Driver Station Laptop

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by euhlmann

I have to disagree. Our drive laptops (old ones fitted with SSDs) are also our primary programming laptops and have been used for other things in the past, including CAD. The point being, they're overloaded with software but we experienced no issues due to startup time or slowness (the SSDs really help)
Anyway there's no point having drive laptops separate from programming laptops - it's easier to have the tools all in one place

I strongly disagree with this statement. It is definitely preferable to have the programming separate from the driverstation. The single most important reason is that I have seen many driverstations take a dive at competition (ie. get knocked off the field shelf or in pit onto the concrete floor). If that is also your programming laptop you are going to be very sad. A second very good reason is that it gives the programmers the opportunity to analyze code assessing issues that have been observed and possibly working to fix them while the drivers are in queue. Of course, we always want the whole team to be watching the matches, but sometimes having the option to be working on a fix or a needed feature is a very good option to have available.** And a third reason is that as you will likely have the driverstation software loaded on the programming laptop, in an emergency it could be used as a backup driverstation (so if my first reason bites you... you will have a backup).

** [Before anyone suggests that the software work can be done on the driverstation in queue if they are loaded on the same computer, I would like to note that although I recognize that many teams do it, I definitely do not condone or encourage the idea of making coding changes in the queue line because you cannot test those changes before going onto the field. A big no-no for reliability.]