Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen (Post 1166700)

Appreciated!

The lights were first put on the robot to look cool for the video, but it wasn't until we found an actual use for them that we were able to get the momentum to actually integrate them electrically.

We used an Arduino Uno to talk to this LED strip (mentioned above). The interface between the cRio and the LED strip were some of the relay outputs on the sidecar. Specifically, there was one relay output (two bits) to run the lights for our co-op assist feature, and another for the fancy lights that fired when we picked up or shot a ball.

At championship, we added a switch to tell when the stinger was touching the ground, and wired that directly into the Arduino, which was simpler and makes a lot of sense, because we weren't doing anything else with that data.

Cheap additional processors like the Arduino hold a lot of promise for enhancing the possibilities for sensors on these robots that might have been limited by the number of inputs in a sidecar. I know that we explored some redundancy in our sensing this year, and that can exhaust the digital and analog input ports very quickly. A good off season project might be to explore interfacing something like the Ethernet Arduino with the cRio in order to fully exploit these possibilities.

Originally Posted by mikets (Post 1164725)

I am not familiar with the power interface of electroluminescent wire but it seems it is powered by high AC voltage (90-120V 1000Hz) so it needs a power controller. If you manage to interface 12V DC to this power controller, it may be feasible. Searching the Internet, it looks like they sell these with a power controller that can take AAA batteries. So in theory, you could DC-DC convert 12V to whatever battery voltage the power controller uses.

Relay is mechanical, since we are trying to play with pulse width modulation on the RGB lights, relay has a limit of how fast you can turn the light on and off. BTW, in case you worry about whether the solenoid channel can power the LED lights, each solenoid channel can source up to 0.75A current, an LED light strip generally consumes about 100mA.

Originally Posted by AlexH (Post 1166757)

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/...ight-strip-led

they are super bright and can plug into the extra pwm slots on the digital sidecar.

Originally Posted by Tom Line (Post 1170122)

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

Originally Posted by Tom Line (Post 1170122)

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

Originally Posted by Tom Line (Post 1170122)

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

Originally Posted by Jeff Waegelin (Post 1170329)

We used very similar LED strips this year and last. We've generally run them directly off of the Power Distribution Board, or through a Spike if we wanted to be able to trigger them on or off.

Originally Posted by Tom Line (Post 1170355)

That's the way we started doing it, but this year they made a nice change that lets you runs loads off the solenoid board. I was very happy to save the wiring and weight of a spike.

Originally Posted by Tom Line (Post 1170122)

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W.

Originally Posted by Meshbeard (Post 1164308)