[daltore]

Nice recycling of old parts. I think our teacher wishes we could do more of that, he's getting tired of stuff piling up in his classroom.

Yeah, I like the DS. Our team has done something similar the past couple of years. The first time, we just mounted the entire operator interface (2007 control board, complete with 3/4' x 3' plywood) on a pieces of 1"x2" aluminum tubing, drilled out some holes, and stuck it on an old drum harness we were permanently loaned by the band... For our demo robot (adapted from our 2008 competition robot), we mounted the controller and radio to a piece of corrugated plastic, and used a gamepad to drive it like a video game, attracts a little more interest from the young crowd that way.

The main thing that strikes me about toting the 2009 control system around is its much higher power usage. We got some little 12v 1.5Ah lead-acid batteries for our OI's, and the old IFI control system could run a couple hours off of those things, while the new one drained it in about 30 minutes.

Portable driver stations for the win! And, of course, long-range pneumatic cannons, well-timed special effects sequences, and good code.