Classmate PC - Front Panel

[Trent B]

Keehun was more likely than not joking though agreeable that without some obvious indicator of such sarcasm it is good to point out the unprofessional style of such a statement. Needless to say the internet is a poor medium for putting across sarcasm without methods such as <sarcasm> </sarcasm>

Back on topic, in regards to the classroom PC I am sort of on the fence in my speculation of what it may be used for.

In regards to being used as a drivers station it seems like they may want to given the considerable amount of fried drivers stations last year.

That being said, they would have to implement a method of providing teams with analog and digital I/Os, or they could simply cut them. Which may very well happen but I am skeptical that they would deprive teams of a resource with which a team could construct a HUD display. Granted such a device could provide members with a screen based HUD display, but it gets rid of the bright LED system that many teams relied on for its simplicity of being able to be seen out of the corner of one's eye.

Video would have to be altered heavily as many teams have discovered to acquire a steady stream of images. Unless it could be made more compact while retaining quality and not wasting too many CPU cycles on such an endeavor (though we have significantly more power than the IFI system ever let us have)

More likely I think it may be used for the purpose of a heads up display for the co-pilot or the person who stands behind the two operators (forgetting the name of that position). This could provide a large amount of data for teams and allow them to adapt their strategy based on a wide variety of data coming in. If the 3rd person notices an indication of a large amount of slipping they could modify their code next round to improve traction. (We have Traction Control in cars to prevent slipping from happening and sometimes the systems go off without the drivers even noticing)

That does run into the predicament of installing labview on such a device, I remember installing it on a 1.8ghz Pentium M of Keehun's and it was a bit sluggish to install and run.