Replacement robot controller for cRIO

[gluxon]

During a team meeting, I sat and looked at our miserably scraped 2012 robot. It had the cRIO and several electrical components removed for our current bot. As we all know, the cRIO setup is costly ($600), and I don't think any team can produce that much money each year for a new robot.

As a result, I looked into a replacement controller. I realize this will not be FRC legal, but the end goal is to revive old bots for presentation (and a ~$50 budget). I'm not worried about pneumatic control at the moment since this particular bot doesn't use them. All that's really needed is 8 PWM outputs.

After some googling, I ended up with the BeagleBone Black. It has exactly 8 PWM outputs and seems very ideal for this project. Additionally, the API is BeagleScript, which runs on Node.js, and Node.js is my life.

Does anyone see any technical limitations with this before I drop $45? It doesn't have to use any of the standard FIRST utilities (Drive Station), just remotely control 8 victors throw PWM. I'm am still open to suggestions for other boards.