**FIRST EMAIL**/National Instruments Pilot

[Danny Diaz]

From: FRCteams <frcteams@usfirst.org>
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
Subject: **FIRST EMAIL**/National Instruments Pilot Program
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:51:50 -0500

Greetings Teams:
In an ongoing effort to enhance the FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST is partnering with National Instruments (NI), a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation, to offer a pilot program to evaluate the potential for innovative data acquisition approaches with sensor technology on FRC robots. The program is limited to approximately 25 FRC teams in the US and Canada. Any interested FRC team may submit an application directly to NI as indicated below.

Selected teams will receive the Student Edition of NI’s flagship graphical programming language, NI LabVIEW, along with an NI 6009 USB data acquisition device (DAQ). The NI USB-6009 DAQ device can easily be connected to most of the sensors teams use on their robots. Using LabVIEW with the DAQ device will allow you to:

* Acquire, store, and analyze sensor readings
* Gain a better understanding of how sensors operate
* Fine-tune robot hardware and software
* Improve your designs and prototypes

NI LabVIEW is used extensively in industry by scientists and engineers who design automated measurement and control systems, much like those used on FRC robots.

Please note that because this project is limited to a small number of FRC teams primarily for feedback purposes, the DAQ hardware provided for this pilot is not legal for use during official FIRST 2006 competition matches.

Upon completion of this pilot, National Instruments and FIRST will evaluate the pilot teams’ experiences in consideration of the possibility of making the NI LabVIEW and USB DAQ device available to all FRC teams in the future.

To learn more about NI LabVIEW, visit: http://www.ni.com/labview
To learn more about NI USB DAQ, visit: http://www.ni.com/usb

How to apply:
· Interested teams may apply online at: http://research.ni.com/run/2005FRCapplication
· Teams must submit their application by Friday, December 2 to be considered
· Teams will be notified by NI of acceptance by Wednesday, December 7

Criteria for participation:
· Teams must be officially registered with FIRST as participants in the FRC 2006 program
· Teams should have dedicated resources to experiment with NI LabVIEW and USB DAQ devices
· Teams should have a mentor or team member(s) who are familiar with computer-based data acquisition technology (aka virtual instrumentation)
· Teams are required to share feedback (including successes, challenges, innovative applications) with NI and FIRST through the Chief Delphi forum and a post-pilot survey. Feedback will be shared with all FRC teams
· Pilot program teams attending the 2006 FRC Championship are requested to participate in an NI pilot program feedback session

For questions regarding the NI pilot program, e-mail FRC@ni.com
Go Teams!

[Elgin Clock]

Oh man.. that looks great.

My team loves playing with new electronic devices.
(re: Autonomous capping in 2k5 with the CMU Cam)

I'll definately share this with my team tonight, and then maybe we'll help test this in the upcoming year.

[Alexander McGee]

Just finished my application. NI makes some absolutely wonderful and powerful equipment. I have used the USB6009 before, and it is an amazing piece of data acquisition hardware. LabVIEW is, by far, the best software out there for this kind of thing. Nothing makes me happier than to learn that FIRST has teemed up with NI.

For all of you have never used LabVIEW, it is exactly like RoboLAB. LabVIEW is much much more powerful, and RoboLAB is a set of programs that use LabVIEW's protocols and design methodology to communicate with an RCX.

I was able to pick up LabVIEW fairly quickly, because i have been using RoboLAB for several years.

Way to go National Instruments!!

Check out some of their stuff at http://www.ni.com

-Alex