[FRC Blog] 2015 Control System and Kit of Parts Survey

[magnets]

The roborio is only $435. That's really nice, but is this a once per year deal like the cRIO is?

Also, the chart has some errors. They list the number of cRIO Digital I/O incorrectly.

The power distribution board at $200 is pretty ridiculous. The current monitoring features are great and all, but I don't think most teams will be taking advantage of them.

My biggest dislike is the lack of relay ports. We usually don't use pneumatics besides for shifting, so we never have a compressor on board. If we use one spike for shifting drive (so we don't have to buy a $90 board that is way more complicated than it needs to be), then we only have three spikes left for motors. We usually use at least that many.

This has the potential to be a really awesome control system, but these people really need to be more open with us. If they showed us what WPIlib and the driver station looked like now, then there wouldn't be such a shock in December, when we buy the systems, and we don't know what we're doing.