[FRC Blog] New 2015 FRC controller from National Instruments

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I don't think IFI actually makes microcontrollers (?). Surely they don't have a fab or got an ASIC produced. I can see them rebadging something. I'm going to guess an ARM microprocessor solely because of it's ability to handle vxworks.

IFI used to provide the robot controller for FRC. Here's the one from 2004.

[codes02]

Originally Posted by TheMadCADer

IFI used to provide the robot controller for FRC. Here's the one from 2004.

Right, but that is just a box with a circuit board (like this one) in it, and a bunch of chips attached to it. One of those chips is a microcontroller (on the old IFI board, it was a PIC, made by Microchip).

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

I think the Ethernet jack is to the right of the one you specified. I could be wrong (and frequently am...)

And USB! Hooray!

Not sure if there would be 20 PWMs and no DIO or Relay ports though.

Looks a lot like the footprint of the IFI controller, eh?

I'd be fairly disappointed if they incorporated the relays onto a PCB without adding external lights like the current digital sidecar. Those are both useful troubleshooting tools when trying to narrow down problems.

[Michael Hill]

I just want to know what that 132-ball csBGA is going to be for. I'm guessing a DSP. It's got a tiny tiny 0.5 mm pin pitch on those balls.

[Michael Hill]

The 96-ball footprint could be DDR2 or DDR3 memory. Not sure what else comes in that package.

[apples000]

If what somebody told me at the championship is true, the memory/cpu are in one device. Here's my post from another thread about what I heard. The guy wasn't a part of NI/FIRST so I don't know if what he said was speculation or the truth, but he seemed pretty knowledgeable about FRC electronics.

I don't know how true this is, but I've heard from somebody at CMP that the controller will have an ARM9 based SoC with similar amounts of RAM as the cRIO-II, and that there will be more I/O than the 3 pin connectors on the pcb they showed us, either on another part of the main controller, or on a separate breakout board, and that it will probably work with a modified version of WPILib.

I was told what the person thought would be the CPU's part number, but I'm not sure if I remember it properly. I think that it's mcimx25?

[Peter Johnson]

Joe Ross sent me a link to this new cRIO, looks to me like a likely basis for the new FRC controller (although we'll find out for sure tomorrow!).

• Increased performance with a 667 MHz dual-core ARM® Cortex™--A9 processor and Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA
• Powerful, open platform available through a Linux-based, real-time operating system
• Extended operating temperature range of -40 to 70 °C
• Flexible, existing C/C++ code that can be reused on the processor with support for the Eclipse Development Environment, or program in NI LabVIEW system design software

http://www.ni.com/crio-9068/

More info on NI's real time Linux: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/14626/

[cgmv123]

Post all discussion/reactions during/after announcement here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=118311

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by Peter Johnson

Joe Ross sent me a link to this new cRIO, looks to me like a likely basis for the new FRC controller (although we'll find out for sure tomorrow!).

• Extended operating temperature range of -40 to 70 °C
  

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Oh Boy: A dry ice game!! Who needs regolith?