Posted by Adam Krajewski.
Student on team #68, Truck Town Terror, from Walled Lake Central High School and General Motors Truck Group.
Posted on 7/2/2000 3:33 PM MST
In Reply to: Innovation FIRST Controllers & BattleBots posted by Dan on 7/1/2000 9:22 AM MST:
Innovation FIRST makes a good robot controller. Tons of PWM and relay outputs, lots of digital and analog sensor inputs, the BASIC Stamp II SX is a very easy to program unit, two-way communication, all in a nice small package. Overall, a good unit. However, for BattleBots, I have seen a couple of things that may cause problems.
1. The reliability of the EEPROM. I know that our team has had problems with 'losing' programs. I also saw a similar problem at BOMB when 27's (OSMTech) robot 'lost' a program after a hard fought match. I'm not sure if there is reliability issues associated with EEPROM, but I've observed some problems.
2. The Innovation FIRST Radio Modems. Is it just me, or were the Motorola radio modems used in previous years less susceptible to interference? Again, nothing concrete, but something to consider.
3. Price tag. It's a bit pricey, though I'm not sure what other kind of control systems of high you could find for less.
Well, having picked apart the Innovation FIRST controller, I will say that I don't know of any better unit.
