Re: Force Feedback
 

I think some more specific and hopefully permissive rules concerning the OI are in order this year. We can sit around and find grey areas all we want but there is still a pretty good chance of our arguements not working with a particular inspector. Hopefully someone like Lavery will take notice of this thread and we will see these grey areas turn a little lighter this year.

Re: Force Feedback
 

I agree one-hundred percent.

Re: Force Feedback
 

And come kickoff, if the rules are silent or ambiguous on this point, I hope some pertinent questions will appear early on FIRST Q&A. The responsibility for getting FIRST to clarify the rule rests with teams who plan to use the idea, and that means before bringing the device in question to an event. Please don't leave this to be covered by a team update that appears after the first week or two of regionals are over. It is in everyone's interest to have the same interpretations of rules at all 2006 events.

Re: Force Feedback
 

Jim,
I think you give me too much credit. Inspectors don't make the rules or interpret them for the most part but we do receive training to make sure we know the intent. In this particular case, the OI rules are more driven by IFI than by any electrical person. The OI was designed for ease of use, interface, etc. and LEDs were considered part of that design. To prevent damage to the OI (and to simplify design) the outputs are current limited so that they only drive LEDs. You can think of it this way...The circuitry has an ouput that swimgs between 0 and +5 volts and there is a resistor in series with the outputs that is selected to provide 10ma to an LED. That means there will not be 5 volts available at the output. With a 10ma load expect the output to only be 2 volts, the standard drop across a forward biased LED.
Now that being said, I would love to have some relaxation of the electrical rules for the OI. Students are coming up with great ideas all the time, many like those in this thread. I would love to see some of them implemented, under the rules of course.

Re: Force Feedback
 

Wouldn't this be permissible if a separate power source (e.g. battery) was provided for it? We were allowed to use a laptop, as long as it could run from its own internal power. :confused: Or were computing devices a separate catagory?

Re: Force Feedback
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=10

Read the thread before you post.

Re: Force Feedback
 

I had read the thread, I guess what I had meant to ask was:

Can the two functions of the joystick (I.E. the joystick "input" and the force feedback "output") be separated, so that the input device is hooked up to the joystick port, and the output device is handled separately? I don't think there would be any internal interconnection, so it would be a simple matter of having two cables come out of the joystick? One to the joystick port on the OI, and the other to whatever is required to drive the force-feedback?

Re: Force Feedback
 

Joystick ports not port. (nitpick, I know) Read the whole thread and the IFI spec sheets for the OI. Also the '05 rules would be a good idea, they may change, but it probably won't have many major changes. Then you'd realize it isn't a simple matter. The rules are the component that cause most of the headaches, for example, I could go and rig this up on one of our old bots for very little money, but it wouldn't be competition legal, at least by '05 standards.