It would be great if Vex could make more powerful motors. Especially if they had direct feedback so that you could control them much more accurately.
Titan 103
Ask and you shall receive (partially anyway). New larger motors with twice the torque of the current motors were shown at World Championships. They run at 100 RPM with a more-robust gearhead.
OMG. Want.
Speaking of stuff shown, I was not able to watch the end of the finals and closing speeches, had to go to my sisters musical, so I’m wondering if anybody can post a summary of any new products they announced or clarified.
Thanks
They didn’t talk about anything. We noticed that several products were already packaged in the vex store shelves - the power expander for sure, and I think the high-strength chain as well.
I wonder when the wi-fi kit will be released. It looks like crystals will be illegal next year, at least at the larger competitions.
I asked about the transition plan from the older controller to the new ones a couple of months ago. I was told that the 2009-2010 would be transitional, with some events using Vex Net and some using crystals, and that in 2010-2011 it would go to all Vex Net. I hope they use Vex Net at the big tournaments so they can run more fields next to each other. At worlds we could have multiple divisions running next to each other at the same time. How about 400 teams divided up into eight divisions of 50, with the winners of each division going into Finals quarterfinal matches. Awesome!
As for new products, I made a couple of notes here: https://vexforum.com/showpost.php?p=76811&postcount=13
Thanks Rick that post in the other thread was really helpful.
I thought someone at the VEX store had said that they would announce when the VEXnet upgrade would be available and the pricing, but no one even mentioned it.
I saw John V-Neun after the finals and asked him how come they didn’t announce any information about the new products at the World championships this year. He said the reason that they didn’t say anything was that they had learned their lesson last year. They had announced all of those new products last year and then they ran into developemental problems. It took longer to develope the products and everyone kept asking when they would be coming out.
I do know that they have the new High Strength Chain and Spockets ready for sale. They were going to start selling them late Saturday, but they didn’t get a chance to add them to the website. They told me that the High Strength Chain and Sprockets should available early this week and the price should be $39.99.
They also told me that the Power Expander should be available in 2 or 3 weeks and the LCD would be another couple of months.
They are still working on the High Strength Motors. I was told that there was a problem with the metal gears breaking so they had to keep working with the factory in China to get the metal right.
This is all of the information that I have.
So what will the Vexnet cost anyway. I’m guessing it will be about $75-100. You figure more than the programming hardware but less than a microcontroller.
Must Have!
I hope it isn’t that much, you can get wireless usb network cards for $10-20. I doubt these things are going to be N stardard, probably A, B or G at most.
From the pictures, there is a component that replaces the battery compartment on the transmitter, and another that plugs into the controller and replaces the yellow receivers. These are all low-production-volume parts (unlike commercial WiFi components) and will cost more. I’m guessing the complete upgrade kit will cost more like $150. What I would really like to find out is the cost of the Vex 2 and Vex Pro. My guess is $200 and $300 respectively – anyone else want to guess?
I’ll hope instead of guess. I hope they’ll lower the old one to $100 (or get rid of it), put the new one at $150 and I think your $300 for the top end one is pretty accurate.
I’ll be a sad panda, because I don’t think I’ll be able to justify getting vexnet at all. I have 2 brains and 3 controllers 
To do a complete overhaul of new brain, new transmitter, and new software (we have EasyCv2, which is showing its limits), I’m imagining a cost closer to $400 (ouch!). I hope I’m wrong.
I’m hoping to get away with one complete overhaul for a competition robot and get by with the old stuff for prototype/practice robots.
If the upgrade set is cheap enough (<$100), it might be worth a couple upgrades to have more competition teams.