This year, many teams encountered issues with their Driver Stations failing due to the electrostatic discharge issue caused by the regolith field. I am sure FIRST will harden the 2010 Driver Stations, but there is also another option.
Dave Flowerday's
Virtual Driver Station shows that any laptop can serve a Driver Station. What if instead of a bluebox DS, teams were given a COTS netbook instead? The netbook would have a laptop display instead of a small b+w LCD, so could be used to display a Dashboard during the competition.
Would teams rather have
- The 2009 DS, but built more robustly
- A COTS netbook acting as the DS
It seems like a netbook might cost a little more. What if FIRST made it legal for you to bring-your-own DS like they're doing with FTC this year? Would teams be willing to spend a bit more to get a full fledged laptop as part of their control system?