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Unread 13-04-2004, 13:11
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ahecht ahecht is offline
'Luzer'
AKA: Zan
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Re: Switching the Channel for Competition

Quote:
Originally Posted by Billfred
And I'm just thinking out loud--if those are all the pins one needs to do autonomous and disabling and channel setting, how hard would it be to create a rudimentary arena controller? Just run the wires for four dongles to one central spot, perhaps add a timer to the disable circuit, and bada-bing! (I figure that even the channel -shouldn't- matter, since the RC checks for team number as well. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to give each robot their own channel in matches.)
You're right, it is quite simple if you have teams set their own channel. For this past year's miniFIRST competition, we just wired up a connector to some telephone line, and had a three position switch for autonomous and disabling on the other end.

It is even possible to build a more complex system. The person who wrote the current official FIRST scoring software is an alum of Team 190, and while on the team he was working on making his own system that would interface with his scoring software. I don't think he finished it before he started working for FIRST, but it definately looked possible.
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Zan Hecht

Scorekeeper: '05 Championship DaVinci Field/'10 WPI Regional
Co-Founder: WPI-EBOT Educational Robotics Program
Alumnus: WPI/Mass Academy Team #190
Alumnus (and founder): Oakwood Robotics Team #992


"Life is an odd numbered problem the answer isn't in the back of the book." — Anonymous WPI Student