FRC Blogged - FIRST Choice Issue (And Part II)

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Cal578

That said, I think we (the teams who are consumers of FIRST Choice) need to be careful in our complaints. I've seen many posts that are some variant of "we lost our order due to the restocking problem". That happened to me, too. But it is important to understand that we didn't actually lose an order, because we never had it. If the restocking problem had not occurred, the order would have been rejected to begin with. We only "lost" an order compared to our mistaken belief that we had an order.

But when you place an order and the order goes through, then gives you an invoice that has your full order included, and the next day you get an email that says you actually won't be receiving all the items you selected and paid shipping for... that counts as a "lost item" in my book. Again, I am frustrated, but I am not complaining. Yes I am disappointed, but also happy that things are being remedied.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

Keeping in mind that the previous control system was much cheaper than the current cRIO-based one, and FIRST was significantly smaller as well. Such things were much more feasible back then.

http://d.pr/i/EJMP For reference on the old IFI cost.

Taken from http://web.archive.org/web/200801152...s.com/oi.shtml which was IFI's website in 2008, the last year we used that system. I haven't found a similar get started kit for the NI system (I only made a cursory look though).

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

Keeping in mind that the previous control system was much cheaper than the current cRIO-based one.

I think the costs for the two control systems (IFI & NI) are pretty comparable.
Probably due to a FIRST RFP requirement.

$1,147 IFI control system package 
 
 
$970 cRIO control system 
      $525 cRIO w/modules 
      $ 82 Digital Sidecar 
      $ 24 Analog Breakout 
      $ 24 Solenoid Breakout 
      $ 30 cables: DB37+Ethernet 
      $ 85 DAP 1522 
      $200 Classmate

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

I think the costs for the two control systems (IFI & NI) are pretty comparable.
Probably due to a FIRST RFP requirement.

$1,147 IFI control system package 
 

$970 cRIO control system 
      $525 cRIO w/modules 
      $ 82 Digital Sidecar 
      $ 24 Analog Breakout 
      $ 24 Solenoid Breakout 
      $ 30 cables: DB37+Ethernet 
      $ 85 DAP 1522 
      $ 200 Classmate

Since realworld cRIO's for general purchase (basically the same specs as our cRIO-FRC2 4slot model is cRIO-9075) are CAD$1430, before you start putting modules in them? Yeah.

[Cal578]

Originally Posted by Cal578

...That happened to my team, and I have sent an email to FIRST (in response to Kate's email sent out yesterday). It will be interesting to see if they can do anything about it. ...

(responding to my own post, just to let everyone know what happened)

I got a response from Kate at FIRST (about the same time as my previous post, actually), and yes they are doing something about it for my team, as I'm sure they've done for others. I just want to publicly thank FIRST and AndyMark for their professional response to a tough situation. Just one of many reasons I love working with this organization.

[daniel_dsouza]

Originally Posted by ksafin

12:25 & 12:28

We made two separate orders.

Really? My Spanish teacher let me out 10 minutes early, and by the time I got to my Robotics teacher, it was 5 min. before 12. The teacher let me into TIMS, and I had the password 30 seconds after 12. (Not too bad).

By the time I had logged onto First Choice(which took several tries), 5 minutes later, the Talons, Sidecars, Classmates(which we needed - ours bit the dust), were gone. 12:15 Eastern. Thankfully we ordered a cRIO and a pair of batteries (ours was having problems last year), and some other components.

Apart from the mad grab for components, and the login issues, which have pretty much been covered, the only other thing I would change is to improve the cart. For one, the cRIO would not stay in our cart. Teams should be allowed to keep a hold of items in cart or allow the PDV to be used for shipping. We lost our talons and sidecar because I had to find someone with a credit card to pay shipping!