Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

I agree that overcomplicating things would be a bad idea. Even better would be to make a glove full of pots so you can control your robot by moving your hand around! That's what I'd call magic!

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

It's been done... a few times. I'd assert it's not the most intuitive control system. Something about how mapping X input into Y output isn't obvious to a casual observer.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

From my experience as a driver for 2 years on 842, the pistol grip controller was extremely intuitive. I had been practicing for a month with joysticks but was nowhere near as good as I was with the pistol grip. With gyro assisted drive and even just a moderate amount of practice, the pistol grip can turn anyone into a top tier driver. Last year we decided we didn't want the cypress board anymore so we took apart the guts of a regular gamepad controller and mapped the potentiometers from the pistol grip controller to to the joystick inputs. After doing this, the computer will just see the pistol grip as a regular gamepad.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

We have messed around with implementation a pistol grip controller in the past, when we started using holonomic drives we could not use the full functionality of them and wanted to keep the controllers constant between all drive types. If you are using a Ackerman steering system it would be very user friendly.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

Yeah. It seems like the best controller for Ackerman steering because you need a control for the speed and a control for the turning wheels. I guess this could work with swerve, but wouldn't be very intuitive. Otherwise, as I have been reading, for regular Ackerman and tank drive, it seems like the best control. How would you code tank drive to use this? Would you have the accelerator controlling the speed of both sides, and the turn wheel controlling the delta in motor speeds?

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

Our team created a rc remote for last season to drive with. We used a Spektrum dx2e remote. It was gutted and the potentiometers were wired in to an arduino uno. We found some code that would make the arduino be recognized as a logitech joystick so it could be easily changed in case of emergency. We did it because it was driver preference but we have found it is easy to learn.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

You wouldn't. You'd code it as arcade drive.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

Swerve is the drivetrain, the control type (holonomic/omnidirecitonal/etc) requires 3 inputs: translation in the x/y plane and rotation. You have only two inputs with the pistol grip, so you cannot control all three DoFs of an omnidirectional setup with a pistol grip controller.

Arcade and tank are two control types as well - the drivetrain is a skid-steer. You are mapping two inputs to two outputs: arcade requires a linear input and a rotational input, and tank requires two linear inputs. The output is the same for both (left and right sides of drivetrain). Since you are using a wheel (rotational) and a trigger (linear), you are using "arcade" style control and should code it appropriately.

I'll add myself to the list of pistol grip supporters.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

You're making a big assumption - maybe the swerve isn't controllable in one of those outputs… Like say a certain 148 robot that could not turn…

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

:rolleyes:
Well, it's technically not omnidirectional then, or swerve. Crab drive? Is that the technical term?

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

I can never keep those dang things straight. To me swerve/crab are interchangeable and describe a steered wheel system.

But you raised the proper point that, in general, you want to map controllable outputs to inputs and having too few inputs for your outputs is not the most obvious solution. (There are cases when you don't want a 1:1 mapping)

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

Holomonic is how the programming control type works, behind drive train where you have the capability to divorce the drive bases orientation away from its main drive direction creating a 2D drive.(Where a drive can drive a straight line and still rotate)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9WHMssEF4U what a good representation of a holomoic drive mode looks like. teams 1640 ocolate drive is anouther.

A crab drive is not a holomonic drive because it can not do the 2D drive motion.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

If I'm not wrong, that looks like a swerve drive (and I know 1717 uses lots of swerve in their robots). Holonomic would be Mecanum/Omni!

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

You are incorrectly constraining the definition of Holonomic. Tyler has the correct definition. Holonomic is not a type of drive system, it is a description of the possible motions of a system. Both swerve and Mecanum/Omni can be holonomic. They can also be programmed or mechanically constrained so they are not Holonomic.

Re: R/C car pistol grip style controller
 

its easier for me as a driver because i have been racing my r/c cars at a track and its easier to use a cheesy drive program on a pistol grip rc controller because its just what im used to