Thread: Controlling a FIRST robot with a Lego RCX Controller?
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Unread 24-06-2002, 04:19
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#0047 (ChiefDelphi)
  
Join Date: May 2001
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Autonomous vs. remote control...
Posted by Joe Johnson at 05/24/2001 11:22 PM EST


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.


In Reply to: Controlling a FIRST robot with a Lego RCX Controller?
Posted by Andy Baker on 05/24/2001 3:17 PM EST:



Andy,

I can easily imaging having the motor outputs set or clear switches that interface to the digital port on the RC. I can also imagine that the RC could then turn on motors via Victors or Spikes.

I think that you could also replace the motors with an resistor and a capacitor or two in order to turn the PWM output from the motor driver of the RCX into a DC voltage that could interface to the analog port on the RC, this would have the advantage of allowing 8 levels to be set per motor channel (assuming you can get the programming all worked out. Actually, you could potentially get 16 levels per motor channel if you could figure out a way to use the reverse directions of the RCX motor driver as well -- a diode or two and another few resistors and capacitors could do the trick I suppose).

The interface would be a bit clumsy but I think it could work. More fundamental to the problem though is that that the RCX is basically intended for controlling autonomous machines while the Innovation First controller is intended for controlling machines remotely.

You have to decide for yourself whether dumbing down the Innovation First system to appear to be controlled by the RCX is worth the bother.

Joe J.



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