[mathking]

Originally Posted by Gregor

How did you know to start rotating the conveyor again after the first ball passed through?

The front roller that gathered in balls was not connected to the conveyor system which lifted the balls. When we wanted to gather balls we ran the front roller, and it would pull balls into the lift conveyor. When the lift conveyor detected a ball it would run until it could no longer detect the ball, then stop. (This is pretty much the reverse of how a garage door sensor is used in a garage.) This lifted the ball up into the robot, but not too far. This was important because the lift conveyor also fed the shooter. The sensor at the top was used when we activated the shooter. When the optical sensor determined the shooter wheel was at the proper speed the conveyor would run until the top sensor detected one ball, and would keep running until it could no longer detect the ball (meaning it had been pulled through the shooter). Then the conveyor would wait for the command to shoot again. We had a "shoot until empty mode" that counted balls in and out, but we found that our shooter was never accurate enough that the 2 seconds this could have was better than verifying the first shot manually. I might have a picture if you would like.