[FRC Blog] New 2015 FRC controller from National Instruments

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by craigboez

There definitely appears to be an IDE style connector in the middle of the board. What functionality could that provide that wouldn't be better suited for a CAN or similar digital connection? Seems like those big and bulky ribbon cables are relics of the past. Backwards compatibility?

I wonder if something locks into it without a cable like a expansion card.

[Whippet]

That PCB is green. Green is a combination of yellow and blue. Water is typically depicted as being blue. Clearly, this signifies a water game.

[Michael Hill]

Here's my opinion so far

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Here's my opinion so far

Didn't CTRE say they were making a external solenoid controller? I think they may be analog inputs.

[Michael Hill]

Upon second look, those aren't potentiometers (the silk screen threw me off). I think they're push button switches. I should really learn to count.

[apples000]

28 i/o
That puts us at 7 analog, 7 relay, 7 dio, 7 pwm...
That's not enough for some teams, so I think that the large ide cable thing is a bunch more io.
Also, it the pin pitch is 0.1", the board is 5 inches deep, and either 5" or 5.25" wide so its pretty small...

[Michael Hill]

I just want to know what that 132-ball csBGA is going to be for. I'm guessing a DSP. It's got a tiny tiny 0.5 mm pin pitch on those balls.

[Michael Hill]

The 96-ball footprint could be DDR2 or DDR3 memory. Not sure what else comes in that package.

[apples000]

If what somebody told me at the championship is true, the memory/cpu are in one device. Here's my post from another thread about what I heard. The guy wasn't a part of NI/FIRST so I don't know if what he said was speculation or the truth, but he seemed pretty knowledgeable about FRC electronics.

I don't know how true this is, but I've heard from somebody at CMP that the controller will have an ARM9 based SoC with similar amounts of RAM as the cRIO-II, and that there will be more I/O than the 3 pin connectors on the pcb they showed us, either on another part of the main controller, or on a separate breakout board, and that it will probably work with a modified version of WPILib.

I was told what the person thought would be the CPU's part number, but I'm not sure if I remember it properly. I think that it's mcimx25?

[Peter Johnson]

Joe Ross sent me a link to this new cRIO, looks to me like a likely basis for the new FRC controller (although we'll find out for sure tomorrow!).

• Increased performance with a 667 MHz dual-core ARM® Cortex™--A9 processor and Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA
• Powerful, open platform available through a Linux-based, real-time operating system
• Extended operating temperature range of -40 to 70 °C
• Flexible, existing C/C++ code that can be reused on the processor with support for the Eclipse Development Environment, or program in NI LabVIEW system design software

http://www.ni.com/crio-9068/

More info on NI's real time Linux: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/14626/

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by Peter Johnson

Joe Ross sent me a link to this new cRIO, looks to me like a likely basis for the new FRC controller (although we'll find out for sure tomorrow!).

• Extended operating temperature range of -40 to 70 °C
  

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Oh Boy: A dry ice game!! Who needs regolith?

[Michael Hill]

Ya, you could be right. The controller had to speak to the pneumatic controller somehow. Was that CAN-based? (I'm on my phone right now and can't look stuff up)

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Ya, you could be right. The controller had to speak to the pneumatic controller somehow. Was that CAN-based? (I'm on my phone right now and can't look stuff up)

yup http://i.imgur.com/276hmyB.jpg

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Here's my opinion so far

I think the Ethernet jack is to the right of the one you specified. I could be wrong (and frequently am...)

And USB! Hooray!

Not sure if there would be 20 PWMs and no DIO or Relay ports though.

Looks a lot like the footprint of the IFI controller, eh?

[joelg236]

Nobody has talked about form factor. Anyone have any idea about the size?