[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by Lightfoot26

You hit the nail on the head Alan!

The sensor I posted actually has a built in sensing light that illuminates when "the circuit is complete" for lack of a better term. This is all internal to the sensor. If the target is present both a green and amber light located on the top of the sensor will illuminate, if there is power to the sensor, but the target is not present, only the green light illuminates.

I agree with the "not use vision if you don't have too." In 2012, we were a team that had no vision on our robot. Our drivers used a line marker at the tail of robot to line up with the center of the key to make key shots. IT was actually a point of pride after a while to have the performance we did without vision. We ranked 1st seed in both regionals we attended that year, so it worked out well for us.

This year, we have vision running on a beaglebone using opencv and ffmpeg. It was a system we received from our friends 118, and have been modifying for our specific use.

I was curious about placement of the robot, because your initial post metioned it was an IR sensor. I didn't see wavelength specified on the link you provided, but I do honestly hope this system works out for you.

It will be pretty cool to see such a simple system reliably work in auton. My fear would be the initial lineup, and shooting prematurely because I was looking at the horizontal target instead of the vertical, but it sounds like you have a plan to overcome that.

Goodluck.

Reagrds,
Kevin