I've been out of FIRST for a while and decided I want to mentor again.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

The reason I had been concerned with it before was because the data acquisition system I was working on was supposed to handle over 900 channels of data, many of which were coming in at a megasample/s, and the user interface to the DAQ system was to be an extremely complex one.

(First of all, it is great to see you here on the CD boards, Michael. Please let me know if you need any help along the way with helping these Ohio FRC teams.)

With regard to the DAQ system you are using, what is it? The good folks at NI just sent us this myDAQ unit from NI. We have not kicked the tires yet, but it seems pretty simple. We're trying to see how it could be used to help with FRC robots.

Andy

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Duke461

I was accounting for the teams that are now registered, which exceeds 4000.

We actually have about 2,000 teams or so. A lot of teams drop out.

[J.Warsoff]

Another great thing Michael is that FRC is now getting teams from all over the world. Brazil, Israel, you name it. In fact, my own team, 1676 the Pascack Pioneers, is helping to start a team all the way in China.

Welcome back Michael!

[Ryan Dognaux]

Good to see you're doing well Michael, we had some fun times back on 1646. They actually built, in my opinion, their most well-designed machine this past year, and won the industrial design award for it at the Boilermaker Regional for it.

2009 Robot
2008 Robot Proving that yes, it's possible to lose a regional when you're paired up with 27 and 469. Michigan is just that good.

Good luck with your new team!

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

MATLAB ... is just an offshoot of Java

Can't tell if you are joking?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB#History

Cleve Moler, the chairman of the computer-science department at the University of New Mexico, started developing MATLAB in the late 1970s.[3] He designed it to give his students access to LINPACK and EISPACK without their having to learn Fortran. It soon spread to other universities and found a strong audience within the applied mathematics community. Jack Little, an engineer, was exposed to it during a visit Moler made to Stanford University in 1983. Recognizing its commercial potential, he joined with Moler and Steve Bangert. They rewrote MATLAB in C and founded MathWorks in 1984 to continue its development.


http://web.archive.org/web/200504200.../birthday.html

Java technology was created as a programming tool in a small, closed-door project initiated by Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, and James Gosling of Sun in 1991. On May 23, 1995, John Gage, director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, and Marc Andreessen, cofounder and executive vice president at Netscape, stepped onto a stage and announced to the SunWorldTM audience that JavaTM technology was real, it was official, and it was going to be incorporated into Netscape NavigatorTM, the world's portal to the Internet.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

(First of all, it is great to see you here on the CD boards, Michael. Please let me know if you need any help along the way with helping these Ohio FRC teams.)

With regard to the DAQ system you are using, what is it? The good folks at NI just sent us this myDAQ unit from NI. We have not kicked the tires yet, but it seems pretty simple. We're trying to see how it could be used to help with FRC robots.

Andy

Will do.

Here's a PowerPoint presentation that outlines the DAQ system that I designed:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WVCV4WEV (wait until the countdown timer gets to 0 and click "Regular Download")

It turns out there were some issues that NI engineers didn't know about with having a "Timing Chassis". They didn't bother to tell us you couldn't have more than one timing card in the chassis, so it had to be reconfigured a bit, but that PowerPoint should give a decent idea of the system. What was eventually done was having a 1U blade server with a fiber-optic card for each chassis. All of the chasses were networked together and all data could be accessed from a main "host" computer running Linux.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Ether

Can't tell if you are joking?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB#History

Cleve Moler, the chairman of the computer-science department at the University of New Mexico, started developing MATLAB in the late 1970s.[3] He designed it to give his students access to LINPACK and EISPACK without their having to learn Fortran. It soon spread to other universities and found a strong audience within the applied mathematics community. Jack Little, an engineer, was exposed to it during a visit Moler made to Stanford University in 1983. Recognizing its commercial potential, he joined with Moler and Steve Bangert. They rewrote MATLAB in C and founded MathWorks in 1984 to continue its development.


http://web.archive.org/web/200504200.../birthday.html

Java technology was created as a programming tool in a small, closed-door project initiated by Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, and James Gosling of Sun in 1991. On May 23, 1995, John Gage, director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, and Marc Andreessen, cofounder and executive vice president at Netscape, stepped onto a stage and announced to the SunWorldTM audience that JavaTM technology was real, it was official, and it was going to be incorporated into Netscape NavigatorTM, the world's portal to the Internet.

MATLAB is now programmed in Java. Some of the internal workings of MATLAB is dependent on how Java works, and if I recall, you can actually access Java libraries from within MATLAB.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Ether

Can't tell if you are joking?

Modern MATLAB has a lot of Java in it. Under the hood, there's FORTRAN (LAPACK), C (FFTW), and who knows what else. But the core application itself (including GUI) now runs on a JRE.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Modern MATLAB has a lot of Java in it.

Yes, I know.

The word "offshoot" threw me off.

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

no, no, no. They would never merge.... they budded off as new teams for a reason.

more like sharing design Ideas but building 3 robots with what each team felt is the best design. (what they had in 2010, I was at that meeting). the talks were of more, like making each other's parts based on team shop amenities; Harrison had 7 lathes for instance (I was spoiled) and would have likely done a lot of the lathe work for the 3 teams.

Perhaps the idea never went through...

Nope, the idea was pretty much shot down by 461. I personally agree, i don't feel as inspired, or happy, for that matter, if 3 teams work together to make one robot. but thats just me

Originally Posted by Chris is me

We actually have about 2,000 teams or so. A lot of teams drop out.

I know. If you would have read my post, you would've seen that i said "There are now over 2000 current teams and over 4000 team numbers!!!" I do realize that there are not 4,000 current teams, as shown in my previous post.

[Michael Hill]

I guess since bumpers are now a requirement, right now wouldn't be a bad time to buy pool noodles, considering how difficult they'll be to come by in the winter.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I guess since bumpers are now a requirement, right now wouldn't be a bad time to buy pool noodles, considering how difficult they'll be to come by in the winter.

Bill Miller, the Director of FRC, encourages teams to buy pool noodles every year during summer.

(That's another change--Bill's Blog is an official communications channel (except for rules questions, where nothing is official except updates and Q&A).)

[Mark McLeod]

Here it is:

Originally Posted by Bill's Blog 7/14/11

We know enough about what the game will look like to want to remind everyone, “’tis the season to buy pool noodles”.