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Originally Posted by zachriggle
So is the 10mA limit just on the OI, or is there a 10mA limit on LED's on the Robot itself?
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You could deck your robot out in enough LED's to light up the arena, assuming the refs don't decide it's annoying/distracting. What that would gain you, I don't know. LED feedback on the robot would be pretty difficult to justify, since it's extra weight you already know you don't have to spare and It's difficult enough to see. Recall that the robot can be 50 feet away separated by thick plastic and surrounded by 5 other robots. Your going to have a real hard time seeing a couple of LED's on your bot.
If you really want to have some LED feed back, have one connected to your OI through one of the joystick ports. It's not to difficult to have any one of the 8 eyes on your drive team look down to see if you have that lock on. I know that Blue LED's are all the rage, but green and red are a whole heck of a lot cheaper and just as visible.
My team has kicked around the idea of putting a 'ball' on the OI. Basically its a cross of 5 LEDs. When the camera sees the target, it returns a value of how far and in which direction the light is from the center of its field of view. If it is to the left, the left most light would light up. if it is to the right and up, the top and right LED's light and so on. When it is dead on, or close enough for a good shot, the center lights up. It has the advantage of letting you know not only if you are on target or not, but how to get on target. While the RC could correct for this automagically, it's nice to put some control in the humans hand. It's an idea somewhat borrowed from the aviation world, in which the 'ball' is a grid of lights that a pilot can see at the end of the runway (or carrier deck) and informs him of where he is in relation to the glide slope.
-Andy A.