@Joe Ross thanks for the tip about the talons.. I'll be sure to change that. The LEDRing is controlled by a button on a joystick. This is the encoder we are using:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0791.htm which looks like it has 360 steps. Our pickup system is like the robot in 3 days build except we are using a cim to control the angle instead of pneumatics. Thus, we are planning for it to start straight up, and then all we need to do is rotate it down a certain amount at the beginning of the match and leave it there.
Thanks for the autonomous tip. There is not a lot of information out there about autonomous mode with the iterativerobot template.
The elastic encoder is going to measure how tightly our surgical tubing is winded up for our launch system. I have not implemented it because we are still not sure on the details of how our launch system works.
@Woolly our pickup system is not an arm, but I will definitely look into how PID systems work.