[EricVanWyk]

I didn't intend to derail the conversation, sorry!! If more discussion on this topic is required, could we please have a moderator pull it to its own thread?

The 2010 PD adds the blinky lights that Mark mentioned, a self-resetting fuse in the camera return path, and a tiny bit of extra power supply conditioning.

None of these improvements matter in the nominal "everything is happy" case. If you wire your robot correctly, a 2010 PD is identical to a 2009 PD. If you wire the robot incorrectly, a 2010 PD provides slightly more information and fails more gracefully* in a few specific fault cases.

You can tell a 2009 from a 2010 by the color of the PCB. Red for 2009, Blue for 2010.

The 2010FRC rules did specify a 2010PD, but a 2009PD works just fine. Please feel free to use them for whatever off-season uses you want to, secure in the knowledge that they are 99.something% functionally identical.


* A few 2009 units blew out the return path of the camera supply when it was shorted to the battery input. A 2010 unit subjected to the same fault will protect itself and usually recover in 5-10 seconds. In an extreme situation, the third line of defense will kick in. This takes 20-40 minutes of resting unpowered to recover entirely, but I've never seen it happen in real life.