NEW 2009 Control System Released

[Tom Line]

Initial impressions....

I like the power and the ability to do floating point and wireless downloading. The ability to realtime monitor everything without printf's will make debugging much easier as quicker as well and that will allow for a quicker development cycle. That power and ease is coming at an expense, though.

It comes in at just over 5+ pounds for just the cRio, not including the bumpers and digital sidecar. I think people are going to be surprised when they actually get this thing in their hands and realize they just lost a couple pounds of potential robot compared to the old system.

System placement is likely to be more difficult as well. With the slim form factor of the existing equipment, I've made the comment several times to the mechanical team that they can do anything they need to do and we'll work around it - not so anymore.

Those are all small gripes though - because the system looks pretty awesome. My biggest worry is the software we're going to start out with. If we don't have ready-made function blocks for the wiz-bang "auton recording" and image recognition - along with functions like the gyroscope, quadrature encoders, etc, many teams are going to have a very very difficult time. I'd wager 1/2 the teams couldn't do what they do now without Kevin or other's code to help them. The lack of time with a C IDE is going to hurt a lot of teams.

If you haven't done Labview before, it's a total shift in thinking when you program. I'm not sure I like being semi-locked into the environment. IF that is what ends up happening.

The teams who can afford to pony up the $$'s for the extra system for a practice bot are going to be hugely ahead of the curve next year. The handful that can pony up cash for a system right now are going to be downright scary.

So - I'm excited about the potential, but nervous about potentially being locked into a development environment that I've never been particularly fond of. I wonder - how many school have classes with Labview.....