[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

I can tell you with 100% certainty that we could do the exact same thing on the old controller that we do on the c-rio. The only nice feature which we utilized differently than the old system was USB game pads, although that was possible with chicklets.

Here's what we're using that the old controller could not give us on its own: Responsive 6-sensor drive train control in parallel with 15fps image processing WITH 900 bytes of WHATEVER data we want sent back to the driver's station, in WHATEVER format we want the data. In addition, we hook a laptop up to the driver's station to easily read the data, interpret it, and display the data in whatever format we want, using ANY language we want for the GUI (Java for us). Useful languages include Java, C++ (etc), Flash, good ol' perl/asp/whatever lollipop flavor script with html/css webpages, Oracle for data storage, and the list goes on, and on, and on. Sometime this summer we'll write a whitepaper on how we custom-wrap and decode the data.

Sure, the mechanics of this year's game make it hard to utilize all of that functionality properly ... just disregard the fact that we've had issues with the hopper jamming and our team would be perfectly satisfied with our bot. The thought of using additional microprocessors with the IFI controller in order to offset the extra CPU time required to do all of the above would add unnecessary complexity to an already complex system of systems.