What was used before IFI?
 

hey, was thinkign bout something the other day.. what did FIRST use as there control system pre 2001? i was told that was the first year of the Innovation First system and, well.. im all curious now!

if you know or have any pics, lemmie know
~Pyro

Err I believe the IFI controller has been around longer than that.

I believe 2000 was the first year with the IFI system. Before that, I think some of the control system was made by Motorola. I never used it, though, so I can't tell you much about it. All I know is, we should be glad we have the IFI system now... I've not heard good things about the old controllers.

the old Motorola controllers were not that much different - in fact, the new ones are esentially clones (new and improved of course)

and there were no Victors back then, we used Tekin Rebel speed controllers (From Radio controlled cars).

Big difference was, you had to give the Motorola controllers BACK at the end of the season, or pay over a thousand dollars to keep them. For most teams, that meant you had to convert you bot to to use a 4 or 6 channel radio control system (from a model plane or car) if you wanted to keep your bot running.

BTW - if you go back to '97, the batteries used were two of the drill motor batteries (thats right! the little NiCad bats that fit in a cordless drill).

They had a capacity good for about 123 seconds :c)

Actually I have been wondering why First does not switch over to NiCads and NiMH batteries. Those have higher energy densities then a SLA battery and their voltages do not drop off as much.

History Lesson
 

http://www.pictars.com/042003/1992-2.JPG
http://www.pictars.com/042003/1992-3.JPG
http://www.pictars.com/042003/1992-10.JPG

Tethered robots!!!

All these pictures are from 1992.


:D

so thats why we can;t find out 99 control system! we assumed it was stolen, the team had a different advisors in 99 who retired shortly after so we didn';t know what happened with any of the electronics

On a side note: will the Victors take input from a standard RC car receiver? They are both PWM right?

It depends. IFI sells two models of the Victor. The one we use will only work with the Isaac control system. There is another type (frequently used in BB) that will work with a "standard" RC control system. Don't ask me why this is, but I do know this from having looked at the IFI online catalog.

Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

Yeah, if you go to www.ifirobotics.com you can find all the stuff IFI makes that we can't use... They have 24V Victors, ones that run on regular RC controllers, a super-Victor called the Thor 883 that can take 120 amps, and lots of other interesting stuff.

EDIT: Looking at it again, you just need a "PWM signal driver" to run a Victor off of standard RC controls. IFI sells them for $15.

Yeah I saw that. So with the PWM driver can you use any Victor with an RC receiver or only the 24V Victor?

PS. I so wish FIRST would upgrade to a 24 Volt system. Of course we would need all different motors. But with the kind of current some bots are drawing these days, it would be nice to have the higher voltage.

EDIT: And those Teken Rebels were great little speed controls. I don't know how well they held up in robots but they worked great in RC cars. Too bad Teken went out of business and their products are now almost forgotten.

A good question for this thread would be: What control systems etc did they have way back in 92 and the other early years?

We had the same control system from the year I started (97) till 99. I do not know when they started using it.

As Ken said, the IFI system is a clone of the old one, better, but still a clone. The old one had a Basic Stamp 2, which means it ran slower and didn't have the separate programming slots or scratchpad.

There were less PWM outputs (8 I think), and 8 relay outputs. The relays were built into the same board as the rest of the RC, as were the fuses for the relays. You had to take off the cover to change the fuses. Moving to the separate spike relays was a huge step.

They used Motorola Radio modems. They were many times less reliable then the current 900mhz ewaves.

The Tekin speed controllers were rated at 20amps max, I believe. We ran them at 20 amps continuous. It was not unheard of for them to go up in smoke in the middle of a match.

In 97, you did have the 2 drill motor batteries as your only power source. And they didn't last very long either. There were also a lot less motors then. Only 2 drills, and a window and a seat, I believe. FIRST handled the charging of the batteries. You would turn in your batteries, and they would hand you two fully charged ones. When they added the van door motors in '98, we really did need the bigger battery. They also raised the weight of the robot that year from 120 to 130 to account for the extra weight of the battery.

A few further refinements on what was said above.

You were never able to keep the old control system permanently. You could keep them after the season by putting down a deposit to FIRST. I think the deposit was around $1000 but you had to return them around October.

As for the Tekin Speed Controllers, it was not only not unsual for them to go up in smoke, it wasn't that unusual for them to literally catch fire during a match. I don't think anyone was upset when we got the InnovationFIRST Speed Controllers (which first appeared in 1999).

Other differences included the fact that the radio modems were hardcoded for a certain channel to operate on (it was at least not configurable via software) so that you hooked the equivalent of the operator interface (it was a much simpler box) to a radio modem that FIRST had supplied to the field. There also wasn't a competition port.

The final change was the fact that the additional $1000 for the first event you register for is for the control system. The price was bumped up in 2000 to account for the fact that we now get to keep the control system.

Matt

That bad, huh? So, the Victor 883 was used before the rest of the control system, then?