A request for change to next years Innovation FIRST control board/system.

[Elgin Clock]

This year the biggest problem we had with the OI and interface, was the fact that most of the computers we use to upload code to the Robot did not have a serial port for use with the program cable.

I would like to see Innovation FIRST upgrade to at least a USB 1 connection next year.

Tethering is no problem, but programming and downloading was a pain. We had to program on one of the teams laptops, and then transfer it to my laptop through a floppy disk from my laptop with the serial port.

It was nice, cause I felt useful, but I wish we did not have to go through this frustration.

I know that the easy solution is a USB-Serial port converter, but none of the ones we tried would ever work with the new computers.

This is actaully the reason I purchased the laptop I did earlier this year - a Dell Inspiron 8100 with an actual swappable floppy drive and ports that just do not come on today's newer laptops.

If the new standard ports on computers and laptops are switching over to USB, shouldn't we follow suit with our hardware?

EDIT: One thing I forgot to ask, was, is this even possible?? With the amount and kind of data we are transferring, is this possible to switch from a serial to a USB??

[Steve W]

Our team used a USB to Serial converter that I purchased for about $25.00 CDN (thats about $18.00 US). We had no problems that I know of.

[Mike Martus]

The unit that Dr. Joe spoke of worked very good for us and the price was low.

I agree, two common items are quickly diasppearing from all computers:

1. The com ports - replaced by USB

2. The 3.5 floppy drive - replaced by USB thumb drives

Soon to go is the common CR-ROM, all will be DVD - Rom or some newer format.

[Marc P.]

I'd guess there's only a few ways IFI could make that happen...

One is to interface the flash rom directly with USB, which I don't think is possible (given the configuration of the PICs, and what little I know about how they read and write data).

The other is to put a serial --> USB converter right in the RC, which may work if there's enough room for an extra circuit on the PCB inside. This may be difficult, because it'd require a revamp of the RC circuit board, and IFI would have to license some technology from a company manufacturing the serial to usb encoder chips, which could get expensive.

I think the best option for the interim is to keep using the usb to serial adapters on the market. For the $20, it's definitely the easiest route. Or, if you're feeling thrifty, check on ebay for a cheapo old laptop in the $70-100 range, pentium 1ish, and donate it to the team for dedicated programming/downloading.

[Joe Ross]

Another thing to remember is that almost all embedded processors still use serial for downloading the programs. So, even if IFI integrates a usb converter into the RC, your students will still have to face that harch reality once they work with other embedded processors.

None of the processors that I have worked with (one with serial and ethernet, and another with serial, usb, and ethernet) have been able to download programs via anything other then serial. It is becoming a little more common, now, but still lags far behind the speed with which computer manufacturers are getting rid of the serial port.

[Nate Edwards]

Our team had a lot of trouble using the USB to serial converter, but it was our only option as we only had one laptop that could handle the program. IT ran off of XP and if you didn't do the process right you ended up with the "Impossible" XP Blue Screen. It was supposed to not have blue screens or whatever but then we ran into to them again and again... It was actually quite hard to program with those problems, and i didn't even want to bother with it eventually.
Nate

[mtaman02]

I have a Dell Inspirion 8500 which I purchased for about 1400$ earlier last month. It comes with How swappable drives 3.5 floppy / dvd cd rw, Serial and USB ports Modem NIC VGA and Printer Ports. a 1394 Slot, PCMCIA slot, and S-Video

The laptop is running some top of the line equipment P4 2.2 or 2.4 GHZ
256 Ram Upgradeble to I think 2 GB, 30GB HD and ATI 9000 Mobile Graphics




All in all there are big name companies which still produce laptops with some of the worlds oldest ports (serial)

I found my Dell 8500 under the refurbished section of their website.

Buying the USB -> Serial Converter would be alot cheaper then re-designing the entire unit. espicially one that is not to big and bulky. Yes USB would be nice but until the DB9 ports have been eliminated from any and all electronics IFI will probably not change to USB.

Though maybe if you ask them nicely enough they may make a special edu-controller with USB to see how it will all work out !!!!! before converting the official IFI controller

[KenWittlief]

personally I like the serial link - the SW you need to program the bot can run very well on an old Pentium Thinkpad, or lots of other old laptops that can be purchased on ebay for $100 or less

I think its much easier for FIRST teams to have a few old Thinkpads floating around that students can take home to work on the code - and if one gets lost or broken you are out $100

than to buy the team a couple $1500 state of the art notebooks, that will compile your SW 60 seconds faster than a 233MHz pentium.

in fact, for the cost of a USB=> RS232 adapter you could probabally get an old laptop that would work just fine.

[MrToast]

Screw USB. Use FireWire! And while you're at it, you should probably buy a Mac, too.

[Astronouth7303]

Originally Posted by MrToast

Screw USB. Use FireWire! And while you're at it, you should probably buy a Mac, too.

Screw macs. They're a minority. That's why you don't find mush for them.

Unfortunately, USB is a genuine PAIN to use, both in hardware and software. Microsoft has made the MSComm control for the COM ports, and even dos can use them. USB is nice, but it's still too hard to use to be hobbyist proliferate.

[KenWittlief]

Jamie is right - RS-232 is a very simple protocol, and if need be you can bit-bang it out on a couple IO pins - and lots of uP's have UARTs to handle it

but USB is very fast, very touchy, difficult to layout on a circuit card to get the required signal integrity

and it has layers and layers of communication protocol you MUST use, no matter how simple your data requirements are.

putting USB into the RC would not be a trivial change.