IFI vs FTC? Both offering competitions for next year!

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by fredliu168

How do you know the average team buys two starter kits? Did you do a survey of teams?

I haven't done a survey, but I know people who have the data. I got it by asking someone at FIRST "how many kits does the typical FIRST FTC team buy on the discount program." Having watched our club build five very competitive FVC/FTC robots, I will add that you could build a robot from the basic kit, but it is unlikely to be competitive. With the SDK at $100, I don't see how you can field a team for $350. Do they use the base code?

I figure the basic cost to be $300 for a kit, $70-100 for batteries, at least $100 for additional parts and sensors, $100 for the SDK, extra transmitter $130. That's $700-730. If my contact at FIRST is right (they were) FTC teams buy a second starter kit, which means you might not need the extra transmitter, so let's say it's $170 more (since IFI won't give you the FIRST discount) for a total of $900. The $300 competition robot simply isn't possible, if you want the robot to be something other than a BLT.

I know that we spent over $1,000 last year to field two robots, and dropped another $2,000 this year to field three and build one more as a test mule. Owning $3,000 worth of Vex parts makes it pretty certain we will participate in the IFI program along with FTC.

Of course, our club visited the Seattle Regional this week and they all have the FRC bug now. May God have mercy on our souls...

[Gdeaver]

Our team, team 104 will most likely not field a FRC team next year. 104 was a joint team of 3 high schools. Hopefully there will be a resurrection of 3 VEX/FTC teams. One from each high school as an after school program with occasional meetings with outside mentors. This whole split is going to cause problems. The way information is being released, there is a good chance that we will not be able to make a choice until the summer. My experience is that when dealing with schools you better have you plan done before June. It's difficult to get anything done in the summer and other programs will have already grabbed the cash. It would be in the the best interest of IFI, First and everyone else to spit out the specific info now. That way teams can make their choice and develop a preliminary plan before June.

I believe both IFI and First have missed an important opportunity to get these programs into the school. It has to do with the robot controller. The robot controllers as they are now are only good for robots. If the developers had expanded the platform a little more the controllers could also be data loggers and would then be usable in the class room. Our school district has equipment that is basically repackaged NI devices and a lab curriculum. If NI had the foresight to unify the new robot controller and their lab equipment the FTC would be a no brainier. One could get a school district to by the brains and sensors for the class room. Then all that would be needed for the robot is some metal, gears and motors. The program would be an easy sell.
It's not to late. With the NTX's communication ports NI could make this work.
We have classes were the teachers are not up to date having students do primitive experiments and graph the data by hand. Using a TI calculator system is not much better. With a choice of bring lab instrumentation in to the class room or running a FTC program, I would pick the class room and admin. will to. If they are the same it's a no brainier for the school admin. Our school district will be buying thousands of dollars of lab equipment this year. To bad our robot program can't be integrated into that budget. Does any body else see the value of integration?