Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
I disagree. There should be better technology at a lower cost for larger volumes of processing than there was a few years ago. Hence, there should be almost no reason for the KOP cost to go up just because a new RC has a few more widgets. We've already figured out some pretty advanced things to do for control of an FRC bot with a simple processor. Aside from 80-dimension closed-loop control systems whose backend processing most students can't comprehend until a couple of years into college, what else is there to do with an RC? There are only so many ways to tell a machine to move.
I know I exaggerated a bit, but NASA put a man on the moon with less processing than some FRC bots. Think about that for a minute.
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I guess I was talking about packaging costs. For instance, the
IFI RC currently uses the PIC18F8722,
which costs $8.36 apiece (bulk) from Digikey. The reason that the RC costs $449.95 from IFI is all of the design and testing costs and packaging costs associated with making the product.
Designing an interface with all of the features that I mentioned, plus more, would have huge overhead. Because the FIRST market is limited, the cost per unit would be high.
Seeing as the LegoŽ NXT system is $250, assuming worst case scenario that the controller only is $150 dollars of that cost, that is still really expensive for something with such a broad market. Imagine if something of similar or greater complexity was designed for a market of 2000 units per year, instead of hundreds of thousands of units per year. Instead of $150 per unit, the cost could easily be near $1000 per unit, compared to the current RC, which is $449.95.
Could they build it for 450 bux a unit? Yeah. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't mind paying more for the features. If 200 bux meant the ability for use of bluetooth devices onboard, increased wireless bandwidth, and a USB controller, that's the best 200 dollars that our team has ever spent.
Jacob