Has anyone considered contributing to this:
WPILib test harness
For most all teams, there is one or maybe two cRIO's and limited access to the hardware in the final weeks as the robot is approaching fully constructed. Access to a virtual cRIO platform would be very useful.
Investigating cheaper hardware options, there's nothing bad about that.
If the code runs on Windows, Linux or OS/2 or whatever, I couldn't care less as long as there is the C++/Labview/Java programmers environment and robot comms interface.
This year "no robot code" and "no camera images" consumed a lot of forum bandwidth. Imagine what will happen if the pandoras box is opened and the teams have access to all the low level real time OS hooks. How will that be supported? FIRST have to ensure the integrity of all the robot code for field competitions. How will they do that? Be careful what you are trying to accomplish. The FIRST programming environment is locked down for a reason.