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Unread 10-09-2007, 19:35
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VEX Robotics Engineer
AKA: Arthur Dutra IV; NERD #18
FRC #0148 (Robowranglers)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Re: How important is Linux?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Qbranch View Post
I saw windows embedded at the Freescale Technology Forum 2007 this summer. It was pretty cool, but they had it running on i.MX processors... pretty fast. I think it might run on some of Microchip's big dsPIC24 processors but i'm not sure.

However, the cool thing about Windows XPe/CE is that they run the .NET MicroFramework .... which can run code from Microsoft Robotics Studio. For those of you who havent played with Robotics Studio it has a pretty neat system where you can target your code to an on-computer physical simulation of your robot then turn right around and target it to your MicroFramework compatible controller. It includes drivers for heavy hardware (like Sick scanners n such)....

Really after writing this i think this is way too overkill for doing FIRST robotics. The controller's cost would get way out of hand to have enough hardware to run XPe... plus I think the simplicity and close proximity to the hardware that MCC provieds is a great experience for FIRST programmers.

-q
// Shudders at thought of using .NET Framework...

While the .NET Framework would be a nice solution, as you said it would be overkill for the task at hand. And what I think is more important, the .NET Framework is only available for Windows XP, 2003, and Vista. All the school computers in Team 228's high school still run Windows 2000 Professional; our team owns three iMacs and one desktop PC running XP. And it's not uncommon to see Ubuntu running on our programmers' laptops.

The ideal new control system would be one which is programmable from any of these operating systems, especially since the number of people using Linux and Mac OS X has only been growing. (If MSRS was cross-platform compatible, then I'd support it.)
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Art Dutra IV
Robotics Engineer, VEX Robotics, Inc., a subsidiary of Innovation First International (IFI)
Robowranglers Team 148 | GUS Robotics Team 228 (Alumni) | Rho Beta Epsilon (Alumni) | @arthurdutra

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