[Lloyd Burns]

Last night, our "EduBot" group played with the Kit for the first time. I had one joystick from a previous year, and started with that. With no computer handy to program the beast and with one joystick, in Port 1, we had p1_y (which controls PWM1 and PWM3 on the ISAAC robot controller, and p1_x, which controls PWM5. These assignments are in the IFI manual.

We had one motor facing east, one west. the East facing motor was connected to PWM1, the West facing to PWM5. Then the fun began : with the joystick at 45 degrees, a push forward into a "corner" gave forward motion with both wheels turning in the same direction, and aft motion came from pulling back to the opposite corner. turning was done in the alternate corners, but you had to push the stick the way the back of the robot was to go while it was turning (relative to the far side of the bot. This was all pretty IFI (iffy :-)).

You _can_ use two sticks to steer your bot, with the stock program, else you _must_ program. The following is the "fix" suggested in the 1998 manual, modified for motors you can't reverse by wiring :

In the SEROUT statement in the mini-RC, program the PWM1 variable with
(((2000 + p1_y - p1_x + 127) Min 2000 Max 2254) - 2000)

and the PWM5 with
(((2000 + p1_y + p1_x -127) Min 2000 Max 2254) - 2000)
[The minus in front of the p1_y and the + 127 should correct the reversed direction on one side.]

If it isn't right, change which motor goes to which pwm connection. I just made the correction up, so I'm not sure it'll work, but its a point of departure.