[seg9585]

Not sure if you saw this at other regionals, but in Las Vegas the team setting up the network for the field were having a very difficult time. Apparently, everything has to be done in a very specific order to setup the game correctly, and if something is done in the wrong order or screws up on its own, the server takes over an hour to reboot and reconfigure.
We spent the entire Thursday morning waiting to test our robots because they couldn't get all the bugs fixed with the field.

On a local level, I think the cRio is great, though! Ethernet really makes it easier to interface your computer with the robot, and the wireless is definitely an upgrade. We were using the Labview Dashboard while running our robot on the field to look at motor pwm/traction control telemetry. My only complaint is that the refresh rate is relatively low, and the fact that we weren't allowed to use the cameras for real-time visual feedback (although I know some teams managed to do this by fitting the camera data into the standard data packet that you always get). Hopefully we can utilize this feature in the future.

Let me also mention that the USB chicklets we used in the past really were a hassle -- they were only compatible with certain devices, and even the ones they were compatible with had issues. In 2008 my team used a steering wheel on the chicklet, but whenever the OI was bumped slightly the chicklet would restart and take up to a minute to reconnect to the device. Sometimes not at all, so we had to give the drivers backup serial joysticks in case it happened mid-match.