NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel

[Steven Donow]

Will be available for purchase in fall of 2014, beta testing next summer, info will be revealed in Frank's FRC Blog

Can be mounted safely via zipties

[cgmv123]

You can continue to use Ethernet cameras, use simple USB cameras, or load your own Linux drivers to use virtually any USB camera.

[jman4747]

Can buy them fall 2014!

[cgmv123]

You can attach it with cable ties!!!!!!!!!!

[Peter Johnson]

Glad I wasn't wrong on RT Linux! RobotPy will essentially be obsoleted by this, as there will no longer need to be a custom Python interpreter (just need to wrap the new WPILib), plus we get all the rest of the goodies that come with Linux (shell access!).

It should be more than powerful enough to talk to the Kinect, at least at low resolution. Linux support is actually pretty good, at least if you're just pulling the image+depth field.

[cgmv123]

Team cost: "Low $400's" to start. Always working to reduce cost.

Don't forget every team gets one for free. This is just for teams that want an additional controller.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Peter Johnson

Glad I wasn't wrong on RT Linux! RobotPy will essentially be obsoleted by this, as there will no longer need to be a custom Python interpreter (just need to wrap the new WPILib), plus we get all the rest of the goodies that come with Linux (shell access!).

It should be more than powerful enough to talk to the Kinect, at least at low resolution. Linux support is actually pretty good, at least if you're just pulling the image+depth field.

I'm going to love playing around with the RT Linux on this thing. Custom drivers can be loaded to have any device working with the controller!

[Steven Donow]

When the roboRIO is put into place, "legacy hardware" will no longer be legal

[BigJ]

This isn't the "FRC And Purchase Orders" panel, people :'(

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

When the roboRIO is put into place, "legacy hardware" will no longer be legal

Not surprising, since every team gets a roboRIO for free.

[jman4747]

New PD board.

[cgmv123]

Faster encoder and SPI sampling

[protoserge]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

Team cost: "Low $400's" to start. Always working to reduce cost.

That's not awful. Definitely higher than I was hoping. What are they "adding on"?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by stinglikeabee

That's not awful. Definitely higher than I was hoping. What are they "adding on"?

Recouping dev costs most likely. The CRIO was more or less an off the shelf part with a new screen print. This seems to be a custom built solution for some very specific needs with a small market.

[cgmv123]

Not waterproof! (But conformal coated)