It affects them as they were previously reliant on hardware (camera and processor + software) sales. While they are probably getting licensing fees for each new piece of hardware using their software, it’s a different focus and business model than every other season they have been in business.
It’s not a bad thing, probably affects them in a good way. But in my mind it means I won’t be buying any physical hardware cameras from limelight anymore and supply our own to use with the MRC as their blurb talks about. When 2027 hits what happens to the old limelight hardware? Effectively useless or there’s still a market for a dedicated off board vision processor/pipeline? Over the next two seasons teams will still need a solution so do they buy new hardware knowing it might be pointless two seasons from now or it will still be worth the price down the road?
Lots of questions that I don’t think anyone but Limelight will be able to answer as they get further along in the process or once it’s in the hands of beta testers and we see how many pipelines the new board can handle simultaneously on a real robot also doing other stuff besides vision.
Even with the new control system, I don’t see coprocessor vision processing going away. There are just so many uses for cameras that will exceed even this new board’s capabilities. However, not every team will need to buy a coprocessor to do some sort of vision processing.
From what I read there is a radio embedded with the controller, this makes me wonder why they have a radio from VIViD now instead of making it a requirement for the controller, unless the wireless in the controller is for FTC use only.
The intent of the integrated radio is primarily for FTC use and things like software deployment which are shorter range and lower speed. The robot controller is often buried in the robot, which particularly in FRC means it’s surrounded by metal and motors, not a good environment for quality wireless at FRC speeds and ranges.
If you just want synchronized start and perhaps some metadata and don’t want to manage actual robot control through it, you could reasonably achieve that with a 4-port router (which are popular to have anyway for the scoring network).
Adding streaming itself is also not particularly difficult either; many places do just fine with a laptop connected to both the scoring network and the greater Internet, a GoPro on a stand, and 10 minutes in OBS – many regions actually stream their league meets as a result.
Yah. This would be what it looks like. pretty similar from what VEX Field Control had.
The only drawback would be requirement to use a device with BOTH wireless and LAN ethernet for DS such as REV Driver Hub or USB ethernet adapter on phone setup.
An appliance, like a newer Driver Hub, could simply be a hardware extension of my proposed RPi5-based DS image. Basically, take an RPi5 (or maybe CM5), put in a case with a small touchscreen (like the Rev DH today), and run the official DS image. Doing so can actually increase what’s in common between FRC and FTC, and open the door for multiple DH-like solutions from different vendors, all built around the common core components of a Pi5/CM5 and official pre-built DS image.
I don’t want FTC to allow diverse solutions to event-critical technology like driver stations.
From a program perspective, I want the core event controls to be operable and troubleshootable by a highschooler. An entire FTC league event should only require approximately two mature adults for YPP - all technical responsibilities should be able to be run by highschool or otherwise non-expert volunteers. Diverse driverstations runs counter to that vision.
That’s a program I can use my existing resources to expand in my community.
I haven’t seen anything that says that. For all we know (and what I assume) is that FIRST is paying a license to put some certain limelight software on the new controller so it’s plug and play.
I’m not sure if you missed the main point, or if we just have notably different opinions. My main point was that if you come up with a single Driver Station software image based on a RPi5 hardware platform, you could either go the route of connecting to RPi5 to a nice monitor, controllers, keyboard, etc., or you could have a dedicated, portable hardware device like a Driver Hub. It would be the same image, though, as it’s essentially running the same hardware and operating system, just in different form factors.
Personally, I believe in the power of the open market, and would like to see different vendors enabled to provide solutions around that common core infrastructure. Perhaps one chooses a higher resolution screen, another has better anti-glare coating, or one has some nice ergonomic touches, etc. But if you’d prefer, you could still have an “official” Driver Hub for certain use cases.
The main point was that you could reduce complexity by having an officially supported core platform, suggested to be based on Raspberry Pi 5 and Linux, rather than an “everything can and will go wrong / be different” generic Windows laptop support. The more we can get valuable volunteer hours working on innovative, helpful solutions, instead of troubleshooting oddball Windows issue, the better, at least in my book.
FTC has (edit: lol, see below, I thought Rev was the only legal one) a single hardware solution and shouldn’t be diversified. That’s what I thought we were talking about earlier?
FRC has a “good luck mate” windows laptop open specification. I’m totally on board with the hardware spec in FRC being no spec, because it’s an unlimited class (to borrow a motor racing term), with adults at each competition who expect to help teams with wild problems. Narrowing this to a set of proscribed RPi based hardware solutions doesn’t sound like an improvement to me, but opening the ds to run on Linux would be a nice to have.
(It’s a “nice to have” because the HID input situation for Linux is much, much worse than Windows as discussed earlier in the thread - so, the spec rpi might work with a spec gamepad, but as soon as teams bring other hardware, multiple joysticks, etc it all goes off the rails with esoteric Linux problems. Removing windows support is a nonstarter.)
Right now FTC has 7 hardware solutions (6 models of android phone and the REV driver hub).
I think what I’d be interested in is having a known compatible hardware solution like the driver hub but also be able to open up other options like a laptop for teams. Teams that are less savvy can use the known compatible hardware solution which is likely going to have more technical support at events and teams that are more experienced can do something more inline with what FRC is doing with the knowledge that there might be less technical support at events if you are using something else (kinda like using one of the less popular programming languages).
It’d be nice if we could use the laptop we are already using to program the robot to drive the robot.
There’s no guarantee the driver station stands are laptop-friendly either. I’ve only started volunteering at FTC events this year but as far as I know they aren’t standardized at all - I’ve seen four different types of stands at three different venues this year.
I’ve seen everything from folding stools to full tables to milwaukee packouts. I also wish this was a bit more standardized. *Looks at those AndyMark FTC driver tables *
There is a minimum of 18" from the FTC field wall to the driver station per the field setup guide. The FRC maximum operator console depth is 14". I imagine any laptop an FRC team was using would also be able to fit in the area between the field and the drivers even if it has to reside on the floor.
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