New R/C Chicken or the Egg

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

I don't think I made my point very well.

As Alan has suggested, I think we understand the point rather well. The issue is that you're asking to move from developing and debugging a single powerful general purpose RC to developing a powerful RC as well as several powerful peripherals to accompany it. My best guess at the moment is that you'd need to design a new H-bridge motor driver, a new solid state relay, new servos, and new solenoid valves, since you mentioned. Not to mention new sensors and such.

If you'd like to beg off completely redesigning hobby servos, then the controller should still have some hobby PWM outputs on it. And we'd still need general purpose digital IOs. And I'd think some analog inputs would still be good just so we don't have to make up an SPI A/D interface when we want to sense something that might not be controlling a motor. In fact, I think that leaves us with our current RC, plus robust serial comm options. Which everyone is clamoring for anyways. The only difference would be that forcing an immediate move to decentralized serial control would push all the development effort right to the front when we could develop these peripherals one at a time as we thought we needed them.

However, I've got a much better and more practical reason that FIRST isn't likely to make this move any time soon. They need the entire robot to shutdown at a moment's notice at match end or transitions. With hobby style controllers, they do that just fine if they don't get a signal. With serial devices, you'd either need a foolproof shutdown sequence in the RC, or you'd need to send a heartbeat or command to all of the devices at regular intervals or some other expensive solution.

Don't get me wrong, the independent peripheral solution is very powerful and useful in lots of situations. I just don't think FRC is one of them.