Quote:
Originally Posted by Photo Storm
All the feedback that is given is great and will definitely factor into the new driver station. I just have one more question about this. The group I am working with wants to have alot of buttons off the controller and on the board. These auxiliary buttons could be useful like for an e-stop but how many do you really need to incorporate into the deign? The new station is being built with practicality in the future in mind and our team in the past years has used only a driver. This year we used a joystick but I think our team prefers controllers.
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I am a huge fan of the e-stop custom control interface board. But then again, we build a new drivers console every year and mount specialty buttons and switches into the wood board. (We have, on occasion, recycled some handles and some buttons.) We make a new board every year because, while the design stays about the same, the holes drilled into the board for mounting and placements of these holes change based on the user control. If you wanted to re-use the same drivers console year after year, obviously this would be difficult.
While reusing the board would have its advantages, its also nice to give flexibility to your drive team on how they want to control the robot, which is why we don't build ours in till Week 5 of build season, when the control interface has been decided upon. (Anecdote: In 2012 our driver asked for tank drive because thats what he was always comfortable with. Less than a minute into driving the partly-completed bot around week 5, he turned to me [head programmer] "I changed my mind. Arcade." It wasn't a difficult switch, but it shows why its hard to design a user interface without the item you are controlling).