Rumor says that FRC teams will have to work with some other programmable controller than the NI-CompactRIO starting 2015.
What would be your wished features for a new controller?
It’s not just rumor, and quite a few details are already known…
Cost effective! Many teams including ours cannot shell out almost $1000 for cRIO package for second robot.
With the FRC discount, you should only be spending $525 (plus shipping) on a cRIO:
I just hope they keep some backwards compatibility with the current cRio, so teams can use the cRio as a testing board or on a practice robot!
I think that they are talking about the system as a whole. A cRIO, Power Distribution Board and Dlink cost $800 that is not including any other hardware like motor controllers.
My team in the past has taken the electronics board off our competition robot and replaced it at competition as the 30 lbs of cots. It is a good way to save a chunk of money but it can be problematic.
Teams receive a new PDB (as well as digital sidecar and breakout boards) each year. The radios are not necessarily received every year, but we’ve received radios 3 out of the 5 years we’ve had the cRIO control system.
In addition, any cheap wireless router will give you the connectivity you need to run the robot. They can be had online for under $20.