NEW 2009 Control System Released

[Gdeaver]

It looks like the power distribution pannel produces 24 volts for the compact rio. So what happens under heavy load and the 12 volt battery is pulled very low? I don't see any back up battery. I didn't see any specs on power consumption for the rio and the moduals and the access point. Did some one forget how first teams love to abuse thier motors and Batteries? Seams to me there needs to be a battery back up.

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

It looks like the power distribution pannel produces 24 volts for the compact rio. So what happens under heavy load and the 12 volt battery is pulled very low?

I agree, the power distribution board provides the power regulation for the RIO and the Wireless Access Point as seen in these two photos. It would be nice to see a big capacitor there designed to survive brown outs.

[writchie]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

I agree, the power distribution board provides the power regulation for the RIO and the Wireless Access Point as seen in these two photos. It would be nice to see a big capacitor there designed to survive brown outs.

These look like high-speed switch mode regulators. Large capacitors are not required, and can even be detrimental. Since the 24V supply is an up-converter, it can probably maintain regulation down to 7V on the main battery, maybe even less.

[FRC4ME]

Does everyone think we can count on Kevin-style ADC processing built-in next year?

[Guy Davidson]

Originally Posted by FRC4ME

Does everyone think we can count on Kevin-style ADC processing built-in next year?

I think so. When I talked to the NI guys, they mentioned (among other things) oversampling, noise cancellation, integration (for a gyro signal) and other such goodies.

[lukevanoort]

For those worrying about security - I was told by an NI rep that FIRST recognized the issue and now has NASA helping them develop a method of securing communication.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

For those worrying about security - I was told by an NI rep that FIRST recognized the issue and now has NASA helping them develop a method of securing communication.

I am not sure who from NI would have said that, but it is incorrect information.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by dlavery

I am not sure who from NI would have said that, but it is incorrect information.

During the mentor Q&A, the FIRST rep said that the security issues would be outsourced to a private firm. He didn't mention the name of that firm.

[adman]

I think we are starting to get a consensus here.

* We all want our students to learn how things really work.
* We all see students become somewhat intimidated sometimes by C at first.
* We all have seen students overcome their fear of C
* We know LabView is a great way to teach control system basics but
can mask the background info that leads to true product design
in the embedded world if that is our cause
* We are all very nervous about how much these systems will cost
* We see the split in minimally backed teams and the teams that
may have these already on order from NI.
*Also considering we are adding more parts to the system, the analog
adaptor plugin and the expansion board and the power inverter the
robot now has potentially more things to trouble shoot to keep the
robot running.

Let's all make solid proposals of how we can solve these problems of
implementation.

[Chaos204]

Am I the only one who has yet to see any video demos or anything on the site? not that i am antsy or anything!?

[Jay Lundy]

Originally Posted by adman

I think we are starting to get a consensus here.

I agree these seem to be common concerns, so I'll put in my 2c.

* We all want our students to learn how things really work.

Two points:

1. The old system and the new system teach different skillsets. Which one is more important is a matter of opinion.

2. If you want to teach both skillsets, just buy a PIC on your own and interface it with the cRIO. That's a lot easier than building a custom board with a PowerPC running VxWorks and interfacing it with a PIC.

So if your goal is to build a robot, the cRIO is clearly better (there's a reason they send 32-bit processors running VxWorks to mars and not PICs). If your goal is to teach, the cRIO gives you more opportunities to do that.

* We all see students become somewhat intimidated sometimes by C at first.
* We all have seen students overcome their fear of C
* We know LabView is a great way to teach control system basics but
can mask the background info that leads to true product design
in the embedded world if that is our cause

These are all related to the fear that NI's ultimate goal is that someday we will all be programming our robots in LabView because the C/C++ interface is crippled. The NI reps have stated many times that is not the goal and the C/C++ and LabView libraries will be of similar quality. If you want to program in C, nothing is stopping you.

* We are all very nervous about how much these systems will cost

I agree that the overall cost will increase for teams that may want a second controller and that's something FIRST should consider. However I don't think the wild speculation in this thread about what the actual cost will be and then coming to conclusions based on that is helping anything. What is clear is that the cRIO's will be sold for around how much each unit costs to manufacture, which is significantly less than the normal price.

* We see the split in minimally backed teams and the teams that
may have these already on order from NI.

Back in 2003 WildStang used a custom board to program a positioning system for their amazing autonomous when everyone else was programming in PBasic with like 100 bytes of RAM. Now veteran and rookie teams both have access to incredibly powerful hardware. The libraries and the increased emphasis on code sharing will help the rookies take full advantage of the cRIO. I predict the split will always exist, but next year it will be smaller.

*Also considering we are adding more parts to the system, the analog
adaptor plugin and the expansion board and the power inverter the
robot now has potentially more things to trouble shoot to keep the
robot running.

I agree, but I don't see that as a significant challenge. Plus with the wireless programming interface and the increased debug capabilities, programming problems will be a lot easier to find so it kind of balances out.

IMHO I think everything except for the cost is a non-issue.

[Doug Leppard]

Jay,

My big concern is that with current system we could have many kids on a vex system in preparing for FRC. You could proto-type what you wanted to do on vex.

But the new system you don't have that link to the two systems other than a labview similiarity.

I am sure it will all work out.

Plus most of us will not get the crio system until Jan 2009 because of cost and there is a lot to prepare for in understanding crio.

Should be an interesting year.

[Arefin Bari]

This was sent out tonight...

Greetings Teams:

We have some important information from National Instruments (NI) to share with you:

-------------

Firstly, we would like to extend our congratulations to all FRC Regional and Championship teams for a very successful 2008 FRC season.

As we know you’ll soon begin preparing for the 2009 competition season, we wanted to answer the two questions we’ve heard most frequently asked about the new control system. We are excited by the energy and enthusiasm you’ve shown for this technology change, and will continue to share information as it becomes available.

When will we receive the new control system? Is there any benefit to purchasing an NI CompactRIO controller now?

FIRST is continuing to work out the logistics of the exact availability date for the new control system, but it will be no later than Kickoff of the 2009 season. We are working extremely hard to make the new system available as early as possible.

We know some teams want to begin using the new control system. However, we advise against purchasing a current NI CompactRIO system from National Instruments. The prices listed on www.ni.com do not reflect the discounted price FIRST teams will pay for purchasing additional controllers, and more importantly, the software experience for the 2009 FRC controller in the 2009 Kit of Parts will differ significantly from an off-the-shelf NI CompactRIO system. Additionally, you will not be able to work with the other components of the control system. Instead of purchasing a NI CompactRIO controller now, we recommend that teams begin learning programming skills in C/C++ or LabVIEW.

What can we do now to learn more?

You can begin reviewing the training material already available online at:

* Tutorial: Getting Started with the New Control System
* Slideshare: Training sessions from the 2008 Championship
* Tutorial: Program the New Controller with NI LabVIEW
* Tutorial: C / C++ Programming for the 2009 FRC Control System


FIRST, National Instruments, and WPI will continue to develop and distribute training materials to support the set-up and use of the control system in preparation for the 2009 season. This training will be distributed through the web and live workshops, and there will be training available for the summer months. We will always post the latest training information on www.usfirst.org/community/frc and on www.ni.com/community/first.

Please send us your questions, comments and feedback via the National Instruments Community blog found at www.ni.com/community/first. We wish you the best of luck in the off-season, and thank you for helping support the FIRST mission and vision.

Go Teams!

[dcbrown]

You can begin reviewing the training material already available online at:

* Tutorial: Getting Started with the New Control System
* Slideshare: Training sessions from the 2008 Championship
* Tutorial: Program the New Controller with NI LabVIEW
* Tutorial: C / C++ Programming for the 2009 FRC Control SystemThis was sent out tonight...

My guesses on what the links should be based upon the above descriptions...


You can begin reviewing the training material already available online at:

* Tutorial: Getting Started with the New Control System
* Slideshare: Training sessions from the 2008 Championship
* Tutorial: Program the New Controller with NI LabVIEW
* Tutorial: C / C++ Programming for the 2009 FRC Control System

[dcbrown]

Previously with the PIC, "system programmers" had the advantage and "application programmers" who wanted all that h/w stuff hidden were at a disadvantage. The advent of WPILIB and EasyC closed some of that gap, but still the plaform was more systems programmer friendly.

The platform was kinda backwards, often requiring a lot of systems knowledge before you could become an applications programmer. This typically meant new programmers were at a disadvantage.

The new platform is more the norm/inverse of that. The entry level for all is as applications programmers using the API of the RT/OS either within kernel tasks or RTPs (real time process). If you want to be a systems programmer, the entry costs in terms of time, effort, and knowledge just increased. But that is usually how it is. The new platform should align better with both sets of folks.

The WPILIB will be just another library/plugin option on top of the RT/OS that provides an API to access the pins, PWMs, etc. that we're familiar with on the PIC. Having the source may or may not help much unless the NI drivers for the modules have the source included in the cRIO kit also. But this library will be *the* method of accessing DIO, ADC, PWM, and relays for almost all but a few teams.

For example, lets say the device special file for the digital io module was /tyDIO and pins 0-15 were /tyDIO/0 .. /tyDIO/15. Then WPILIB would need to do something like the following to read an input pin.

fd = open( "/tyDIO/0", O_RW, 0 );         // open DIO driver for NI module, pin 0
bytes_read = read( fd, &byte, 1 );        // read value of pin 0
close(fd);                                         // close device

** this is pure swag -- there are several ways of doing this, but this is the
     most direct but again depends on the device naming scheme for the
     modules and its subparts.

This assumes the VxWorks io driver model is used and not bypassed in some bizarre fashion. Or instead of using the provided NI module driver, WPILIB may decide to directly implement their own replacement NI module driver to collapse some of the details but that sounds like way too much effort and then they'd need to support that flavor of NI module driver... Anyway in the PIC, systems programmers knew how to directly access the h/w. In the new model it isn't that simple, its easier to just access the NI drivers. It will be nice to get at least some documentation on the NI module driver APIs -- it would go a long way to understand how some of the system pieces fit together.

The biggest problem I'm having wrapping my head around is the sheer size of the API and doc set for VxWorks along with a lack of information on what the NI driver/library interfaces look like. But all in good time...