Hey everyone!
First season is creeping up and everyones getting ready, but our team is doing a little something special...
My New team is hosting a competition for us and the other local teams in our area (RIchmond, VA) using the Prototyping kit that FIRST supplies. Since we are using our own game design, we need to build a competition control box to operate the game.
I Have the pinouts for the Competition port concerning the Channel Switch and the Disable option, but there are still a few more thing I would like to know:
1. I know FIRST supplies power to the OI through this port at the competition, so how do you do this?
2. If you cant do this (or easily) then is it still possible to operate the oi with competition control while the oi is using the adapter?
3. The Channel Switch: I'm still a little confused about what exactly this does. If you jumped the pins for the channel selection on four bots at the same time, would they each select a different channel automatically? or is there another set of pins that feeds the channel value to the oi? In my reading of the OI manual, I beleive that if you jump the pins, it autoselects a channel that has a RC (Robot Controller) with the matching team number. so, you could use up to 4 bots simutainously (it only supports 4 different channels). What if 2 robots transmit their team # over the same channel?
So, as you can se, I think I'm understanding it, but I'd like a confirmation from someone else. I understand that various teams here host competitions, so I would assume that someone out there has to know the answer. We are planning on having the competition this fall.
I can't say anything about the game guys, I'm sorry, but the teams participating may be watching and they're not supposed to know til' kickoff
Anyway, I would like it if you could help me ASAP.
Thanx!