[Jay Lundy]

Originally Posted by adman

I think we are starting to get a consensus here.

I agree these seem to be common concerns, so I'll put in my 2c.

* We all want our students to learn how things really work.

Two points:

1. The old system and the new system teach different skillsets. Which one is more important is a matter of opinion.

2. If you want to teach both skillsets, just buy a PIC on your own and interface it with the cRIO. That's a lot easier than building a custom board with a PowerPC running VxWorks and interfacing it with a PIC.

So if your goal is to build a robot, the cRIO is clearly better (there's a reason they send 32-bit processors running VxWorks to mars and not PICs). If your goal is to teach, the cRIO gives you more opportunities to do that.

* We all see students become somewhat intimidated sometimes by C at first.
* We all have seen students overcome their fear of C
* We know LabView is a great way to teach control system basics but
can mask the background info that leads to true product design
in the embedded world if that is our cause

These are all related to the fear that NI's ultimate goal is that someday we will all be programming our robots in LabView because the C/C++ interface is crippled. The NI reps have stated many times that is not the goal and the C/C++ and LabView libraries will be of similar quality. If you want to program in C, nothing is stopping you.

* We are all very nervous about how much these systems will cost

I agree that the overall cost will increase for teams that may want a second controller and that's something FIRST should consider. However I don't think the wild speculation in this thread about what the actual cost will be and then coming to conclusions based on that is helping anything. What is clear is that the cRIO's will be sold for around how much each unit costs to manufacture, which is significantly less than the normal price.

* We see the split in minimally backed teams and the teams that
may have these already on order from NI.

Back in 2003 WildStang used a custom board to program a positioning system for their amazing autonomous when everyone else was programming in PBasic with like 100 bytes of RAM. Now veteran and rookie teams both have access to incredibly powerful hardware. The libraries and the increased emphasis on code sharing will help the rookies take full advantage of the cRIO. I predict the split will always exist, but next year it will be smaller.

*Also considering we are adding more parts to the system, the analog
adaptor plugin and the expansion board and the power inverter the
robot now has potentially more things to trouble shoot to keep the
robot running.

I agree, but I don't see that as a significant challenge. Plus with the wireless programming interface and the increased debug capabilities, programming problems will be a lot easier to find so it kind of balances out.

IMHO I think everything except for the cost is a non-issue.