Quote:
Originally Posted by lbarger
I too am interested in a control system so we build a training platform to use with rookie teams (only 17 in our state this year!).
However, there this one discussion point that has not been covered in this thread. With the seller being on a sophomore team I think it is very important to point out that the control system is only included in the ROOKIE KoP! If you are expecting to receive another in the kitthis year, it will not happen. If you sell this control system you will need to gut the old robot to have a controller this year.
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Lee, you raise a very good point. Yes indeed, you are correct that as a sophomore team, we won't receive another cRIO in our Kit of Parts this year, of course.
Actually, the cRIO we are selling is our third cRIO. When we were a rookie team last year, we bought two cRIOs before the Kick-Off (one for $750 and one for $1500), so that we could have one in a "benchtop robot" used for simple software training, and a second in a "placebo bot" that our mechanical team used just to learn how to build any robot at all (we didn't know what the challenge would be at that point, of course.)
Then, we received our third cRIO in the Rookie Kit of Parts (as expected). This meant we now have a total of three cRIOs, which is more than we need. We are selling the mint-condition cRIO that was in our "benchtop robot" that was never used in a moving robot. We are keeping our other two cRIOs, one which I think we will keep in last year's robot so the software team has a functioning robot to try out new techniques both before and during the season, and the other for the mechanical team to use in trying out some new technologies before the season and to use in our competition robot once the season begins.
After Kick-Off, we will of course start over in writing our software and building hardware for this year, per the rules and spirit of FRC, but we will have had some good training time again to get our team all up-to-speed so we can hit the ground running at Kick-Off. I suspect we will try and keep last year's robot running even after Kick-Off, for software testing purposes, and to demonstrate last year's robot to sponsors, friends, and at community events, while work proceeds on this year's competition robot.
Thanks for pointing out the usefulness of us keeping two cRIOs, though, much appreciated. We very much agree!