MSC and FIRST/Banner Sensors

[Madison]

A fun e-mail blast from FIRST today. . .

MSC and FIRST!
FIRST is pleased to announce a partnership with MSC that we hope will be of great benefit to our teams this year. MSC is one of the largest industrial supply catalog companies. Paid teams will be shipped Microsoft Visual Studio NET, Filemaker Pro 6.0, and Banner sensors, along with the MSC 2002/2003 Big Book, and an MSC cd. Shipping started on December 12, 2002 - if you are a paid team you can expect your package soon!

Please visit the MSC website at www.mscdirect.com!

So, since MSC carries considerably more varied product than SPI, can we expect to be limited in price or selection again this season?

MSC carries the gamut from sprockets to raw material to full-blown HVAC equipment and it seems like if it were all available to teams in unlimited quantities, that level-playing field notion would start to slip away.

Still, they are a much larger supplier than SPI, and hopefully a lot of the problems teams have encountered in the past will not happen again.

Also of note, the sensors are being sent to us early. Not much earlier, of course, but that does seems a bit interesting, seeing as they were included in last year's kit with everything else.

What could this indicate? It may mean that FIRST is giving teams; rookies, particularly, an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the how the sensors work (with the EduRobot, possibly) before kick-off.

That means, of course, that they could play an integral role in this year's game, which could lend itself to the possibility of some level of automation.

Ack!