New Robot Control System!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by ThomasP

Have you heard of cheap laptops? I went to Dell just now and saw laptop for $550, only $100 more than the current RC. If Dell became a sponsor, I'm sure they could knock another $100 off the price to match the other RC...

P.S. - I think my cell phone runs code a bit higher up than C... and I know it runs Java.

Erm. The issue with slapping any random laptop on the robot is that it doesn't DO anything. Not by itself. Laptops have no way to communicate with remote joysticks or speed controllers or anything else. Don't think for a second that all the analog, digital, PWM, and special serial I/Os that we want are going to come cheap. That kind of hardware will run you atleast another $300. And that's not covering how the heck you talk to the joysticks.

Also, since when do we programmers start begging to get off easy? The mechanical side of things may have more motors and parts options than ever, but they still have to cram everything into the box and get it under weight. I think it'd be a bit unsporting if the programming side of the equation suddenly had effectively unlimited hardware resources.