Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday
Are you saying that we weren't using industry standard hardware and software before? I can't believe that anyone would claim, with a straight face, that Labview is more of an industry standard than C.
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I am not denying that using C is an industry standard. I do suggest that the hardware we were using was not something that a young engineer is going to run into in the form we were using it. Certainly the limitations of the IFI interface had to be worked around and one could say that this is a good exercise for any student. I don't know anyone that was using the IFI controller in a real application other than perhaps in a Battlebot or other simple robot.
I have seen Labview/cRIO used in a number of aerospace applications here in the Pac North West... I have not, to date, seen it used in a robotics application in person although I have seen it used in robotics applications on the web.
Even though, to this point, no one has been programming the cRIO with C or its variants... I have to believe that the ease we will be able to use C on this piece of hardware will be much greater than with the older microcontrollers.
Cory,
As far as the purchase of another unit. This is information I gleaned from a conversation with our NI rep here in Seattle. I believe it was also discussed in Atlanta. I don't know much more than that at this point. I would certainly suggest that teams squirrel away an extra grand for this purpose.
I certainly don't know whether this will continue into future years or not.
I know that NI and its partners are investing a great deal of money into FIRST and that our rep here in Seattle is very excited about working with FIRST.