NI Week Athena Announcement and Q&A Panel

[protoserge]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

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.

I agree with the development costs. They are producing a minimum of 6000 units if I remember the RFP correctly.

Have you seen the new cRIO they just released this week (cRIO-9068)? It's also an ARM Cortex A9 with a RT Linux. It should be pretty interesting to see how that is applied.

[protoserge]

Zynq-7020 information...

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silic...7000/index.htm
http://www.xilinx.com/applications/b...t/cameras.html

[Andy A.]

All cool stuff, but am I the only one disappointed that the code name wasn't carried over to the final product?

Athena is just cool.

[ablatner]

At work and can't view the stream, but the comments here make it sound incredible. Electronics just got so much easier. Maybe with this and CAN Talons we'll give CAN another shot.

[protoserge]

Amen to that. CAN should be much better documented and supported come the 2015 season.

Oh, and I'm sure the name "Athena" will stick around for a while.

[Meshbeard]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh man. I'm so jealous. Everything about this controller is better than the cRIO sidecar duo. I too liked "Athena" better than roboRIO, so I'll probably refer to it as the Athena for a little while longer.

Is there any more information available on the custom electronics port? pinout? This custom electronics port is the coolest feature of the Athena IMO.

I'm hyped and I'm not even a student anymore.

[ebmonon36]

Originally Posted by Meshbeard

Is there any more information available on the custom electronics port? pinout? This custom electronics port is the coolest feature of the Athena IMO.

During the Q&A, they referred to the custom electronics port as MXP (myRIO Extension Ports). NI's other product with an MXP has its pinout shown here:
http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/h...ector_pinouts/

The point counts match the features of the custom electronics port, however I have no confirmation that this is the correct pinout diagram for Athena.

[Ether]

FPGA?

[GarroH]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

Your robot always fails when it matters the most! (Pesky radio!)

Haha, as one of the students on stage operating the robot, I can tell you that it wasn't actually the radio's fault. Our computer opened up some bizarre program that I didn't know how to close so space bar was my first reaction, which, as you know, is the E-Stop. This meant that I had to power-cycle the robot and wait for the cRIO reboot. Whoops.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Ether

FPGA?

It uses a Xilinx Zynq-7020, which is an Dual Core Cortex A9 ARM processor and Artix 7 FPGA in one package.

Joe Hershberger mentioned that encoder decoding was increased to 1mhz.

[Tom Line]

This is very exciting. The NiWeek expo was incredible and the roborio is impressive. We talked with Greg and Joe, and they presented a neat option. With the USB available you can even use a small USB dongle as your robot radio.

[Foster]

It does look very cool, I'm excited about the use of RT-Linux, that opens up lots of possibilities. I like that there is basic direct connections but also that there is expansion capabilities. Having SPI and I2C interfaces gives lots and lots sensor options.

And just think, add a small solid state drive and vBulletin, it can be your team's webserver in the off season

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Anyone know when the video from this morning will be posted?

Both the keynote and the panel have been posted.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Both the keynote and the panel have been posted.

I guess I'm dumb and not seeing the keynote, mind linking it?

Thanks.

[Joe Ross]

http://www.ni.com/niweek/keynote-videos/