2010 Control System Getting Started

[Kims Robot]

I just wanted to add that a lot of the results of the Beta test may not be in documentation format. How many teams that are implementing advanced traction control go out and use someone else's code? Its not cut & paste, and the differences between 2008 & 2009 coding style may not be that different.

I see the biggest benefit of the beta test being the experienced users that come out of it. Last year 1511 helped 340 Beta test, and consequently the two teams were able to get all of the Rochester area teams (20+) up and working on the system relatively quickly. Additionally 3 of the 1511 programming mentors (including a labview guy), instead of helping their own team make bigger and better and more perfect code, left the code to the kids at competition and went off and helped other teams with the control system at all 3 of our events, and traveled to a 4th that was in need of help. You can bet that is VERY likely to happen again... and honestly was much less likely to happen if they weren't part of the Beta test.

It is probably very hard to sit on the outside and see very little released to the public, but a lot of what is being done is working through tedious and annoying bugs... and what do you care about the bugs if they are going to be gone before you get there? Could there be more documentation released? Likely true, but there are some rules FIRST imposes, and there are the hours in the day limits (making something readable/useful for others is much harder than just posting up what you have done at the end of the day). 1511 had proposed a wiki-type setup for the 2008 Beta, but I think a lot of that was knocked down by FIRST trying to keep things under wraps.

I see both sides... but just try to look at what is useful coming out of this - teams that can help other teams, and maybe future Beta tests will start early enough that teams will have more time to document and get others up to speed.