LCD display
 

is there anything in the rules that states that a team cannot use an LCD screen as part of the user interface to the robot? we have ideas :)

www.crystalfontz.com

You probably want to look into hooking a laptop to the Dashboard port on the OI.

The OI itself doesn't have the capacity to drive an LCD by itself.

yes, that is true.. but we were thinking of something more portable than a laptop, i believe.

Hmm - it's not necessarily clear whether you could use it or not. However, I'm curious how you would go about communicating with it via the operator interface. Is it possible to do serial communication through the radio modem and out one of the output pins given the way that the the control system is hooked up? I'm curious.

this idea is something our vp had.. and honestly, it could prove more useful than a laptop.

as for interface.. there are 4 ports for joysticks. ;)

Previous years have said nothing powered outside of the potentiometers feeding back into the OI(note: this year's custom circuit can only be on the robot), and they explicitly said on the broadcast that you couldn't take dashboard out, crunch it, and feed it into one of the inputs...

Go to SharingFIRST ( http://sharingfirst.mit.edu/ ) and look around. There is information on how to interface a Palm Pilot to the dashboard port. That would be a bit more portable than a laptop, and probably cheaper too.