Money

[Tim Vanderhoek <vanderh@ecf.utoronto.ca>]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2000 at 11:41:19PM -0500, Joyce Poon wrote:
>
> 	I don't really care how much you spend.  I trust your good
> judgement.  Moreover, when it comes to school stuff, I don't really mind
> spending whatever amt necessary.  I don't care whether we end up with an
> expensive robot or a cheap one as long as it works and performs well.  

cheap == good, expensive == bad.  Paul Leventis's tag robot cost
nearly $700.  That is disgusting.  That is a disgrace to the robot
constructor.  _Anyone_ can build a good robot for a gazillion dollars.
Spending that much money represents poor research, poor planning, and
probably poor initial design.  I consider cost to be near design
driver status.  $700 is a huge embarrasment.  Not to mention a huge
waste.  I have __far__ better things to do with the $333 that would
cost than to spend it on a throw-away robot....  That would be the new
hard disk my computer needs (X 3).

Not including design manuals and kit deposits, we're at about $90.
The $20 for motors plus another $10 for whatever else Cindy bought
today makes that $130.  Except for poof mistakes, I'll need to buy no
more than $5 more.  Joyce will need more stuff...I hope we'll be able
to keep that under $50 (we have to figure-out a more efficient way to
use A/D converters for that to happen).  The big variable is what
Cindy has to buy yet.


> recognizing that we are not going anywhere).  I know Tim will
> probably argue (or interject or add) that the prog will figure it out and
> we won't really slip anyway, but I thought you might want to keep this in

Under many conditions the computer can intuit it.  There is still a
penalty invoked --- the computer can only guess at _when_ the wheels
started slipping.


-- 
Signature withheld by request of author.