[gblake]

Jeez - A lot of posts went up fast here - I don't have time to read every word in each one, so I hope the point I will try to emphasize hasn't been beaten to death already. Here goes.

On a wall in the FIRST Place part of FIRST HQ in Manchester, there is a tee-shirt emblazoned with this quote attributed to Carl Sagan, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch; first you have to invent the universe." When I spotted it yesterday, I smiled.

So, to anyone who is worried that a COTS swerve module is too much function in one purchase; let me be blunt, "Get over it." Here is why

Until you start mining, refining and smelting your own aluminum; and start creating your own lithography masks for your integrated circuits (that you are going to print on your own silicon wafers); and start manufacturing your own pneumatics and sensors and radios and and paint and .... your objections are likely to fall on deaf ears.

Instead of wasting time objecting that something that was once hard has now become easy(ier); move on to tackling the next harder design/coding/manufacturing problem that you couldn't tackle earlier because your either spent too much time trying to building swerve modules or because that harder problem required swerve modules that you knew you couldn't build.

Take it to the next level folks!

Maybe if you build a sentient and self-replicating, but benign and helpful machine, in the 44 days of build season, you can convince me that you have run out of interesting challenges to use to educate and inspire yourselves and your team mates; but until then, be happy that the world is making progress and what was once hard is now easy!

Sheesh! Sometimes the glass really is half full. This is one of them.

Blake
PS: When/if it gets to be too easy to build a machine that can accomplish a recent/typical FRC game, then I suspect it will be time for someone to unveil a harder game.