IFI Critique

[BrianBSL]

Originally Posted by sparksandtabs

Hmmm.....I wonder when the AM control system will be shipped out

But seriously, the quatily and cost of the control system to me is outrageous. I have seen in many occasions where somebody has used a basic stamp to control something far more difficult that what we do in first. Go to the parallax website and look at the "Nuts and Volts" articles they have. They are hooking their BASIC stamps up to EVERYTHING you can imagine. Granite the programming languange is really easy to understand and it gives rookies an advangtages, it still held back more expirienced teams from acceling. I have seen manythings done in BASIC as we do in C. ALso that control system if bought direct from parallax is far cheaper. 2 BOEs and 2 transcievers with a few ADC chips and external circuittry and voila you spent only 300$ if that.

Not to bash anybody's control system but I have a development board sitting 3 feet from me that cost 80$ that can do EVERYTHING that the IFI system can do. Sure it may take a little more coding but it is cheaper and more raw (more room for development and expansion by individual teams) that the IFI and parallax solution.

<bashing>How hard could it possibly be to design a new control system?</bashing>

of course all IMHO

I issue the same challenge to you that I issued in my other post - if you think it can be done better and cheaper, then do it and sell it to FIRST. The BOM price for a IFI RC is likely less than $75, including the PCB, but engineering (including the base software dev - both master and user in thier configuration) and support time are not free. Basic Stamps are overpriced and under powered - and would be a move backwards - as they certainly don't provide the level of refinement necessary for FIRST. What is it that the stamp can do that the PIC can't? I don't see anything in your argument of your dev board being more capable - there are plenty of systems that cost less which are more capable, but they aren't as refined and don't provide the output control. You seem to be arguing two different things - going simpler in one sense (BASIC) and more complicated in the other sense (here's a dev board with nothing done for you). The IFI platform provides a mix of these - and with easyC, the simple side is covered pretty well.

Remember, in the end, the system doesn't have to be used by just you - it must be used by 1000+ other teams, and must provide a safety factor that others who aren't on a team know they won't be hurt by another team's misprogramming. None of those dev boards can provide that without some level of custom IO protection. Plus who wants to slap 8 pcb's on their robot - your 6 pieces of parallax gear does nothing about packaging.

I'm not saying it can't be done better and cheaper - I'm just saying that I'm not doing it with my time, and I don't see you doing it. If you think it is such an outrage, then be a do-er and not a talk-er. Even if you don't have the resources to do it yourself, there is nothing stopping you from convincing FIRST to accept a new system and getting together the resources to create it (even if by a sponsor, etc).