[Gdeaver]

In years past our FRC team tried line following and never really got it working as well as was needed for the competition. We ended up not trying to follow the line. We used the lines as way points. In other words, we went out by dead reckoning until our line sensors picked up the line and then executed a timed turn and then continued on. In the stack attack game we were able to use the semicircle line to actual control our turn. We went out until the first sensor hit the line and then turned until a second senor pick up the line and then went straight up the ramp. The robot could do this very fast compared to trying to follow the line. I don't know if the lines on the field for the vex game are in the correct position for way points, but it is a good technique to have mastered for the future.
The other technique for using a line sensor is to mount the sensor on a servo. The problem with a line follower is it only gives an on off binary sensing. By mounting the line follower on a servo you can get a large sample to feed into a control loop. Sweep the servo back and forth. After each change of position on the servo read the line sensor. You can then find the edges of the line and calculate the center. Use this value to plug into your control loop drive to. Remember, the servo can only change position every 17 ms. The main loop is much faster than this. The nice thing about Vex is you could have the sensor servo mounted and be testing in about 1/2 an hour. Easy - C 2.0 will make the programming easier because you can build functions. If your your using the 1.1 version in the box, the program gets long and hard to manage. Also the sonar sensor can be mounted on a servo too.