And thus...the Furby was created. :D (technical shmecnical)

Tape......What is this thing you call "the tape"??? They fight over Duct Tape?? YES!!!!!!!! Fighting over Duct tape is a pastime!!!
J/K
Two Letters- CD lol -you can even have the driver get blinded by it!!! Not fun in real life but would sound good in a story.

Seriously though, I like the soundtrack idea!! We've done that in the car. I know people who have played Song 2 by Blur over a series of hills (7 hills to be exact) in town and match the screaming descent on the hills to the "Whooo Hooo" parts of the song!!!!

EDIT- I just realized this post has nothing to do with the original topic but eh- what are ya' gonna do?

I origionally had a tape, because it makes a more satisfying "THWAK!" when you thump someone on the head with it. I like the getting blineded by the CD though. If I left it in the case at the beginning of the argument, I could still get a satisfying "THWAK!" out of it.

AS for voice activated movement in a bot; I think what I'll do, is base this story in the off season and have it be an outside project by one of the kids on their own.

Honestly I think I've collected enough information for this book to start a series.

Maybe we'll just call the series "Team Mayhem" or something like that, and just tag on whatever adventure they're on to the title of each book. Is that name taken already? Would they mind if I used it? Anyone have a better suggestion?

EDIT- I think I've edited this at least three times already. I am soooo not awake right now.

There is a Mayhem on the Merrimack* Competition I believe.

Also look at the names of the previous years FIRST Games and you'll notice a trend. Names like Maize Craze, Ramp Riot, Zone Zeal, and Co-Operation FIRST come to mind but there was a cool name attached to every FIRST competition.

*****Help me out fellow posters what were all the other names???*****

A catchy name for the series is a very good idea, I like it!

Read the Robot, rules & specs Manual. Do a search for computer. Either that or it's rule 2.2.3.

Portable computing devices may not be connected to inputs on the Operator Interface.


I admire your effort, but by on-board control system they mean the robot controller. That rule was designed to specify that they robot can perform it's own automatic commands programmed into it (the software part), or the student's commands that is operating it.

You still can do your voice thing, you just can't hook a computer up to it. It will make it much more difficult, though. The stamp chip only gets new data at the mininum every 25 milliseconds. That's not a high enough sampling rate to process human speech. That's only 40hz... So only 40 tone changes in a second...

With the limited number of commands needed you could do it in 40 tone changes... it's just finding the right words that produce a noticable change in tone for the programmer for all your commands.

The microphone itself can be adjusted to accept different noise levels, either by dampening it with foam, or using different microphone technologies. It will be hard to see if background noise will affect it or not...

Thanks for the point in the right direction Jnadke. I really appreciate it.

["You are not allowed to use computers in your control system, since they are not in the digikey catalog. Computers can only be used for feedback, as said in the Rule Book. This means you can't use your computer program to control the robot."

From Jnadke"

The digi-key catalog has tons of microprocessors and microcontrollers that would be very useful in our robot applications. I've got the Sept-Dec 2002 catalog. Pages 238 through 284 (ish) are filled with them. In fact, on page 243, you can even get another Basic STAMP module from Paralax.

digikey catalog
 

Can anything in the digikey catalog be used??????

And where was this said. What rule or udate said this?

Yes, all that stuff would be usable... but you're gonna have to write your own program for it... she was wondering if you can use a PC for the voice recognition software...

Re: digikey catalog
 

You can use anything out of Digi-KEy for under $100.

Additional Hardware List
Page 7

Electronic Componets - Up to $100 worth from Future FAI or Digi-Key.


The other compition names:

1992—Maize Craze
1993—Rug Rage
1994—Tower Power
1995—Ramp n' Roll
1996—Hexagon Havoc
1997—Torroid Terror
1998—Ladder Logic
1999—Double Trouble
2000—Co-Opertition FIRST
2001—Diabolical Dynamics
2002—Zone Zeal


Voice commands would be cool, but impractical for a competion.

Off-season demos, however, would be a VERY cool place for them.
Espesically if we replace the dance button with a voice command. :D

Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~
Any other questions?

You just gave me another crazy idea Wetzel.

LOL! A dancin' bot. Wouldn't that be funny if for a display table for a team if someone installed the innards of one of those dancing flowers (or santa's from the Christmas craptopia aisle) and built a lightweight bot around it? Every time someone passed by and said something the little 'bot mascot would do a dance.

shudders
 

Please no! Not a dancing 'bot! The old programmer from my team put this in so that when you pressed a button on the box it would start spinning, waving its arm, and sending the gripper in and out. Well, he forget to comment it out before the competition, and someone actually pressed the button during a match. It wasn't pretty.

As for doing stuff with a PC, I've been working on that in between my school work and my emulator, but I don't own an RS-232 to RS-432 converter, and from what I've heard, they are approx. $80. On the other hand, there were rumors flying around a while back that the tether is just plain 232, but it's unconfirmed. In either case, if I ever get the time to reverse-engineer the packets flying back-and-forth, I might try to write some form of computer-controlled thing, but I still need to polish my emulator.

That was my first thought o_O

I have plans to build an animatronic head. It seems pretty cool too.

Re: shudders
 

Somebody better a video of that accident!

Was it the kind of bot that put balls in the goal, one that carries the goal around? or a combination?