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Unread 23-05-2002, 09:33
Lloyd Burns Lloyd Burns is offline
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FRC #1246 (Agincourt Robotics)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Rookie Year: 1997
Location: Toronto
Posts: 292
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Re: Use it with last year controller

Quote:
Originally posted by Manoel
You'll want to use the Yellow Dongle with your old controller, since Innovation First changed the pinout for the competition port in this years controller, and they didn't update the manual to include that.
The Yellow Dongle paper, and the Control Sytem Users Manual V1.0 (p 18 + 19) both tell you to connect pin 12 to pin 15 to allow access to the channel change feature. They also tell you to connect a switch from 6 to 8 to disable the robot outputs (killl switch), and this does not change.

Innovation First told me in an email this season, that pin 15 may be required for something else in future, and to use pin 8 for grounding pin 12. This works on all previous years' OIs as well.




BTW, I found that the Dongle's power light, which goes on when the robot is active, does not work when the robot is on tether. The light being out, although the switch is not in "kill", might lead you to think that the tethered robot is disabled and safe to work on, but if someone toys with the controls, also relying on the light and thinking it safe, dangerous motion could occur.

Note that the robot looks the same enabled or disabled, with all those lights lit up and blinking. Only old hands who are familiar with how the dongle works, and know what the light means when running on a "Wall Wart" power supply, will get, or give, hurt, with this tether power quirk.