IFI Critique

[BrianBSL]

Originally Posted by sparksandtabs

Hmmm.....I wonder when the AM control system will be shipped out

But seriously, the quatily and cost of the control system to me is outrageous. I have seen in many occasions where somebody has used a basic stamp to control something far more difficult that what we do in first. Go to the parallax website and look at the "Nuts and Volts" articles they have. They are hooking their BASIC stamps up to EVERYTHING you can imagine. Granite the programming languange is really easy to understand and it gives rookies an advangtages, it still held back more expirienced teams from acceling. I have seen manythings done in BASIC as we do in C. ALso that control system if bought direct from parallax is far cheaper. 2 BOEs and 2 transcievers with a few ADC chips and external circuittry and voila you spent only 300$ if that.

Not to bash anybody's control system but I have a development board sitting 3 feet from me that cost 80$ that can do EVERYTHING that the IFI system can do. Sure it may take a little more coding but it is cheaper and more raw (more room for development and expansion by individual teams) that the IFI and parallax solution.

<bashing>How hard could it possibly be to design a new control system?</bashing>

of course all IMHO

I issue the same challenge to you that I issued in my other post - if you think it can be done better and cheaper, then do it and sell it to FIRST. The BOM price for a IFI RC is likely less than $75, including the PCB, but engineering (including the base software dev - both master and user in thier configuration) and support time are not free. Basic Stamps are overpriced and under powered - and would be a move backwards - as they certainly don't provide the level of refinement necessary for FIRST. What is it that the stamp can do that the PIC can't? I don't see anything in your argument of your dev board being more capable - there are plenty of systems that cost less which are more capable, but they aren't as refined and don't provide the output control. You seem to be arguing two different things - going simpler in one sense (BASIC) and more complicated in the other sense (here's a dev board with nothing done for you). The IFI platform provides a mix of these - and with easyC, the simple side is covered pretty well.

Remember, in the end, the system doesn't have to be used by just you - it must be used by 1000+ other teams, and must provide a safety factor that others who aren't on a team know they won't be hurt by another team's misprogramming. None of those dev boards can provide that without some level of custom IO protection. Plus who wants to slap 8 pcb's on their robot - your 6 pieces of parallax gear does nothing about packaging.

I'm not saying it can't be done better and cheaper - I'm just saying that I'm not doing it with my time, and I don't see you doing it. If you think it is such an outrage, then be a do-er and not a talk-er. Even if you don't have the resources to do it yourself, there is nothing stopping you from convincing FIRST to accept a new system and getting together the resources to create it (even if by a sponsor, etc).

[John Gutmann]

I am not neccessarily saying that the the Stamps are better, but I am saying that from what I have seen they can do basically everything we need to do. Maybe not so much in the upcoming years but right now from my expirience I would say they would run fine.

My dev. board isn't a stamp it is an atmel AVR. Also again I am not saying to give the teams a dev board and expect them to do anything. But I mean how hard would it be to take a socket for a 40 PDIP and create the neccessary ports for it on a PCB. I am not saying it needs no engineering but I also dont think it needs a whole heck of alot to get the job done. (then again what do I know I am only in highschool, feel free to bash me for this comment.)

As for your challenge. Sure. what the heck it is summer and I have nothing better to do. Just to set some rules for this new system I will try to develop what do you want. How about everybody who want to helps or has an idea as to what I could include in this system to make it something that they think a majority of FIRST teams could use or want in a system to post here.

I will work on a simple one that does everything that the IFI system does right now and make periodic updates on everything.

<edit> Due to me being poor right now. and not having the money to prototype something like this it will have to wait for a little bit. I do not currently have the mony to put into the right kind of socket to mount the chip I was looking at to a PCB let alone my dev board.

Though I will still do conceptual planning and post it on here</edit>

[Joe Johnson]

STAMP2 is not a step in the right direction to be sure. The problems we had with STAMP2s as a control mechanism were many and various -- complex & unweldy programming slots, unsigned 16 bit math, no interrupts, poorly implemented UART, and so on.

It was basically easy to do easy stuff using PBASIC, but anything complex took a guru to implement.

I think there are better micros/languages to use.

Joe J.

[John Gutmann]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

STAMP2 is not a step in the right direction to be sure. The problems we had with STAMP2s as a control mechanism were many and various -- complex & unweldy programming slots, unsigned 16 bit math, no interrupts, poorly implemented UART, and so on.

It was basically easy to do easy stuff using PBASIC, but anything complex took a guru to implement.

I think there are better micros/languages to use.

Joe J.

Once again, I am not saying that using the BS2 is a step in the right direction. I never said anywhere that I wanted to use it. I simply said that I have seen it used in a setting that needs more complex coding than what we do. So it is possible to use it. But I don't necessarily think that using a microchip processor is the best thing either.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by sparksandtabs

I simply said that I have seen it used in a setting that needs more complex coding than what we do. So it is possible to use it.

I see from your profile that your rookie season was 2004. You realize that prior to 2004 the robot controllers used a BS2, right? Many, many people complained about the lack of power and other features (hence the move to the PIC-based RCs by IFI). And yes, there were many teams that completely maxed out the performance of the BS2. Teams were most definitely being held back by the BS2-based RCs.