[Marc P.]

I think the PICs are a great improvement from the BS2sx. The sheer speed alone makes them much more versatile as a robot controller, nevermind the flexibility of interrupts. I was born a BASIC programmer though, wrote my first BASIC programs when I was 3, so I could write essentially anything in PBASIC for the robot. Unfortunately, I never did much of anything with C, so this year was the first time I've ever seen/used it. From a novice programmer's perspective, I think IFI did a pretty good job as far as publishing information and tutorials on programming. We did get about the same functionality out of this year's controller as we did last year, but now that I have a feeling for C, I can certainly see it's great advantages for the future, and can appreciate the amount of power the new controllers have. This year made a great transitional year for experienced teams, and the wealth of knowledge between here and Innovation First will certainly help rookie teams. I do expect great things from this controller in the future, from PID loops to much more complex autonomous modes.

I know I'll be spending most of the summer playing with the edu-bot, trying out various snippets of code, and really getting a feel for what these things are capable of. I can't wait to see what everyone collectively can make these things do next season!