Quote:
Originally Posted by waialua359
Art,
I'm not quite understanding this.
Isn't the 2009 season better as your comparison is for 2 control systems vs. 1? For 6802, its just 1 control system vs 6000 in 2009.
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Maybe I should have clarified it as 2010 being cheaper than
expected. We were expecting to have to buy another control system for the 2010 competition robot on top of the $6000 registration fee. But last season we had to spend $2200 on top of the $6000 to purchase an additional system for a practice robot, whereas this year it'll cost $802 on top of the [originally expected] $6000 for another control system (which would allow us to keep 2009 operational, along with both practice and competition robots for 2010).
Although absolute wise, yes, it is more expensive this year, as it'll cost $6802 to get everything that was in the 2009 KoP for $6000. However it was hinted at quite often that we'd only be getting a single control system, so an increase in price was to be expected if you wanted new control systems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by waialua359
The economy and the cost of materials dont lie. It will cost everyone more to do the status quo as in the past. Under the old IFI system, you could have easily done the same, without the official FIRST memo.......IF you wanted two robots (1 practice and 1 competition version).  |
Don't get me wrong, I kind of prefer the inexpensive nature of the IFI control system over the expensive NI control system. Yes, we do have a lot more cool features on the NI system, but I think there could have been better specs per price ratio from other systems, like the Vex Qwerk (between 1/2 and 1/4 of the specs of the NI system for 1/10 the price, while still being a vast improvement over the previous IFI controllers).