Uses for old control systems
 

My team's work area was recently "rearranged" on the plant layout and our storage closet has been put to other use for the plant. That meant going through and cleaning out almost a decade of past seasons parts. I snagged some '04 controllers and parts.

I am currently working on a remote controlled hovercraft. Will have pics up soon and plan to play with it at Palmetto regional.

With the new control systems coming in 2009, and a pile of old parts and controllers in team's back closets everywhere; what are some of the uses/ projects peolpe have found or though of for these older parts... practice bots, T-shirt shooters, electric go-carts, hovercrafts, etc.. :rolleyes: please leave details.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

If anyone has old controllers that they absolutely don't want and don't mind donating, team 1323 would be interesting. This would allow us to build stuff for the community easily. For example a police target practice robot and a anamatronic mammoth.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

We(1103) are planning to build an improved version of our 2006 shooter. That was always a good robot for demos, but it got torn apart during the 2007 season.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

Ours did too, very sad:(

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

One of the big benefits of getting a new controller each year was that it would let you keep your old robots running as demonstration machines. Perhaps since we are now expected to move our cRio from old robots to new ones, it would make sense to keep an old controller around to drop into your 2009 robot when you pull out the cRio for your 2010 machine.

It would also make sense, if you can, to keep one machine up and running for demos this year.

Otherwise consider that if you have controller from '04-'08 then you have enough for a "class set" if students work in groups of five or six. You probably also have enough speed controllers and motors and stuff for students to design a robot... there are a number of non-FRC competitions for which IFI controllers are ideally suited. Perhaps http://botleague.net/

Jason

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

We are keeping one up and running to teach future members and programmers. Frankly, we only have room for one complete bot. I'm using parts from '04 and '05, even some '03 stuff, I talking about things that almost had to be throw away if not for interested students. But you are right Jason, until we get the new stuff up and running, we are definatly keeping a complete '08 control panel around.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

We (2402) might be interested in some stuff. We snagged several boxes of parts from 497, but it was a bunch of obsolete stuff, and we might want some extra controllers depending if subsequent games are interesting enough to demonstrate in PR events.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

We only have three controllers and I suspect we'll use two of them to keep robots running after the cRIO is done with them. The last one will probably be a spare, or it will be used to create a motor testbed for experimentation and prototyping during the build season.

If we had more, I don't know what we would do with them besides donate them.

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

T-shirt cannon in the works. I'll also try to bring it to Palmetto (our backyard). I like the other ideas out there, especially the police target practice.:ahh:

Re: Uses for old control systems
 

I am hoping to create an AVR or Arduino clone, so teams can make demonstration controllers to keep old robots running for demo's. I really like the arduino's because they are cross platform. They would make awesome little controllers for us Linux users.