[omalleyj]

Do you have old robot parts from previous years? We have a small test robot that can be used as a test bed while the competition robot is being worked on.
Knowing that programming this year would be worse than last because of all the changes I took extra steps. I built a plywood box that has a PDB, DSC, 2 Victors, 2 Jaguars on it. The cRIO can be placed in it or removed with only two screws. The ethernet connection is held in place with velcro.
It did require buying an extra PDB, extra connectors, and making extra cables, but I can move things between the real robot and the test bot in about 10 minutes. This allows me to have a development test bed that we can bolt onto a test chassis, or I can bring home. When we ship the robot I will still be able to work on programming, and only the weight of the cRIO, ethernet, and camera will count against the weight allotment.
It is probably too late to do this now, but I would recommend that every programming team put together a system in the off season that can be easily moved and modified. This year we put the slick wheels on the test bot and were programming traction control way before the competition robot was in shape to drive. Sure things needed to be tweaked, but basic testing was done and it was a matter of tuning, not basic debugging.