[cdawzrd]

Hi, some team members and I were thinking it would be uber-cool if we could hack together a fake IFI "arena controller" and the field controller computer, to supply most of the functions that the real IFI stuff does for an off-season competition.

Specifically:
-LED Color
-Channel (all of them, remotely, not just enabling the dip switches)
-Auton & Disable (really easy)

Also if we could figure them out...
-Data being transmitted - I am guessing there is some sort of comms between the OI and the AC, I say this because of the "heartbeat" LED you can see on the AC's, that flashes at about the same rate (im guessing now) as the status lights onthe OI/RC (the 26.2ms loop). This could just be indicating the program loop, or it could mean that there is serial communication between the Arena Controller and the OI.


[EDIT] I just remembered that the radios run through the comp port now too. The new arena controllers must be a tad bit more complicated because of that since they have to rebroadcast the radio data to and from the modem tree. Just throwing this out there. We would have people use their own modems in our competition. [/EDIT]

Now, we were going to go ahead and try to map out as many of the comp port pins as possible (probably not too many). My question is, does anyone know anything at all about the IFI back-end controllers? Has anyone volunteered and touched/seen/used them? Can I not ask this...i.e, has IFI sworn those people who operate the field to secrecy? Is there any hope for us to get a full pinout of the comp port or at least some hints?

As far as I can tell, the only reasons IFI would have for not releasing any info on the AC or comp ports are 1) so people dont burn out their $350 OI, 2) so people dont hack it and download new firmware (i'm guessing that, as the only mystery port, the comp port is used to communicate directly with the OI's microprocessor and download new firmware. But, these reasons exist for other info IFI has released, such as using the program port, etc.

IFI seems to be doing a good job of avoiding liability for anything teams do to their comp ports, so I is there any other reason (besides wanting to keep trade secrets) that IFI couldn't release more info about how the arena system works?


Sorry if this seems pointless, but I think the IFI control system is extremely cool and it would be a great project to build our own arena controller.