MSC and FIRST/Banner Sensors

Technical Technical Discussion
1

A fun e-mail blast from FIRST today. . .

MSC and FIRST!
FIRST is pleased to announce a partnership with MSC that we hope will be of great benefit to our teams this year. MSC is one of the largest industrial supply catalog companies. Paid teams will be shipped Microsoft Visual Studio NET, Filemaker Pro 6.0, and Banner sensors, along with the MSC 2002/2003 Big Book, and an MSC cd. Shipping started on December 12, 2002 - if you are a paid team you can expect your package soon!

Please visit the MSC website at www.mscdirect.com!

So, since MSC carries considerably more varied product than SPI, can we expect to be limited in price or selection again this season?

MSC carries the gamut from sprockets to raw material to full-blown HVAC equipment and it seems like if it were all available to teams in unlimited quantities, that level-playing field notion would start to slip away.

Still, they are a much larger supplier than SPI, and hopefully a lot of the problems teams have encountered in the past will not happen again.

Also of note, the sensors are being sent to us early. Not much earlier, of course, but that does seems a bit interesting, seeing as they were included in last year’s kit with everything else.

What could this indicate? It may mean that FIRST is giving teams; rookies, particularly, an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the how the sensors work (with the EduRobot, possibly) before kick-off.

That means, of course, that they could play an integral role in this year’s game, which could lend itself to the possibility of some level of automation.

Ack!

2

I like the variety MSC has and suspect that we will be limited to certain pages or a certain budget for materials.

The only problem is that for those of us in the West there are only two offices, both of which are about a 10 hour drive from LA. That means that unlike many teams in the East, we MUST use their shipping department. Hopefully it will be better organized than SPI’s. If I request overnight shipment, it had better be here before I can drive to Reno and back. Assuming I make their deadline for same day ship of course. On the other hand, if I’m that desperate maybe there are other problems too.

Personally I would have prefered Mcmaster-Carr, but this isn’t too bad. If they’re as big as McMaster then they won’t have any problems handling our piddly little orders. :smiley:

The enhanced sensor capabilities are good news too. I think I’ll go borrow the Procurement guy’s Banner catalog and go drool a bit. Then I’ll go figure out how to get them working on EDUbot.

3

This is big news. I have an MSC book on my desk and it is HUGE! It is about the size of the SPI catolog x 20 (big book with really thin pages).

This is exciting.

*Originally posted by M. Krass *
**…it seems like if it were all available to teams in unlimited quantities, that level-playing field notion would start to slip away.
**

Good point, but there is another way to look at that.

Sure, if we can buy anything we want out of this book (which I doubt), the bigger teams will be able to bug more stuff than the teams with less money. However, now both of these teams at least have the opportunity to buy the part, where before the bigger team used other resources (mainly engineering and fabrication expertise) to create the part they needed.

For example… I see that MSC sells SMC-brand pneumatic grippers. Pneumatic grippers are pretty expensive ($200+). In the past, if a team wanted a gripper, then they had to design it. Now they can buy one (a limited design, but it is there). The team with more resources would end up designing and fabricating one while a team without the resources would just do without.

I’m not sure… but this change may actually even the playing field more.

We shall see… I really don’t know right now.

Andy B.

4

*Originally posted by Andy Baker *
**I’m not sure… but this change may actually even the playing field more.
**

I agree with Andy B. For years a team with a lot of expertise in manufacturing has had an inherent advantage over those without. Now it’s a trade, aquire the expertise or aquire the part. Anybody can buy a part, not everyone can make it.

I can also see the return of the dreaded BOM and spending limits in the offing. That will complicate the equation more. Do I buy it almost ready made and go over budget, or do I spend precious time and resources to make it?

Just one more engineering judgement to make.

Fun isn’t it?

5

WHOA! VS.NET??? Really? That’s awesome.

6

I agree with Andy. Greater availability of stock parts can level the field. In the past, there were teams that were making their own gears. Personally, I like being able to order them.

You are never going to completely level the field when you are competing with the big teams with the big budgets and the excellent resources. I think it is more important that the teams with the small budgets and the limited expertise can get the parts required to create a mobile base. And things like sprockets, gears, keyed shaft, and other items make that more obtainable.

A level field is like a wheel that rolls without slipping, a frictionless surface, and many of those other assumptions we learned to automatically write down at the begining of every dynamics problem…

7

*Originally posted by Norm M. *
**I agree with Andy. Greater availability of stock parts can level the field. In the past, there were teams that were making their own gears. Personally, I like being able to order them.
**

Well, of course.

But, what falls within the ‘stock parts’ category? Sprockets, gears, chain, raw materials, etc. . .

what about that HVAC stuff? Hydraulic components? Pneumatics components? Air motors? AC Motors?

Surely, there needs to be some limit. Having access to MSC’s ability to stock more items is definitely a major improvement over SPI, but the amount of stuff available is almost overwhelming.

My concern would be in, say, buying additional motors. A financially solvent team could buy tons of motors for use on their robot. A money-strapped team could not, and could not likely manufacture them out of raw materials. So, is that still a level playing field?

Of course, I realize that there’s likely a limit on motor and pneumatics usage. I’m just curious as to how far the limits will go.

8

*Originally posted by rbayer *
**WHOA! VS.NET??? Really? That’s awesome. **

yes, i’ve heard this too, but what version of VS.NET are we getting? the C++ part, or the other stuff (which i don’t really know about, cause i haven’t ever used it). i’ve heard we’re getting the other stuff, but hey, VS.NET will at least be fun to play with :p.

9

I also agree with Andy B that allowing anything to be purchased will level the playing field. But I also think that limiting the budget that teams can spend in the catalog will offset that leveling effect.

Please don’t take this as bragging - it is just a fact that my team (111) can make quite a few things out of raw materials. We have all the equipment and plenty of expertise to design many things very quickly. Trust me, the only thing that limits WildStang is the weight restriction. We can design around any cost restriction and get a huge advantage over inexperienced teams.

10

Hmm. An interesting point.

But what if there were pricing restrictions that put a limit on the total you could spend - and that total was a combination of purchased parts and “cost of production” of parts made from raw materials (which could be calculated by the amount of time required to produce, multiplied by some pre-defined $xx dollars/hour figure for machinist’s time).

If that were done, then the advantages enjoyed by teams with full machine shops would be reduced to a more level playing field (and it would probably drive certain very-well equipped teams nuts! :slight_smile: ).

But on the other hand, do we really care all that much if some teams have more production capability or access to more machinists or more mentors or more students than other teams? Do we really need to go to extraordinary lengths to level the playing field completely and make the competition “totally fair?” One of the (many) purposes of FIRST is to expose students to some of the real-world practices to professional engineering. In the real world, companies virtually always have certain capabilities that are not shared by their competitors, which they exploit to their advantage. Why should this competition be any different? (as Momma Lavery always told me when I was a young 'un, “no one ever said that life was fair.”)

-dave

Y = AX^2 + BX + C

11

*Originally posted by Raul *
**I also agree with Andy B that allowing anything to be purchased will level the playing field. **

This is interesting, since Raul is the one who made the most sense with this line of thought at the Ypsilanti Forum this past summer. Raul knows that it was his idea first while myself and others just adopted his line of thinking.

Then he goes and post that he agrees with me… ha! It was his idea in the first place, and he didn’t even say anything!

This goes to show how much of a class act Raul is. Definitely a gracious guy who many of us admire.

Andy B.

12

Why do you think they’re giving us VS.NET? To make dashboard programs or server scripts for our webpages? I find it hard to explain…

*Originally posted by Ian W. *
**yes, i’ve heard this too, but what version of VS.NET are we getting? the C++ part, or the other stuff (which i don’t really know about, cause i haven’t ever used it). i’ve heard we’re getting the other stuff, but hey, VS.NET will at least be fun to play with :p. **

Well, if they say we’re getting VS.net, I guess we’re getting the whole thing. Else they’d name the parts, like Visual Basic .NET

13

*Originally posted by Suneet *
**Why do you think they’re giving us VS.NET? To make dashboard programs or server scripts for our webpages? I find it hard to explain…

Well, if they say we’re getting VS.net, I guess we’re getting the whole thing. Else they’d name the parts, like Visual Basic .NET **

yes, i also find it hard to find reason for getting VS.NET, and hence, find it harder to see why we would get the whole thing (why we’re getting anything in the first place will remain a mystery forever, it would seem :p). i mean, it’s all lovely and such that we’re getting VS.NET, but I would really like to know why…

14

*Originally posted by Ian W. *
**i mean, it’s all lovely and such that we’re getting VS.NET, but I would really like to know why… **

It’s just a guess, but I think MS is just trying to get us hooked on their products. Given the insane quantity and insane profit margins (80% on Windows), it will cost them almost nothing to donate a few hundred copies. On the other hand, if they manage to get us hooked on their products so we end up buying large numbers of licenses later in life, it will pay off big-time. This is the reason why MS has such an amazing college-student discount program–I got VC++ 6.0 pro, which is normally $400+ for $80 by faxing them my college ID even though I wasn’t even technically “in” college!

Since I’m one of the only ones on my team that knows any of the languages in VS.net (C/C++, VB, etc) I’m hoping there isn’t going to be anything about the game that requires it as I would have to teach high-power languages to the rest of the team in addition to PBASIC. On the other hand, if there’s some kind of new programming award, I would be very happy…

15

*Originally posted by rbayer *
It’s just a guess, but I think MS is just trying to get us hooked on their products. Given the insane quantity and insane profit margins (80% on Windows), it will cost them almost nothing to donate a few hundred copies. On the other hand, if they manage to get us hooked on their products so we end up buying large numbers of licenses later in life, it will pay off big-time.

Yes, in the real world thats called advertising.

Heres a free sample, if you like it buy more and products like it. Its how marketing departments work. Kinda like autodesk with inventor ;)****

16

VS.NET is incredibly resource intensive. It is unusable on my PII 300 Mhz machine, I use mainly notepad and make files to code for the .NET framework.

The framework software development kit (SDK) is a free download from microsoft and includes command line compilers for all languages. It also includes WSDL.exe and ILDASM.exe. ILDASM is the CLR disassembler and WSDL is a tool that generates a proxy class for you to consume a SOAP-based web service. VS.NET is a very nice interface to the tools in the SDK, with lots of enhancements.

VS.NET includes everything, managed C++, C#, and VB.NET. Last time I checked there is nothing in the framework classes that lets you open a serial port, so you’ll still have to code against some other DLL or the Win32 API. I honestly don’t think its worth it. Code written using VS.NET or the SDK will only run on a windows machine with the .NET framework installed (20 MB download).

You can use SourceSafe to manage all of your project documents. That includes ALL documents, not just programming stuff. ASP.NET is a nice change from ASP, but there are not a lot of commercial hosting companies supporting it.

17

I don’t really think that this will be any different from Small Parts. I’ve never seen the MSC catalog, but I would venture to guess that with all the different things they sell, FIRST would put out a list of thing that they would allow us to buy from them.

18

On Friday when I spoke to a FIRST rep, I asked if we would be allowed to choose anything from the MSC catalog or if we would be limited to certain items or if we would be limited by cost. They said they had not yet fully decided on this and that I would have to wait until Kickoff to find out. :frowning:

19

It would be pretty painful if, for example, they put limits on the types of metal we can use. You can use 6 in. diameter Al from small parts if you want to, while otherwise you’re limited to the cross section. They might have to do that, though, if MSC is too extensive. With the change in catalogs, I think we can expect significant changes in the additional hardware list and rules.

My 2¢

20

Please don’t take this as bragging - it is just a fact that my team (111) can make quite a few things out of raw materials. We have all the equipment and plenty of expertise to design many things very quickly. Trust me, the only thing that limits WildStang is the weight restriction. We can design around any cost restriction and get a huge advantage over inexperienced teams.

I like the idea of limiting what you can get from MSC, simply because you are likely to have some things designed/built out of pre-packaged parts that are going to be too difficult for FIRST to maintain order through simple rules. Remember the file cards and tape measures last year.

I also like the idea of having a BOM and a total spending limit. Not in the interest of leveling the playing field, but in the interest of making the competition a little more “real world” by providing some cost constraints.I would also recommend that the limits be applied to everything on the robot: extra wheels, extra speed controllers, basic raw materials, etc.

Clearly, some teams can bypass limits by buying raw materials and making things out of them rather than buying the finished part. However, those teams have to allocate resources to these tasks rather than to other, potentially higher priority, tasks.

This also provides an incentive for teams to improve their fabrication resources. Since we’ve joined FIRST, we have, year by year, increased our machine shop capabilities with strategic tool purchases. Maybe teams that have just a drill press and a band saw will have the incentive to go out into the community and form a partnership with a local machine shop.

I guess we will find out in a couple of days exactly how this thing is going to be managed.
Andrew
Team 356