I hope it is okay to mention this here. Please forgive my faux paus if it is not.
To help raise funds for our team this year, we are selling an extra FRC cRIO controller and accompanying cRIO modules. We have listed it for sale on eBay. The starting bid is $600, which is $150 less than the $750 it costs for an FRC team to purchase this same cRIO package directly from National Instruments.
Last year was our FRC team’s rookie year, and this was the cRIO that we used in our “benchtop robot” that we used for training our software team members on the control system last fall, before we received the cRIO in our Rookie Kit-of-Parts.
We need to raise additional money for our team this year, so we are selling our extra cRIO and the accompanying modules. They are in mint condition. Since they have only been used for a few months on our “benchtop robot,” they have never been installed on a moving robot, have never been jostled around, etc.
This cRIO would be excellent for a new rookie FRC team that wants to jump right into learning about the FRC programming and control system before the Kick-Off in January, or for a second “testing” robot for your veteran FRC team so that your software team can make progress while your hardware team is working, or in case **you want to keep last year’s FRC robot intact **for demonstration purposes, etc.
Good luck teams, and we are looking forward to the upcoming 2011 season!
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.
Team 1610 is also looking for a extra C-rio As we’ve been needing one to practice with (not to mention having a spare) so we don’t have to keep
taking the one we have out of our current robot. I’ll let our team leader
know about this.
Unless the controller and modules do not function for non FRC purposes and do not have a value on the open market higher than the discounted price available to FRC team (neither are consistent with my understanding), it seems this ebay listing is very likely going to result in a non-FRC purchase.
Randy, I wish to point out that one of our cRIOs was purchased at the full price of $1500. I choose to say that this is that cRIO. Although forum members are being generous in understanding both the sale and the posting, there would be no conflict to selling our full price unit.
I want to apologize for any error we made in listing our extra FRC cRIO for sale on eBay. We totally did not intend to do anything wrong, and we really appreciate everyone’s comments and suggestions on this issue.
I think the suggestion to instead list extra FRC parts on CD-Swap here on Chief Delphi is excellent. That makes a lot of sense. We did not know about CD-Swap when I posted the eBay listing for the cRIO last night. My sincere apologies for that.
There are already 4 bids on the cRIO on eBay at this point, so I don’t feel like it’s fair to those FRC team bidders for us to remove the cRIO from eBay at this point. However, I think it’s a good lesson for us, and everyone, going forward, to use CD-Swap instead.
And, I also want to reiterate my promise, earlier in this thread, that we will make certain that the cRIO only goes to another FRC team. Whoever wins the cRIO, we will carefully vet the buyer and make sure they are really part of another FRC team. As I mention earlier in this thread, we are deeply grateful for the FRC vendors who provide special pricing and donations to the FRC Kit of Parts. We totally agree with Bill Miller, Director of FRC, who has asked all FRC teams to make sure they only sell their spare parts to other FRC teams, to respect the FRC vendors and make sure not to undercut the non-FRC business of those vendors. That has been our intent from the beginning in the sale of this extra FRC cRIO that we have. We just didn’t find the ideal way to go about it, and for that we are very sorry.
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 thought of listing 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.
But I see now that CD-Swap exists on Chief Delphi, and that it is a better vehicle than eBay for selling spare FRC parts, because it helps ensure that only FRC teams will buy those parts. That makes a lot of sense to us.
By the way, in both our original eBay listing, and in the question response we just now posted for that item on eBay, we made it clear that we will make sure that the cRIO only goes to an actual FRC team, and that we will not sell it to anyone outside of FRC. If the winning bidder is not an FRC team, we will cancel the sale to the high bidder, and instead go to the highest bidder that is a legitimate FRC team, whom we carefully vet.
I hope the Chief Delphi community, and the wider FRC community, can forgive our faux paus in listing this cRIO for sale on eBay. We totally didn’t understand that it might be a problem. We thought carefully about it, and thought it would be sufficient that we ensure that the winner is indeed another FRC team (and include that caveat in the listing). But we see now that CD-Swap is the way to go if we sell any other FRC parts.
Mea culpa. Thanks again to the folks here on the thread for pointing out the correct way going forward to handle the sale of spare FRC parts (using CD-Swap), and we promise that we will only let the cRIO on eBay go to another legitimate FRC team, after checking out the winning bidder carefully.
I too am interested in a control system so we build a training platform to use with rookie teams (only 17 in our state this year!).
However, there this one discussion point that has not been covered in this thread. With the seller being on a sophomore team I think it is very important to point out that the control system is only included in the ROOKIE KoP! If you are expecting to receive another in the kitthis year, it will not happen. If you sell this control system you will need to gut the old robot to have a controller this year.
Lee, you raise a very good point. Yes indeed, you are correct that as a sophomore team, we won’t receive another cRIO in our Kit of Parts this year, of course.
Actually, the cRIO we are selling is our third cRIO. When we were a rookie team last year, we bought two cRIOs before the Kick-Off (one for $750 and one for $1500), so that we could have one in a “benchtop robot” used for simple software training, and a second in a “placebo bot” that our mechanical team used just to learn how to build any robot at all (we didn’t know what the challenge would be at that point, of course.)
Then, we received our third cRIO in the Rookie Kit of Parts (as expected). This meant we now have a total of three cRIOs, which is more than we need. We are selling the mint-condition cRIO that was in our “benchtop robot” that was never used in a moving robot. We are keeping our other two cRIOs, one which I think we will keep in last year’s robot so the software team has a functioning robot to try out new techniques both before and during the season, and the other for the mechanical team to use in trying out some new technologies before the season and to use in our competition robot once the season begins.
After Kick-Off, we will of course start over in writing our software and building hardware for this year, per the rules and spirit of FRC, but we will have had some good training time again to get our team all up-to-speed so we can hit the ground running at Kick-Off. I suspect we will try and keep last year’s robot running even after Kick-Off, for software testing purposes, and to demonstrate last year’s robot to sponsors, friends, and at community events, while work proceeds on this year’s competition robot.
Thanks for pointing out the usefulness of us keeping two cRIOs, though, much appreciated. We very much agree!
Hello, Foster. Thanks so much for your note. I was just about to post a message here about that. A few minutes ago, I ended the eBay auction early for our extra cRIO because the bidding had reached $780, and all FRC teams can purchase a new cRIO and modules once per year at the discounted price of $750. We didn’t want to be unfair to any teams who didn’t realize they could purchase a new one cheaper.
By the way, for any teams that would like to purchase a new cRIO and modules at the FRC discounted price of $750 once per year, go to the National Instruments FIRST page and see the note in the middle of the page that says, “Once per competition season, your team is eligible for an entire additional cRIO-FRC kit (part number 780405-01) at the discount price of $750. Call 1-866-511-6285 to check eligibility!”.
As I mentioned a couple of times earlier in this thread, we will make sure to only sell this cRIO to another FRC team, because all of us get special pricing on parts as FRC teams, and we want to be supportive of the generous FRC sponsors that provide parts at discounted or even donated pricing to FIRST. (And also, Bill Miller, Director of FRC, has previously reminded all of us on Bill’s Blog that if we sell specially priced FRC parts, we should only sell them to other FRC teams, for this same reason.)
So, we have sent a message to the winning bidder of our cRIO on eBay to find out who they are and what FRC team they are on, so we can carefully check them out to make sure they are really an FRC team. If they aren’t, no harm done, we will point out that the eBay description says we can only sell to other FRC teams, in which case we will walk down the eBay bidding list and offer it to the next lower bidders until we find a bidder that: (1) is definitely an FRC team, and (2) would still like to buy the cRIO. In any case, we won’t charge the FRC team more than $740, since they can buy a new one (per above) for $750.
Thanks so much for the interest in our extra cRIO. This will really help us, as we need to raise some more money this year. I apologize for the faux paus of listing on eBay (with a big note in both the eBay listing and the Q&A at the end of the listing saying this is only for FRC teams ) rather than listing on the CD-Swap section right here on Chief Delphi (I didn’t know about CD-Swap – my apologies!). I will definitely use CD-Swap if we have more items to sell, to easily ensure that such parts only go to other FRC teams. Thanks so much for everyone’s understanding. Have a great 2011 season!
What was the point of putting this up on ebay if you wanted only FRC teams to bid on it? You will have to pay a pretty penny for fees associated with ebay for a price that high and such.
why not just try to sell it through here and skip the fees?
I know it’s to help fund raise, but you lost some money from putting it up on ebay.
I used to do a lot of selling and buying on ebay, I got tired of all the fees and such with it.
Wow, this thread has gotten a lot of replies! As I mentioned a few times earlier in this thread, I goofed when I listed our cRIO for sale on eBay for FRC teams only. I didn’t realize that Chief Delphi had a CD-Swap area specifically for this purpose. I will definitely use CD-Swap in the future, if we have other things to sell. My sincere apologies for any confusion, and for inadvertently taking up so much off this board’s “mindspace” with this issue.
I think I’ll leave the issue here, so I don’t keep cluttering the Chief Delphi board with this. Thanks so much to everyone for your replies and understanding, and hope to see you at the competitions in 2011!
As I mentioned a few times earlier in this thread, I goofed when I listed our cRIO for sale on eBay for