[cbolin]

Good points!

Regarding IR, we spent two weeks with an IR sensor mounted to a servo. The servo would scan back and forth looking for any IR signal. We put the controller and servo with sensor on a cart and moved it around. The servo and sensor would look onto the IR source if the range was less than 5 feet.
We were so focused on trying to detect the IR sources from 20 plus feet away that we didn't take advantage of this this short range capability. We could have moved in autonomous straight ahead until we were right next to the ball/trigger mechanism. This short range system would definitely have worked.....but we didn't think of it. Of course other teams did. :-)

These Banner sensors have a couple of different part numbers. We had three on our bot...thought they were the same. Programming just didn't make sense. We found at that two were detecting 'light' areas but the third would detect anything that could reflect. Can't tell you how much code was rewritten over and over to figure this out. Check part numbers closely.

Regards,
ChuckB