Is it just my imagination or is the 2005-2006 KOP gearbox no longer available from IFI? I looked today and do not see it listed anywhere. We have one left from last year that may now be obsolete for this year’s competition.
Indeed, I can’t find it anywhere either.
Equally interesting is the Kitbot page, where the frame is not available–it says “Check back after 1/8/07” instead. Could we be receiving a new frame and/or transmission?
Put that together with Dave Lavery’s quote and I guess we are in for some big changes.
Hrm begs the question and yet a retirocal one at that - Has Andy Mark partnered with FIRST in such a way to provide some part in the kit for '07 that could limit the availabilityof those parts from teams that would go purchase it themselves or any other vender for that matter?
Hmmm. Daves comment had we worried about ordering frame and transmission parts to play with before the season. Now that the IFI frame and transmission are there I am not to eager to go out and buy several hundred dollars of parts.
Offtopic, the IFI version 2 traction wheels should be out in the next few days.
Oh man… maybe new motors?
I would say MagMotors, but they are sooo heavy, among other things.
It would be nice to have new motors… the robot keeps getting heavier, the game keeps getting a bit more demanding, so with all this traction the robots are needing to get slower.
I would be happy to see some new stuff.
That said, I’m not reading into what IFI’s pages say. I’d rather be surprised, than dissapointed.
Or they could be just protecting us from ourselves for a while.
To add to the rampant speculation that the few weeks before build season brings on – the serial (programming) cables on the IFI site also say to check back after kickoff. Could we be switching to USB?
After several threads about USB and Serial programming i basically concluded that they would stick with serial. But now, maybe. Just maybe we will have USB this year.
The whole control system (radio modems, Robot Controller, and Operator Interface) all say this as well; maybe it is changing?
All the motors are still listed for sale; but the CMUCAM, pneumatic storage tanks, and fuse panels all say to check back. Maybe a new fuse panel, a newer CMUCAM, or pneumatics are on the way?
I sure hope so! A USB program port sounds great!
I really hope FIRST doesnt limit teams to using IFI or AndyMark parts. That would be terrible.
I dont see that happening. That wouldnt be cool at all.
I dont think there is a new CMUCam, so it could be that they just dont have nay of thsoe right now.
Either do I… I’m just putting it out there. FVC can only use IFI parts. FLL can only use Lego parts… what next?
Rumor is there’s a new kitbot and trannies this year.
I noticed the changes to the IFI web site a day or so ago while checking to see if the new IFI wheels had been released yet. What puzzles me is that all of the “Out of Stock - No More This Year” items have been changed to “Check back after 1/8/07” except for the breaker panel, the camera, and the servos. I wonder what this means? I sure hope the breaker panel isn’t going away. It is just so much cleaner to use than all of the separate terminal and fuse blocks even if it is optional and we have to buy it. I wouldn’t be surprized if the camera was upgraded again this year and they went to a different model servo. I just find it odd that in all the locations on the IFI web site these 3 items are distinctly different than everything else.
I’ve also heard that same rumor, at least in the transmission department. Given FIRST’s preference to save money where they can, it seems entirely plausible that FIRST found a cheaper way of going about it. Considering that AndyMark was able to undercut IFI’s street price on similar single-speed transmissions by a full third, I put some stock in this idea. (There are dozens of other factors here that I’m ignoring, mind you.)
Its very possible that they are usingAndyMark or other cheaper solution. If each team gets 2 of them, there are atleast 1000 teamd and they can make them $50 cheaper that is alot of money.
2x50x1000 = 100,000
It could just be a minor modification to the kitbot and/or KoP transmissions, I’m not freaking out about anything
If they are drastically changing the KOP gearbox I would be surprised. The tooling that they would need to make those would be very expensive and couldn’t possibly be worn out after only two years of use. Most of the cost of those gear boxes was already invested, so cost reducing them would be either stupid or very hard.
Of course there tooling could have a shorter life time than I thought but it seems silly to buy tooling to make only 4000 or so of an item.
Just a thought