For Sale: Mint Condition FRC cRIO controller

[Randy Forgaard]

Originally Posted by Ether

Did you purchase the cRIO at the FRC discounted price? If so, are you allowed to re-sell it to a non-FRC third party? i.e., are there no such restrictions associated with the reduced-FRC-price purchase agreement?

You raise a good point. Yes indeed, we purchased the cRIO at the FRC discounted price of $750 last year. Bill, the Director of FRC, has asked teams only to sell FRC discounted parts to FRC teams, because vendors have given FRC special pricing (or donated parts) and we don't want to cut into the business of those vendors. We totally agree, and we fully intend to respect and comply with that request. First of all, the cRIO is specifically intended for FRC, it has the FIRST logo on it, the part number on the back is "CRIO-FRC," the label on the back says "FOR USE ONLY IN THE FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION" (and we include that photo in the eBay listing), and the FPGA comes programmed with the latest V20 cRIO image.

Also, we say in the eBay listing: "Please note that we intend for this cRIO to only be purchased by another FIRST Robotics team. It was sold by National Instruments specifically only for use with FIRST Robotics, it carries the FIRST logo, and the FPGA has been programmed with the latest FRC cRIO image, and it specifically includes all the cRIO modules that come with the Kit of Parts for for FIRST Robotics teams. It should not be purchased for general-purpose industrial use. It is a cRIO for FIRST Robotics."

We will do our darndest to make sure this only goes to another FRC team. We will ask the buyer what FRC team they are part of, and check them out before selling it. We think it's great that National Instruments (and all the other vendors) are so generous with their pricing and donations to FRC, and we want to support them and respect that. Our purpose in selling this is to raise a little additional funds for our team. Also, it might help out another team that would like to buy another cRIO but would like to save a few bucks. The reason we listed it for sale on eBay, rather than listing it for sale at a fixed price here on Chief Delphi, is that we don't know what price to ask for it, and we want to bring in a fair price to help out our team financially this year.

Thanks very much for your note. I meant to mention the above caveats and intentions in my original posting.