Everyone refers to the old controller as being Motorola but I don't think it was. As a Motorola team we had to resort to building one from reverse engineered plans that a team supplied at nationals one year. I think it was a commercially available industrial controller but I don't remember seeing a name on it. It was a bear to work on, mount, etc. and hard to trouble shoot but it worked and we all lived with it. A big sigh of relief when Innovation First was born and we started to get quality control systems and the ability to talk to team displays, competition port and dashboard.
Tekin speed contollers were the pits for big robots and every team had problems at one point or another. I remember a Midwest regional where Technokats killed a controller on the field during finals. When we could still call time outs, all the teams, in order, called their five minute time out so they could all help the Technokats get the controller changed. Then they went ahead and beat us in the last match.

Al,

You are right, the controllers were not motorolla. In fact, I beleive that someone told me that Eric Rasmussen at FIRST designed them. In any case, the Rnets were motorola, unless my memory is completely wrong.




In '99, we only used the Victors on the motors that required them, because we couldn't afford them on all. So we had 2 window motors that were still on the tekins. In our first match at nationals, we were allied with Gael Force. One of the Tekins broke part way through the match. This caused us to not get the 2x multiplier, and that was all we needed for a perfect score. Our driver didn't tell us anything was wrong though, until after our next match, which we lost because of the dead speed controller. Needless to say, between the 2nd and third matches, we replaced both Tekins with Victors. Doing the math afterwards, if we had gotten the perfect score, we would have moved from 30th overall to 17th. If we had won that second match, it would have put us into the top 16. Oh well.

I believe it was the Rnets from Motorola. I know something was from Motorola.

I remember there was a big deal that we were using the same system NASA used on the Mars Rovers. But NASA took the covers off thiers to save weight, thereby voiding the warranty. Motorola seemed very concerned about that, though how NASA would have returned the sets for a warranty repair is a little beyond me. I think Mr Lavery has the whole scoop on that little legend.

ChrisH

I never paid much attention to it at the time but my old team used to have an antique controller. It was big bulky and had a clear case compared to the slim black one we use now. I know the team spent good money on it at the time. I'm pretty sure that you could pay to keep them at the end of the season.

After looking at the '92 pics I thought it would be great if FIRST made some crazy rule next year about robot size. Imagine a match of 2ft cubed bots running around trying to move last years goals.

Again, you could pay a deposit to keep the controllers until October. I know it was just a deposit as I specifically remember packing up the controller to send back to FIRST. Now, I'm sure some teams just failed to return them and let FIRST keep the deposit money. I don't believe that's what FIRST intended however. And from your description of the controller, I think we're talking about the same thing.

I also think that the controllers were designed by FIRST or were at least a custom FIRST part. They didn't have any markings on them that would imply they were made by a manufacturer.

The radio modems were from Motorola. I remember having to replace the fuses on them several times (which voided the warranty if I remember correctly but I think we just put the covers back on and hoped no one noticed).

The InnovationFIRST speed controllers first appeared in 1999. We were required to use them on the drill and van door motors that year (am I missing any?). They were optional on all other movies. This was before the InnovationFIRST control system was born. I remember seeing InnovationFIRST for the first time and wondering about the name (and then realizing it was yet another bad pun on FIRST).

Matt

Does anyone know where to pick up the victors designed to be used with standard radio equipment?? I want to pick some up for some robotics projects.

http://www.ifirobotics.com is innovation first's site for non FIRST stuff. Look for the PWM signal driver on the page for any of the speed controllers

Thanks I was going insane trying to figure out why half of their products were missing. Btw in a innovation first add it says that the controllers we use have ten microprossers. Does that sound right??

In 98 and 99 (I believe) our first two years in First, the controller was housed in a clear-topped NEMA box, had 8 PWM outputs and eight Spike equivalents on board. There were 8 digital inputs and 8 analog inputs, all on one Dx25 connector. Most of the area of the board was relays, fuses (20 A spike-like and <2 A cylindrical ones) and power supplies (and their heat sinks). There was a BS2, which actually drove its own outputs, providing serial output and serial input.

The control unit actually had two power inputs, one for the electronics, and one for the relay output power. If the latter were not connected, you could not tell if the output were working. There were four blinken-lights that indicated power in the unit, that the radio was receiving data, and the program was running.

The radio system was a single channel, one way - no dashboard feedback as at present. It had a length of coax for between the radio and its antenna, and the stub antenna was placed on the robot with a through-bulkhead coax connector. There was an atenuator, to cut the range of the transmitter, I suppose, and we had to mount a right-angle connector on the transmitter, to avoid mechanical interference with the other connector.

Since we had to give the units back after the Nats, or after the summer if we left a deposit, we never could use them to tour local schools with last year's robot. I solved that by spending a few hundred to make a look-alike, work-alike clone, just before the change to the next system, of which we could not obtain an ordered, paid-for extra system until after that year's (2000?) kick-off.

Previous to that, photo-copied tracts, handed out at the Nats, told how, for example, to modify two radio-control units, each with 4 or 5 analog channels, so that they would provide some (real) analog and some (jury-rigged) relay (digital) outputs. It seems everybody wanted to control their robots in the off season, hence the "you-gotta-buy-it" policy.


Tekins had no fan, just a big heat sink, so external fans were provded. They would fail, and pass voltage back into the controller, ruining it and possibly other Tekins. One year, we were told to short out the current sensing resistor on the board, because some motors could blow it out, melting traces on the internal cct board, killing the control with no external indication.

Wow... I never thought I'd appreciate the IFI controllers so much. We should be happy we have them, and not the old control system, even if PBASIC is a little screwy at times...

For what it's worth...
 

I know that the IFI site states that you may need an interface device to drive a 12V Victor from a standard R/C receiver. However, before I knew that, I ran two different Victors (883 and 884) directly from the servo outputs of my Futaba R/C boat receiver. I was trying them with 9.6VDC drill motors, and the whole setup worked fine.

So I think whether you need a signal amp or not to drive the opto-isolators depends on the individual receivers.

Bruce C.

A few years back, before the IFI controllers were available and we still had to turn in the controls systems at the end of each season, some of the engineers at NASA Glenn Research Center and Team 120 designed a "build your own" version of the FIRST control system. This was done so teams could have something to use to run their robots during the off-season and summer-fall competitions. Their design was posted on one of their web pages for a while, but is no longer publicly available since their network was reconfigured. Fortunately, I made a copy of the page (sneaky me!;) ). You can see the plans here.

-dave

wow... i never thought that the Isaac32 system could be the saving grace for anything. the cumbersomeness of the whole thing seems balanced by the crappiness of the whole system that was used before.

ah. the world makes sense now. ;)

(still, i think progress should be made... shameless plug alert!!! :D)

*emphasis* mine, not Aonic's

A bit harsh, I would say. The current system does things unheard of in R/C, with feedback via lamps, and the dashboard port (Paradise by the dashboard port ? I would make any pun for laughs, but I won't do that ! :D). The previous system was also a cut above simple R/C, although it was a straight application of the various ic's used. It didn't have a lot of I/O, and its uP was slower than what we have now, but it's big drawback was that you got only one, and you had to give it back, when it was needed most - for trying new ideas out, learning PBASIC, or demonstrating your robot to local schools or sponsors.

The big advantage to either system is that there are blinkenlights to allow diagnosing faults quickly. It is so good now that IFI routinely claims any faults to be in your program, not their equipment.

In future, I can see folk using the electronics package to drive the Robot Controller directly, and putting all the computing in a favorite uP chip, but even then, the required competion controls will be reliably in place. Do that with your standard Futaba 6 analog channel R/C unit ! :P