The roboRIO
This is the new roboRIO, the brain of the 2015 control system.

The New rRIO - Clothes Off

Yes, it's naked. Maybe we should put a R rating on this portion of the webpage. For reference, here is a picture from one of National Instrument's press releases with it's clothes on.

The New rRIO - Clothes On

National Instruments will be providing one of these to every team in 2015 for free. Their website gives some of the specifications of the new rRIO:

NI's roboRIO Page

There are some interesting differences between the old and new control systems. First is the presence of a native CAN port. This is certain to be an improvement over the old RS-232 connected version on the last controller.

Next, you can see that the new rRIO has 10 DIO ports as opposed to 14. Team 1718's most DIO-intensive robot used 8 channels. We'd venture a guess that 10 DIO channels will be enough for the vast majority of teams. However, if you are a team that utilizes a mechanum drive with encoders on each wheel, you're only going to have 2 ports left over for other applications. 4 wheel indepedent swerve and even crab drive can put a substantial dent in your available DIO ports. We'll discuss a solution to expand that capability later.

The next obvious difference is in the 2 USB Host ports and the USB Device connection. Since the new wireless system will be USB, that leaves the ethernet port for the current Axis Cameras. In addition, tethering will likely be through USB as well. We'll be curious to see if the USB Device Host will support an external USB hub that allows additional USB devices to be connected. If it does, then this new capability will allow us to continue to expand the capabilities of the rRIO - as long as drivers are available to support the devices that teams want to connect.

The new rRIO only supports 4 relays. There is some relief since the new pneumatic system offloads the compressor relay onto the pneumatic controller module. In addition a PWM output to a speed controller can run most of the components you might power with a relay. So there's some flexibility here.

Now comes a potentially problematic difference between the rRIO and the old cRIO system. The new rRIO only has 4 analog ports. Most robots utilize a gyro. Rotational potentiometers are routinely used to measure the angle of arms, kickers, or other mechanisms. They can also be used to measure positions of hi-lo systems. Ultrasonic sonar systems can also be wired in through the analog channels. Add an acclerometer or two and you'll be wondering where you're going to plug everything in. That's where the expansion port on the center of the controller comes into play.

NI is providing an expansion breadboard that plugs into the top of the roboRIO. When team 1718 stopped by NI week in Austin, we were shown some prototype boards that contained extra PWM and DIO ports. The only issue will be interoperability with the safety system on the roboRIO.

There really isn't much more to cover about the roboRIO at this point beyond it's phsyical characteristic's.

The roboRIO Length

The roboRIO Width

The roboRIO Height

Power Distribution Length

The roboRIO Weight