Howdy, folks!
We at NI are excited to follow up REV’s announcement with some further details on what you can expect from the roboRIO 2.0. As part of NI’s renewed commitment to FIRST, we wanted to provide an updated roboRIO that would better meet the needs of teams today while not being a dramatic departure from the roboRIO you all know and love (I hope!). Our key priority was resolving what we call ‘match-breakers’—anything that forces a team to miss a match, or be bypassed in a match, or have a sad robot sit there for a match. We’re making a few key improvements to help more teams get to more of their matches.
- Adding an SD card slot
We’ve replaced the USB cable retention screws with a real, actual, functional SD card slot. The goal of adding an SD card slot is to not only provide more memory onboard, but also reduce the number of teams who make a small code change and accidentally corrupt the code onboard the roboRIO. Ideally, teams can keep a “known good” version of code on an SD card and test new code directly on the SD card in the roboRIO 2.0. If something goes wrong and your new code is crashing, you can swap the SD cards, restart the roboRIO 2.0, and be ready to compete in your match in approximately 23 seconds.
- Selective brownout voltage setpoint
A FIRST Robotics Competition robot may reboot due to loose connections or when the battery voltage droops to ~4.5V due to high current use. To prevent a voltage-based reboot, the roboRIO implements a brownout feature where non-essential loads such as motors are disabled — allowing the battery voltage to recover and avoid getting the voltage low enough to cause a reboot. RoboRIO 1.0 used a fixed brownout threshold of 7V – which has worked quite well. Team feedback indicated interest in the ability to customize the voltage threshold. For roboRIO 2.0, we’ve made the brownout voltage setpoint configurable to let teams adopt different brownout strategies at different points in a match, to adapt to different driving styles, and to adjust for battery conditions.
- Increased memory, processor speed, and RAM
We’ve updated all the internals to keep up with the incredible software FIRST Robotics Competition teams are designing, and to set the roboRIO 2.0 to be an asset to teams for years to come.
If you’ve got questions, comments, or concerns, please reach out via the support boards at www.ni.com/frc!