[Eug-lug] FIRST Robotics competitions

[Allen Brown]

The high schools local to Corvallis and Eugene are competing in
FIRST Robotics.  The regional competition is in Portland next
weekend and I assume all local teams are going to that competition.
The dates are Feb 28, 29 and March 1. It is at the Memorial
Coliseum (next to the Rose Garden).

This event is open to the public.  It is pretty cool and I
encourage you all to attend.

The robots are designed and programmed by the students.  (mostly)
Adult mentors, such as myself, contribute.

What does this have to do with Linux and Open Source?  Today,
not a whole lot.  I open source my team's software.
(CVHS team 955)
http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/first/simulator/

In general the FIRST organization is not friendly to open source.
They require us to use specific products, locking us in to
single vendors with proprietary products of low quality.

I am trying to break that hold in a small way.  My simulator
is specifically designed to run on Linux, altho it can be run
anywhere.  A bigger step would be to be able to compile, download
and debug from a Linux host.  We know how to compile.  But without
the download step, that is not very useful.

I plan to attempt to reverse engineer the protocol of the loader
product soon.  And also the protocols of a couple of debug tools.

Anyway, the point of this posting is to invite you all to attend
if you can.  And if you can afford time, you can volunteer as
mentors for a team near you.  Maybe we can all inject a little
more open source into the world.
-- 
Allen Brown  abrown at peak.org  http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/
   You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
   --- Dean Martin