[BB]: Beta Hardware

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Cory

Can we have IFI back now?

This is the new driver station? Seriously?

Amen.

Significant advantages of this please? Thanks.

[Jared Russell]

I think you guys are jumping the gun big time. Assuming they put the USB hub, E stop, and I/O breakout into a single, well-designed enclosure, what's the big deal? How many teams don't mount the operator controls to a nice piece of lexan, plywood, or something else?

As far as startup time, the clamshell PC boots from a solid state flash disk and usually runs a stripped down Linux distribution - we're talking 15-20 seconds, tops. (Though if they make us run Windows XP, I will cry.)

So what are the advantages of this arrangement? To some extent, it all hinges on what aspects of the Classmate they let you utilize. But here's my stab:

1) The clamshell has built-in WiFi. We could potentially eliminate the need for a router.

2) The clamshell has a battery. Hauling AC adapters around to demos has gotten pretty old.

3) The clamshell has audio playback, a microphone, and an optional camera. There is opportunity for innovation here. Imagine a game where in "autonomous" mode you could talk to or gesture to your interface without touching buttons.

4) The clamshell is much more capable a computer than even the cRIO. If they let you write code for it, you can suddenly offload some complicated (computer vision) tasks.

5) Every team now has access to a sort of dashboard app without having to pony up their own laptop. This helps not only the teams, but also potentially FTAs and staff to troubleshoot problems from the driver stations.

6) Lastly, it says the clamshell has a water resistant keyboard. Perfect for dealing with all of the splashing from next years' water game.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Jared341

I think you guys are jumping the gun big time. Assuming they put the USB hub, E stop, and I/O breakout into a single, well-designed enclosure, what's the big deal? How many teams don't mount the operator controls to a nice piece of lexan, plywood, or something else?

This is what I meant by shiny enclosure.

[Joe Ross]

Last year, many people had trouble updating the firmware on the DS (you needed a "magic" flash drive to get it to work). This year updating should be trivial.

Last year, many people had issues with ESD damaging the DS. As the classmate was designed as a consumer device, it shouldn't have any ESD issues. Hopefully the same can be said about the add-on boards.

Last year, the DS took time to boot. Since the classmate has a battery, you should be able to have it booted long before you reach the field.

Last year, you couldn't tether the robot on the field without access to AC power for the DS. Since the classmate has a battery, that shouldn't be an issue.

Last year, FIRST had to deal with Kwikbyte for firmware updates. Since it looks like a LabVIEW application, that shouldn't be an issue.

Last year, you couldn't use an Xbox 360 controller. Presumably, that wouldn't be an issue with the classmate.


Overall, I heard a lot of dissatisfaction with the DS last year. This is FIRST's way of addressing that dissatisfaction. If the DS wasn't really so bad last year, I hope that people will think twice about complaining about anything and everything, because the result might just be worse.

[Joe Ross]

I updated my Beta Test Team map to differentiate between teams that get the hardware to test. Overall, it looks like Geography and language choice played a large role. There are 6 teams getting hardware for each programming language. It also looks like they were spread out so that only one team in an area gets the hardware.

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by eitang

I also noticed that the Wifi indicator is lit, could this mean that we don't need to use a router any more?

Does the classmate have 802.11n 5GHZ?

[Andrew Schuetze]

Thanks for suggesting people compare the ups and downs of last year to what we see in one photo of a beta system for this year. All too often forums such as this get off on a rant of dislikes.
What I hear that I like so far is quicker boot times, no need for an AC adapter, no wifi router, possible choice of USB joysticks, more internal control of updates ... MORE Robust without a significant increase in complexity. In fact it seems to have gotten less complex.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by Jared341

I think you guys are jumping the gun big time.
So what are the advantages of this arrangement? To some extent, it all hinges on what aspects of the Classmate they let you utilize. But here's my stab:



5) Every team now has access to a sort of dashboard app without having to pony up their own laptop. This helps not only the teams, but also potentially FTAs and staff to troubleshoot problems from the driver stations.

I really like the potential for this, as a resource and mentor stretched team we could never develop a dashboard. It was just two years ago that 418 recieved an innovation award for a labview dashboard system. Now every rookie might have such a system.

[Abrakadabra]

Jared and Joe:

I want to thank you guys for taking the high road and pointing out all the obvious advantages that this new DS system has over anything that has come before.

<soapbox>

It is amazing to me how some people on this thread are reacting so negatively to change. Not just this year, but even last year, where the benefits of the new control system were even more obvious, it was the same folks making the same complaints. And again, they were generally doing all their griping before all the details were known.

It is even more amazing to me that these people represent teams that have built their reputation on building state-of-the-art, cutting edge robots. Honestly, I really have to wonder how much better these teams might be if they didn't have to deal with so much negativity in their midst.

Sorry guys, but requiring today's students to have an understanding of assembly language, or knowing how to build their own outboard processor, much less how to cram an image processing algorithm into 4K of RAM, is just not going to cut it anymore. I applaud FIRST for making a such a valiant effort to provide us with the latest technology, and at a reasonable price.

</soapbox>

PS - I'm with Jared on the software - that picture doesn't look like LabView to me. I'm betting it's a simple window system running on some sort of stripped-down Linux distro. I'm also betting that for safety (as well as a bunch of other) reasons, we may not have a whole lot of leeway to modify the DS software itself. Possibly a binary library with a published API for panel customization. But we shall see soon enough...

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Abrakadabra

<soapbox>

It is amazing to me how some people on this thread are reacting so negatively to change. Not just this year, but even last year, where the benefits of the new control system were even more obvious, it was the same folks making the same complaints. And again, they were generally doing all their griping before all the details were known.

They're not the same complaints (e.g. last year they didn't go "but what if KwikByte makes an inferior DS that dies to static discharge that you have to void your warranty to fix?").

It is even more amazing to me that these people represent teams that have built their reputation on building state-of-the-art, cutting edge robots. Honestly, I really have to wonder how much better these teams might be if they didn't have to deal with so much negativity in their midst.

I think the success of such teams does more to say the benefits of "negativity" (e.g constructive criticism, an incredibly useful tool for any engineering project) rather than "wow the poofs would do so much better without that Negative Nancy!". I mean, if they weren't skeptical and negative, then teams would try to do ridiculous things that would never work because no one criticized them. Criticism is a GOOD thing, if it is constructive.

Hell, without criticism, we'd have the same static death boxes with unreliable pins and Ethernet ports that we do now. And no free laptop in the KoP

Sorry guys, but requiring today's students to have an understanding of assembly language, or knowing how to build their own outboard processor, much less how to cram an image processing algorithm into 4K of RAM, is just not going to cut it anymore. I applaud FIRST for making a such a valiant effort to provide us with the latest technology, and at a reasonable price.

</soapbox>

From an engineering standpoint, if you can get away with a cheaper, more ancient solution then it's inefficient to go with a more expensive one that effectively does the same thing... and I think that's what a lot of IFI fans think, that the current system, while it has its benefits, isn't so much better that it can outdo IFI for FIRST (not to mention basic stuff like reliability, which since you're paying for a product you should complain about when stuff doesn't work).

Sorry for soapboxing as well, but I think to certain extents criticism should be encouraged so that FIRST can make a better product, and your post made it seem like ALL criticism is bad, which is not the right approach.

[Dave Scheck]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Hell, without criticism, we'd have the same static death boxes with unreliable pins and Ethernet ports that we do now. And no free laptop in the KoP

And without politics, we would still have a bulletproof IFI solution.

[Abrakadabra]

The way I see it, there's constructive criticism (good) and then there's just b*tching, which is how I would classify much of the complaining here (and last year as well). They don't want to improve the situation, they just want to keep the status quo that they are comfortable with, and the h*ll with the rest.

As for the Kwikbyte experiment, one poor implementation should not cause us to stifle all innovation. I wish you could see my response to the KOP survey from last year - the Kwikbyte DS was a real piece of cr*p, and I let them know it. But I also made sure to include some comments about what was wrong with it, and how they might be able to make it better. I applauded the initiative to give us something better, but roundly booed the implementation. Time will tell, but so far it looks like DS v2.0 has a much better chance of success.

Most of the IFI lovers seem to be multi-year veterans who most likely had good, knowledgeable mentors who could teach them the mysteries of that system and how to maximize its potential. They came to know it and love it and still wonder why anyone would need anything else. They may think it was "bulletproof", but what they often forget is that it was a very daunting platform for most kids who were probably encountering their first embedded programming platform, usually without any kind of expert guidance, and certainly with very little entry-level documentation. Until Kevin Watson came along and cleaned up the code and wrote a little documentation, most ordinary teams were lucky to just get a drivable platform working. And forget about a mere mortal getting any kind of camera image processing working!

If we really want to grow the FIRST experience, we need to make the steps to success as easy as possible for teams that don't have a full staff of experienced engineers from a large corporation at their beck and call. To my reckoning, the new control system (plus the vastly improved software libraries) is a good step toward that, plus it gives the veteran teams lots of room to expand and stretch the limits of what is possible. The best of both worlds!

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Last year, you couldn't use an Xbox 360 controller. Presumably, that wouldn't be an issue with the classmate.

I think that the new DS works well, but I'm not holding my breath for Xbox 360 support.
Last year's DS ran Linux. Linux has support for Xbox 360 drivers (I use 360 controllers under linux fairly often). Last year's DS didn't have 360 support. So, even though the DS was capable of supporting 360 controllers, it didn't. If this year's DS runs Linux, it'll be in exactly the same boat. Capable of supporting them, but not required.

On a separate note, I'm hoping that they enable Force Feedback on the joysticks. For example, it would have been useful to use force feedback to tell when the wheels were slipping, or the hopper was jammed, or use a force feedback steering wheel and have it tell the driver something about how easy it is to turn, or ... The possibilities are endless.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck

And without politics, we would still have a bulletproof IFI solution.

Yeah, but there's nothing we can do about that now (Man, politics ruins everything. FTC, our control systems... guess it's a microcosm of the real world )

Presumably if this DS runs a Linux variant, one could install 360 drivers. I don't like driving with gamepads anyway but whatever floats your boat.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Abrakadabra

Sorry guys, but requiring today's students to have an understanding of assembly language, or knowing how to build their own outboard processor, much less how to cram an image processing algorithm into 4K of RAM, is just not going to cut it anymore.

You know, as a software engineer I have to comment on this one. Sure, technology has moved a long way from these things, but I can tell you with certainty that the best software engineers that I personally work with all know how to work with assembly language. Saying that we shouldn't bother with teaching that any more because technology has moved on is just as short-sighted as saying that there's no point in teaching kids how to do arithmetic or calculus by hand since there's calculators available that can do the work for them.

Having said that, you're exaggerating the difficulty of working with the IFI system dramatically. I consider my team to be one of the most advanced users of the control system, and we never wrote a single line of assembly code. I know many powerhouse teams that have never built an offboard processor. You're just making stuff up to make your own position sound better.

They may think it was "bulletproof", but what they often forget is that it was a very daunting platform for most kids who were probably encountering their first embedded programming platform, usually without any kind of expert guidance, and certainly with very little entry-level documentation.

I'm amazed that you'd try to use this as an argument. You must not have gone through the unbelievable hassle and headache that was the process of setting up WindRiver for the new control system last year. Our team has experts who work with VxWorks, WindRiver, and various RTOSes and debuggers every day, and yet it still took us hours to get things installed and configured correctly. And even then, WindRiver would randomly not work at times, or lose the connection to the target, etc. Comparing the approachability of the IFI system versus the new control system is probably not a good idea if you're trying to make a case that the new one is better. Just go look at the numerous threads from last year around kickoff of all the people that had issues setting up their system, getting software installed, etc.