone who wants to get involved and see the stuff 'before December', by all means sign up for the Beta testing and be part of the solution. The more experienced teams who test, the better. Keep in mind though that part of being a Beta team means holding a seminar for other teams, so none of the information comes as a shock to anyone.