Purchasing the 2009 controller

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

I would like to know how "heavily reduced" the price of the system will be for the offer to sell a "second controller" to a team each year? Does that imply we would get a new controller each year?

The NI rep we spoke with at the Championship told us that the cost has not yet been finalized, but that they were working to get it "near to the cost of the existing system" when discounted. The current system costs about $1200, so maybe the cost of the new system will be in the $1200-1500 range, but I suppose some people could define $2000 as being "near to $1200" too...

Frankly I don't understand how FIRST can possibly claim that they are not increasing the cost of the program. To get the same equipment that we currently get each year (since we, like many teams, really like to keep our old robots functional), we're going to have to spend an additional amount of money (likely $1000+) each year. If we choose not to spend this money, we get LESS than what we get now. How is that not raising the cost?

A different NI rep also told us that the software for the system is not done yet and will not be complete until sometime in the fall, so we may not see availability of this stuff anytime soon.