[EricH]

Originally Posted by tomy

slow down there i forgot to say this our first year with mecanum wheels should we just stick to the basics with the joysticks?

And you're starting during build?

Stick to the joysticks. There's prewritten code around somewhere; you would of course have to find it in your favorite language and tweak it for your robot.

I don't recommend doing mecanum in the six weeks if you haven't done it before; if you do it that way, KISS is a MUST. Start with stuff that's already out there.

David, you're close to right about the method, except that you forgot one thing: 4 independent motors vs 2 pairs of 2 motors. 2 pairs of 2 motors, you can Y-cable. 4 independent, it's a lot harder to Y-cable for some reason. Also use caution: Should you go to fallback (mecanum goes to 4WD rather easily), make sure you comment out the strafing--Alan Anderson of FRC45 found that out the hard way.

You could also do a complete directional program. That might be a bit harder.