SD540 Motor Controller

[techhelpbb]

Just a little something I'd like to put out there:

Taking risk is what encourages people to sell products. If your market must have zero chance of issue before any financial or morale return can be made you'll discourage innovation and you'll leave yourself with a small number of choices. Eventually that drives up cost artificially.

Yes - MindSensors decided to make a change in their design. The Jaguars in the past made changes in their design. That's nothing actually new and the Jaguar manufacturing resources took much longer to do it.

FIRST doesn't really let you build your own control systems for competition use. They let you change out modules. Even though my team (FRC11) gave me all their old Jaguars after a bad experience - I as the CSA at several competitions simply took note of these controllers and the experience each team had with them. If you put the time in you could make the Jaguars work - how much time was really up to your team's resources to approach the issues. Even the change MindSensors made addresses a situation which may or may not be a deal breaking issue. I mean they did drive an FRC size robot around with these original controllers and it did move - plenty of people never got that far with the Jaguars.

It should be up to the individuals where there comfort level stands and why. FIRST obviously realizes not every team has the resources to take any risk at all - and for those teams this practice of tightly controlling the control system components is advantageous. It also stops teams from trying to build entirely unique controls in just 6 weeks and then having weird problems with no standards for the FTA/FTAA/CSA to help hunt down to keep the competition playing.

So there's give and take here. I hope the community has some patience with these new guys so they can sort any issues out and polish their work till it represents the best possible outcome. I bought both Sparks and SD540 and I have no regrets because in my particular situation $100 of both was a small price to increase the market diversity.

I write this not because of my trivial investment or any involvement with these companies. I write this because I've put give or take 20 years into FIRST FRC and I personally would rather see some small controlled risk of issues that get addressed than a lock-out that drives not just cost but limitations to the very cool diversity that FRC frequently demonstrates. This isn't FLL. This is high school level and by now as we teach STEM I should hope we can drive metric driven decisions and independent thought.

[AdamHeard]

The time to test these to build confidence for teams was in the offseason at events.

It'd be foolish for teams to run these without being cognizant of the substantial possible risk compared to more established brands.

I know we will be worried about picking teams running these until substantial independent testing in competition proves robustness.

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Just a little something I'd like to put out there:

Taking risk is what encourages people to sell products. If your market must have zero chance of issue before any financial or morale return can be made you'll discourage innovation and you'll leave yourself with a small number of choices. Eventually that drives up cost artificially.

Yes - MindSensors decided to make a change in their design. The Jaguars in the past made changes in their design. That's nothing actually new and the Jaguar manufacturing resources took much longer to do it.

FIRST doesn't really let you build your own control systems for competition use. They let you change out modules. Even though my team (FRC11) gave me all their old Jaguars after a bad experience - I as the CSA at several competitions simply took note of these controllers and the experience each team had with them. If you put the time in you cloud make the Jaguars work - how much time was really up to your team's resources to approach the issues.

It should be up to the individuals where there comfort level stands and why. FIRST obviously realizes not every team has the resources to take any risk at all - and for those teams this practice of tightly controlling the control system components is advantageous. It also stops teams from trying to build entirely unique controls in just 6 weeks and then having weird problems with no standards for the FTA/FTAA/CSA to help hunt down to keep the competition playing.

So there's give and take here. I hope the community has some patience with these new guys so they can sort any issues out and polish their work till it represents the best possible outcome. I bought both Sparks and SD540 and I have no regrets because in my particular situation $100 of both was a small price to increase the market diversity.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The time to test these to build confidence for teams was in the offseason at events.

It'd be foolish for teams to run these without being cognizant of the substantial possible risk compared to more established brands.

I know we will be worried about picking teams running these until substantial independent testing in competition proves robustness.

So you are suggesting you'd punish teams at selection time because they are using hardware you think is an issue?

You haven't even played the first match. That's sort of a bold stance to take. I suppose I could do the same.

I pour money and time into FRC and there are often field and technology problems in the control system.
Perhaps I shouldn't do that any more I mean I take risk doing that. I could cut my losses.
Cause I can actually prove that these issues have cost matches - where as I can make no such claim about these ESC.

You've implied there's a standard for testing here - so I honestly wonder what it might be because an ill-defined standard isn't much of standard. I've got some experience with proposing hardware to FIRST but I can't say that anyone has ever handed me any documents that define the criteria clearly for the levels of test required. I am also fairly certain FIRST is trying to hire a test engineer:

https://jobs-usfirst.icims.com/jobs/...un1offset=-240

Perhaps that role being unfilled contributes hard to say.

[AdamHeard]

It's not a punishment at all.

You're drafting a team and a robot. That robot is made up of many design decisions that may be positive or negative. This wouldn't be any different than passing up a team because their mechanical design isn't robust due to choices they made.

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

So you are suggesting you'd punish teams at selection time because they are using hardware you think is an issue?

You haven't even played the first match. That's sort of a bold stance to take. I suppose I could do the same.

I pour money and time into FRC and there are often field and technology problems in the control system.

Perhaps I shouldn't do that any more I mean I take risk doing that. I could cut my losses.

Cause I can actually prove that these issues have cost matches - where as I can make no such claim about these ESC.

You've implied there's a standard for testing here - so I honestly wonder what it might be because an ill-defined standard isn't much of standard.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

It's not a punishment at all.

You're drafting a team and a robot. That robot is made up of many design decisions that may be positive or negative. This wouldn't be any different than passing up a team because their mechanical design isn't robust due to choices they made.

Just to be clear you'd do so because you have actual reasons for declaring it a negative right?
That's the heart of the issue: what testing do you define as sufficient to take risk on.

Cause I could argue that surviving 10 matches of FRC on 10 designs is enough. You may argue that it's 1,000 matches of 100 designs. That was why I was so very specific to elicit criteria when I started tinkering early in this topic.

It's not much of an experiment without clear expectations.

So if we can put it out there we don't feel they are adequately tested which can drive hardship back to the manufacturer - can we in fairness put out there what adequately tested is?

If we can't define what the actual testing barrier to entry is we are basically saying FIRST is 'all over the place' about how you make a product that is FRC approved and ready for sale. That kind of situation is painful for everyone involved.

To close my previous post: if you view FIRST as an experiment for an educational process/product. FIRST doesn't set their achievement by the minority of technical issues that have happened. They set the value on the overall impact which is greatly positive. These new ESC products haven't had time to set any other experience but it is safe to say that time will tell and I'd like to know for reference how one charts a path to a conclusion because it seems in < 2 months some people have a pretty negative outlook. It sets expectations for people that might want to make FRC products. Is it okay to have a problem when you first release a product if you fix it? How about 2 problems which you do fix...? How about a product that looks a little different? I would hate to hold the teams building robots to the same level of scrutiny. I've seen lots of robots evolve in positive directions after a bumpy start.

[Rick]

My team has been in at least two situations where a desire to save money has cost us a match. I won't get in to details.

In both situations, looking back to the decision to save money was the wrong because we ended up spending more in the long run to fix the problem.

IMO, the potential to save a few hundred bucks is not worth the risk of experimenting with this new controller for this upcoming season for any team.