How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

We have completed the beacon and the sensor but I am not sure how to test and see if the two are correctly talking. We have uploaded the code into both the Edu controller and the ifi controller. What should the results be?


Matthew

Ubergeeks

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

Try uploading the file in this .zip file to your robot controller. Once it's running, you should see a bunch of data dumped to the console window every second or so. This is the raw data in the sensor_stats arrays that you'll find documented in receiver.c/.h. As I haven't had a chance to test this code, please let me know whether it works or not. It would be most helpful if someone with a known good beacon and sensor(s) could try it out and report back.

-Kevin

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

Thanks, I will try this tommorrow when I get back in the shop.


Matthew

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

You can test your IR beacon by looking at it through the viewing screen of a digital camera. The beacon will show up as white light. You may have to block or turn off the visible light to see it.

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

We are also having problems testing our beacons. I also had the idea to try using a camcorder on night vision mode and a night vision monocular to see the IR light emitted from the beacon, but no luck. Our team was a bit confused from the earlier discussion about how the wiring diagram may have had a bad pinout for the FET. Our IR beacons are wired like shown in the wiring diagram in this document http://kevin.org/frc/Infrared_System_rev012704.pdf.

We tried to power these for testing with a power supply in the lab. We put ground to black (GND) and white (-) pins on the 3-pin connector, and aprox. 6 volts to the red (+) pin. Does this sound like it should work to anyone else? It looks as though we should eventually be connecting the beacons to the EDU RC pwm outputs? Is this true?

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

Tie the white lead to the red (not black) lead and try it. This should be done with a +5 volt supply. Also, why aren't you just using the EDU-RC for this?

-Kevin

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

Thanks Kevin. So if I tie +5V to White and Red and ground to Black then the board should work? Do you have a suggestion on how test that our IR Beacons are working? Unfortunately, our EDU-RC is locked away in a room for the weekend - so we had to get creative in order to continue working.

Re: How do we Test our Beacon and Sensor
 

Yes, this should turn all four LEDs on. While on, you can then use your digital camera to see the LEDs. You'll need to hook it up to the EDU-RC to generate the beacon waveforms.

-Kevin