Team 751 looking to buy a robot-side controller

[davidmandle]

I am a member of team 751 (barn2robotics) in Portola Valley, CA. At the SVR competition, our program port on our controller got ripped off , so we are now unable to make revisions to our robot's program. Now that a CalGames-like event may be happening, we are interested in fixing up our robot for another competition. Unfortunately, IFI robotics wants near $450 for a new robot controller, and my team is on a rediculously tight budget. We would (obviously) prefer to pay a mucher lesser sum and recieve a used controller. Do any of you teams have a legal and spare controller you'd be willing to sell us? We'd be very greatful. Thanks for you help!

[Beth Sweet]

Yuck, I know what a pain it is to work on such a tight budget. Luckily, CD has a feature called CD Swap that lets you post an ad for what you need and anyone trying to sell one can look it up and talk to you about it. Here's the link to it!

[sanddrag]

I don't know how much time you have to spend but IFI should be able to repare it for much less than the cost of a whole new one. Or, if you have someone VERY skilled in small electronics and surface mount stuff and the like it is possible they could fix it. By VERY skilled, I mean has been doing it for years. Otherwise, you could cause more damage than you already have.
Also, this should be a note to everyone to never screw in your tether or programming cables. Screw in cables like radio cables that are crucial to match performance, but never screw in something that you can walk up and plug back in no problem. It is always better to have the cable pull off than the port rip out.

[Andy A.]

I'll just offer that the ports are actually fairly easy to resolder.

If you have someone on the team who is pretty competent with a soldering iron, all you need is a new port (you can buy them) and a method of sucking out the old solder and broken pins. As long as theres no damage to the PCB in the first place, it's pretty straight forward. I've done it before on the tether port. Interestingly, we didn't have the exact same port design. So the one we put in didn't bend 90 degrees like the original. Instead of pointing in the same direction as all the other ports, the new one pointed straight up. This was actually an improvement, since it made plugging in a tether worlds easier.

Back to the point-

I don't have a C based controller, but I do have an old P-Basic version. Assuming you have a matching OI, it should be fully able to run the 'bots basic functions (motors, pneumatics, simple sensors). It will of course require a complete code rewrite and isn't nearly as powerful in autonomous (or anytime really).

But, it'll be cheap!

-Andy A.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by davidmandle

I am a member of team 751 (barn2robotics) in Portola Valley, CA. At the SVR competition, our program port on our controller got ripped off , so we are now unable to make revisions to our robot's program. Now that a CalGames-like event may be happening, we are interested in fixing up our robot for another competition. Unfortunately, IFI robotics wants near $450 for a new robot controller, and my team is on a rediculously tight budget. We would (obviously) prefer to pay a mucher lesser sum and recieve a used controller. Do any of you teams have a legal and spare controller you'd be willing to sell us? We'd be very greatful. Thanks for you help!

We had this happen to us in Phoenix in 2004 with the radio plug. IFI was able to repair it, but I don't know how much it cost to have it done. (Somebody else handled that)Tony from IFI said the board is a mulit-level board so repairs are VERY tricky. I'm not sure they didn't just swap innards for us.

Tony also said that they had looked at other connection methods and hadn't found anything that had the reliability and availability of the standard 9pin serial connector. But they are very aware that the board is the weak spot and that the board tends to fail to protect the connector. Hopefully if you call them and explain the situation they will have mercy when writing out the bill.

At least talk to them, a phone call doesn't cost that much.

ChrisH

[Dave.Norton]

During competition our radio port was ripped off, we borrowed a board for the remainder, but I did replace the connector and get it running again. It is the board on the robot today. You will need someone who can solder as the holes are silly small, but take your time and go carefully you can replace it, and we were back up for less than $2 for the new connector (did void the warrentee though when I took the screws out, IFI wanted almost as much to fix it as a new one, and our budget is also tight).

[Kingofl337]

We also repared ours last year and again this year. DOH!