[Ben.V.293]

One thing that i have noticed in my FIRST experiance is that many teams just dont have enough time to focus on their control box. The majority of teams i have seen simply velcro their oi and joystick to a peice of plywood. I happen to work at a sheet metal shop that makes control boxes for big companies. If i designed a simple FIRST control box with mounts for joysticks and the oi and offered it for a reasonable price how many teams think that they would be interested? My boss happens to love FIRST so mayby i could work out a deal with him. What would you pay for a good control box? What features would you like to see on it? Some ideas that i had were to have the top panel easily replacable for differant switch layouts and so on. It could also have jumpers on it to relocate differant ports to easily accesible locations. Some could also come prewired with switches and led's. I think that a nice, clean, pre-manufactured control box would be a huge benefit and timesaver to many first teams, especialy rookies. Let me know what you think and i can start working on some inventor drawings. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Ben Van Selous