Quote:
Originally Posted by mtaman02
You know what burns me more then anything is that IFI is 1) very doubtful of our problem and that we the programmers and team members are imagining things when the RC system fails for whatever reason, 2) forcing us to build around a problem in which they caused.
Basically this is what they are doing: We IFI have chosen to upgrade the hardware on the Radio Modems to make it bigger and much more harder to mount. You have to mount our radios in such away that it is put in danger of breaking if you don't mount it to our guide lines you will suffer signal degradation. What ever problems you come across are through your own fault and not of ours even though we've tested unsuccessfully the new radios at an offseason event. We will however allow you to send your radios to us for repair / adjustment or replacement if you can correctly identify the problems you are having.
It's bad enough we have to design a robot within 6 weeks to FIRST specs. Now we have to do it to IFI specs to. I don't like this one bit but hey if anyone thinks otherwise then please share your opinion.
BTW got my teams radios back but don't have any time to test them. Much to Much work left to get done. I guess we'll find out come the first regional. 
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While the radio issues are frustrating, please understand one thing. IFI didn't "choose" to upgrade anything. The guts of the old radios are obsolete. In fact, so obsolete that the only thing to do was redesign. It just wasn't possible to create another 1300 sets of the old ones. Why are they so big? That's what it took to try and make the right thing happen. IFI had a significant challenge in making the new radios work. They were testing prototypes as early as July 2006 in competition conditions and were still testing during offseason competition in November 2006.
This is not a situation IFI created, but rather a huge challenge they they have been working like crazy to overcome. The solutions they are providing are the best that currently exist.