[miketwalker]

I know that when I was working with 1390 the night before ship and we had all sorts of problems with their arm extension we were able to very quickly mount a Vex encoder and some other light sensors to get feedback. In the final code we allowed the driver to make the final decision, but Vex sensors enable you to have the ability to have more feedback then the majority of teams in a very short window of time (in that case 1 person working on a mount for them, and myself working on other things and coding it up in EasyC in about 5 minutes provided a complete control interface for their multi-stage elevator and ramp deployment system, quite amazing how quickly you can work with them).

To avoid the "slicing and dicing" of the sensor cables I would highly recommend going to a local hobby shop and finding some female-to-female PWM cables which enable you to quickly, without modification, connect those sensors to your FRC controller. Some electrical tape and you are good to go. Plus, the cost you can find some of those sensors is better than the sensor themselves from other places and you get the nice plastic housings which are actually really nice to work with on an FRC bot.