Driver Station ESD sensitivity

[Travis Hoffman]

OK, I can be "understanding" (see Team Update #4, Section 10) of a nonfunctional 5 VDC status LED on the power distribution board (we received one of these), because it does not hamper control system operation, but if this ESD matter with the Driver's Station becomes a widespread issue (I'd say 3+ teams, including one of the original beta teams in 190 - is a decent start in that direction), somebody of influence better "work through" this "blemish" and wrangle up a solution to the matter other than merely "Buy another DS" or "RMA it and waste 3+ days waiting for a replacement". Can anyone confirm that those responsible for the control system are looking to refine and update the DS design?

For teams who've been adversely affected - were your defunct DS's covered under warranty, or are you forced to buy new ones?

The Driver Station isn't "very exciting" when its sole functional task is serving as a large, blue, expensive paperweight. I don't recall ever creating any large, black paperweights with "Innovation FIRST" printed on the cover.....

We teams do not exist as a bottomless cash/time cow that must keep going back to the well owned and operated by the designers/fabricators of an increasingly more suspect piece of hardware. As one of the many people among FIRST teams responsible for releasing payment to FIRST for its endorsed products and services - the customer holding the pursestrings - I DEMAND a proactive approach to eliminating crippling, time wasting "blemishes" from control system hardware. You can tell us to be careful with this hardware, providing specific instructions until doomsday, but perhaps if someone were "more careful" during the DS design phase, such risks of ESD, firmware update, and other "brickable" possibilities would have been eliminated?