2009 Control System Possibility?

[Tristan Lall]

As it seems to be open season on speculation, let me add what my secret agents are telling me: National Instruments (of LabView fame) has a platform called CompactRIO, which is used for industrial controls. It's modular, durable, and quite expensive. Controller units consist of a smart backplane and a stack of interchangeable modules. When my agents were down in Texas, interviewing for NI, they were openly describing this system as the new FRC platform. Whether that means they've submitted a bid, and expect to win, or they've already been chosen, I don't know. But I doubt a potential employer would be feeding my agents disinformation....

Also, recall there was a bit of a slip-up a few months ago, regarding these very same units, where an NI representative announced, then retracted an unofficial statement about these systems, when he was talking to an FRC audience.

Anyway, my money is on cRIO, for next year. Hopefully it's ready in time, if that's what FIRST wants to use.

[Jeff Waegelin]

I've done a little bit of work with cRIO based systems. I'll be interested to see how NI would turn that into an FRC control system. It would be really easy to design a visual block-based programming system with LabView, though...

[Abrakadabra]

I have absolutely no "inside info", but the NI cRIO solution makes so much sense, and boy is this thing sweet!

Now it makes sense why NI included the full-license version of LabView in the KOP this year. They weren't just hoping you would use it for the Dashboard and Robot Modeling Kit - they were prepping us for the future!

And, if they were to provide these units, it would be a pretty good bet that FIRST students going out into industry would take this "industry-ready" NI technology right along with them.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Interesting... according to the cRIO description, you can use C/C++ code on the real-time processor, in addition to LabView. The more I read about this, the more sense it seems to make to me. I think this system could allow us to do a lot of interesting new things with I/O, as well as provide a really simple graphical programming interface for new programmers, while still allowing teams to continue learning and using C.

[erikstotle]

I'm kind of excited about the move from IFI. After 3 years of programming IFI, a little change would be refreshing! I'm also a big supporter of having an open electronics platform. Our teams been around for 11 years or so, and we have quite the stockpile of parts. It would be a bit of a bummer if they all of the sudden became worthless. Also, I've been looking around on FIRST's website, and I have seen no news about the switch from IFI. Has there been a press release of sorts, or is this more hearsay? I'm really quite interested in what controllers FIRST is considering.

[scottanderson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Waegelin

Interesting... according to the cRIO description, you can use C/C++ code on the real-time processor, in addition to LabView. The more I read about this, the more sense it seems to make to me. I think this system could allow us to do a lot of interesting new things with I/O, as well as provide a really simple graphical programming interface for new programmers, while still allowing teams to continue learning and using C.

That's the thing... I'm wondering how they will handle the control interface, given that VxWorks is a full OS. There will have to be some sort of interlock, but if the programmers can get into the OS level, how much use is that?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I could get excited over this
http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/202711

Encoder input and current sensor built in. We could start doing some great things for the community as far as software infrastructure goes.

edit: Looks like this is for low current applications only (8A continuous, 12A peak). Either way, I hope some kind of 'out of the box' feedback solution is integrated into our motor drivers next year. I have helped teams get software solutions running at regionals for the past few events, and the value of something like this would be immense.

[LightWaves1636]

For what I've been told by some people(or more of a lot) on the committee and the other volunteer and mentors here in Colorado, I had been hearing that we're going with Labview...

Originally Posted by aksimhal

Why exactly would FIRST want to get rid of IFI? They donate many supplies to teams (which if bought individually, could cost more that a thousand dollars), and there is always an IFI representative at almost regional.

I've been told it goes back to when the VEX kits were first released at Radioshack and IFI was having a lot of problems because many of the kits were defective and IFI began to lose money and had to break ties with Radioshack. Then it goes into even more detail but it's more trouble to explain what had happened between FIRST and IFI.

I've heard that FTC next year for the Fall 2008 season though will still be allowed to use the VEX kits but it will be their last year to be allowed to use them for FTC.

[Jonathan Norris]

FIRST without IFI... now thats a scary thought... sadly it looks like the future

[Stephen Kowski]

programming in Labview would be nice (i use it everyday @ work), but my money is on M$ & .NET CF.....

[scottanderson]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

programming in Labview would be nice (i use it everyday @ work), but my money is on M$ & .NET CF.....

Ugh, I hope not. This is one programmer who won't be continuing in FIRST if that's the case.

[TD78]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

FIRST without IFI... now thats a scary thought... sadly it looks like the future

Also gone will be all the tech support. There's always at least one IFI representative at each regional and they have always provided great support (from what I've seen). What can we expect from the new provider?

[erikstotle]

Originally Posted by RollinTDollin

Also gone will be all the tech support. There's always at least one IFI representative at each regional and they have always provided great support (from what I've seen). What can we expect from the new provider?

Hopefully FIRST will consider that aspect when they enter a new contract. IFI people have been incredibly helpful throughout the years.

[Abrakadabra]

Originally Posted by RollinTDollin

Also gone will be all the tech support. There's always at least one IFI representative at each regional and they have always provided great support (from what I've seen). What can we expect from the new provider?

According to their website, IFI has 75 employees; National Instruments has over 4500. I bet they can spare a few for each FIRST event.

But we all know that numbers don't tell the whole story. So , for a real life example of NI's FIRST support, just pop over to the NI forum right here on CD, and ask Danny Diaz (an NI employee) a question. Chances are, he'll have an answer within an hour or two. If NI is able to provide even 1% of the excellent service that Danny has provided so far, we'll all be in good shape.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by LightWaves1636

I've been told it goes back to when the VEX kits were first released at Radioshack and IFI was having a lot of problems because many of the kits were defective and IFI began to lose money and had to break ties with Radioshack. Then it goes into even more detail but it's more trouble to explain what had happened between FIRST and IFI.

I think your information is suspect at best.

If you don't have hard facts, it's best to avoid speculation that may or may not be unfounded.