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Unread 22-04-2007, 12:37
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gblake gblake is offline
6th Gear Developer; Mentor
AKA: Blake Ross
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Re: FVC GDC wants your feedback

Quote:
Originally Posted by skimoose View Post
Not true.
Well, "Yes" and "No".

"Yes" because we are specifically discussing FIRST events at the moment.

"No" because VexLabs and FIRST appear to be collaboratively attempting to keep the genie in the bottle by only offering 10 crystals for sale to anyone who doesn't know the secret handshake (a bit annoying - especially for organizers of large practices and scrimmages that use VexLabs equipment and/or FIRST's games; and for users who want to do multi-robot experiments or games that aren't related to FIRST's competition games. Formal FIRST events are not the only activities that use Vex equipment....).

Quote:
Originally Posted by skimoose View Post
FVC competition crystals are different channels from the ten commercially available.
You mean commercially available to ordinary buyers through VexLAbs. The crystals for the other channels are commercially available from plenty of other sources (I now need to look for the right connectors from other vendors....). See your and my further comments below.

Quote:
Originally Posted by skimoose View Post
This is done so that the commercial crystals can not interfere with FVC competitions. There are enough channels to run two fields simultaneously, with a small amount of expansion, too. If no one's noticed, the field controls are designed and built to be used by three teams per alliance.

Vex uses the standard hobby ground frequency of 75 MHz, channels 61-90. That's 30 total channels, minus 10 commercial channels, leaves 20 FVC competition channels. Fine for 2 vs. 2, but a little tight for 3 vs. 3.
This genie will be out of the bottle very soon. In an odd case of serendipity, I had this same "conversation" with my hobby shop team sponsor last Monday and with Chuck Harris at a PVL-sponsored FVC scrimmage yesterday.

So, I doubt I will be the first person to take a crack at figureing out how to adapt commercially available crystals from sources other than VexLabs for use in VexLabs Tx/Rx equipment. Hopefully it won't be any harder than finding a source that uses the same two pronged plugs.

Thanks for the reinforcing info Skimoose!

Blake
PS: Is anyone able to recommend a suitable vendor already?
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