ifirobotics.com Closing?

FIRST General Forum
1

I noticed this morning while searching for some certain products that IFIrobotics.com has a new note on the homepage.

Note: As of January 6, 2010 the products on this website will only be available for sale at vexrobotics.com. Please click over to the VEX site to make your purchases after that date. The relevant reference material on this site will be migrated over to the VEX Wiki over the next few weeks.

I am less interested in knowing the background behind this change, and more curious if there will be a complete transfer of product lines to the new site.

So if any informed patrons out there might know, will all of the IFI Robotics components still be available, especially victors and IFI robot controllers, after the transfer to the new website?

On that note, does anyone know if there are future plans to discontinue these products?

Mason

2

I have no idea what will actually happen.

I can guess that they will probably discontinue the Robot Controllers/control system components because they were only used heavily by FIRST which no longer uses them.

I can also guess that they will keep their Victor line because it is still used in FIRST and other robotics competitions, and other large hobby robots (think Battlebots). Plus the Victors play nice with the Vex robot stuff (plus, most non-FIRST people who need an IFI RC could probably get along with a Vex RC)

Other than that, almost everything else ifirobotics was useless to most non-First people, and things like the Kitbot, Chicklet, CMUcam2, and all of the other stuff they made specifically for FIRST will probably be discontinued.

I hope that all of the legacy material is transfered to the Vex Wiki, as it is extremely useful to me (for OCCRA, which uses the '04 control system)

I do not know what will actually happen.

3

That’s an interesting observation.

There is the fact that IFI no longer receives the business it once used to in the Robot Controllers/Control system, so it may not be worth while for IFI to maintain their site.

But VEX is its own competition, and it’ll definitely be interesting considering the rate of popularity increase of VEX.

4

I highly doubt they would cancel the Victor line of speed controllers (or any of their other lines for that matter). Those are used extensively outside of FIRST (and the Victors are within FIRST), so perhaps it’s just a renaming of products or something…

Of course, this is all speculation. Only IFI knows.

5

The IFI controller probably is nearing it’s end of life. They have been working on a new controller based on cortex micro and other enhancements.

6

It could be as simple as just trying to get all their products in one place, with one name.

Either way, no real reason to speculate; they’ll clarify their plans eventually.

7

Why can’t we do this with the game hint?

8

We can. :wink:

9

It’s probably related to this: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/120809dnbusrobots.3dfa894.html

10

looks like some of your answers are available… http://vexrobotics.com/ … look for “VEXpro” under products tab