second controller cost

[Stephen Kowski]

I'm sure that someone has probably answered this somewhere, but I seem to be unable to find it. The FAQ on the new controller says "Teams will be able to purchase one additional control system each year at a heavily reduced price. The exact details are still being finalized."

Does anyone have any more details on this currently?

[wilsonmw04]

I'm not sure they know yet. I don't think FIRST has really thought about how not getting a new controller each year is going to affect smaller teams. The ability to run more than one robot at a time is going to very VERY hard to do after 2008.

[EricH]

There are no published details right now. Therefore, we don't know. Hopefully, they tell us before ship date.

[mcf747]

I see nothing wrong with having us resuse the cRIO but I would like a new powere distro block, digital side car, and OI every year. The expensive part is the cRIO RIGHT?

Matthew Forman
MorTourq 1515

[NickE]

Originally Posted by mcf747

I see nothing wrong with having us resuse the cRIO but I would like a new powere distro block, digital side car, and OI every year.

Agreed.

Switching the cRIO would not be ideal, but it is manageable. It would be a shame to have to [almost] completely take apart the electronics board year by year, putting older robots far from ever working again.

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by mcf747

I see nothing wrong with having us resuse the cRIO but I would like a new powere distro block, digital side car, and OI every year. The expensive part is the cRIO RIGHT?

Matthew Forman
MorTourq 1515

As I mentioned in another thread...the easiest way to handle moving the cRIO between machines is if FIRST supplies (or the team buys) a new power distro panel, digital sidecar, and analog/pneumatic bumpers each year. Then, basically, everything would need to be unplugged from the cRIO and then just the cRIO and wireless bridge moved to another machine.

Out of curiosity, why would you want a new OI? Except for those teams that build an entire sealed case around their OI(not recommended, BTW, in case you have to replace it), the OI is one of the easiest parts to use with more than one machine.

[Dale]

At least in our case, we do a Fall warm-up scrimmage with local teams where students build simple FRC-class robots to play a game of our own design. In our case we typically have only 4-5 students building each "BunnyBot" during this time so students really get a lot of hand-on time with designing an fabrication. Since we'll have three robots, we'd need (eventually) three CRios, three OIs, etc.

Details on the "BunnyBot Scrimmage" are at http://www.pnwfirst.org/html/bunnybots.html

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Nate Smith

Out of curiosity, why would you want a new OI? Except for those teams that build an entire sealed case around their OI(not recommended, BTW, in case you have to replace it), the OI is one of the easiest parts to use with more than one machine.

Because you can't be driving more than one robot if you only have one OI.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Cory

Because you can't be driving more than one robot if you only have one OI.

Has this actually been confirmed? or is this just your assumption because it would not be difficult for the OI to ID 2 cRIOs on the network and send separate commands to each, since all robots and OIs will (probably) be on the same network.

[Nate Smith]

VERY interesting idea(the wheels in my head are turning already), but at least for the time being, we have no way to program the OI, so we would have no real way to tell it which commands to send to which cRIO...unless, of course, we're talking about synchronized robotics

[fimmel]

What about, since its all just a network, instead of having an OI u could run a certain VI on a laptop and just use the laptops USB ports as if it was an OI.

After all its all software now (over simplified i know)

Thoughts?

...Forest

[mcf747]

As far as a new OI.....it would be nice but agreed, it is not essential as the other three more "disposable" one use components. I would like a new OI just because we usually but our OI together into a 1 piece drivers station and usually it includes a lot of custom circuitry. Hopeful not as much now that we have USB but time will only tell.

Matthew Forman
MorTourq 1515

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

Has this actually been confirmed? or is this just your assumption because it would not be difficult for the OI to ID 2 cRIOs on the network and send separate commands to each, since all robots and OIs will (probably) be on the same network.

That was just my assumption. I have no idea if this is possible.