Robot Lighting

[Johnny_5]

Originally Posted by taichichuan

We've had good luck with using Arduinos and RGB addressable LED tape like this stuff:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/306

The Arduino can only source 40ma on one digital out. So, you'll likely have to create your own power transistor circuit if you want to trigger more than a simple LED.

Good luck and enjoy the lights!

In regards to this addressable strip, I saw that you must use a micro controller to use the lights. Instead of using an Arduino board couldn't you use a DIO off of the sidercar?

[taichichuan]

Originally Posted by Johnny_5

In regards to this addressable strip, I saw that you must use a micro controller to use the lights. Instead of using an Arduino board couldn't you use a DIO off of the sidercar?

Yes, you can use a DIO off of the sidecar. However, we frequently find ourselves in the situation where we're maxing out our sidecar with limit switches and the like. So, if you've got the pins, use 'em ;-).

[SteveGarward]

We added our lighting very late this year at Championship due to making sure we had weight for it.

We used the addressable LED strip from Adafruit, as we did last year. This was controlled by an Arduino Uno R3, which was sent commands to change mode from our robot software through I2C. We were in danger of maxing out the available digital I/O ports early in the season, but had planned to use an Arduino anyway. I2C is available and keeps other robot-useful ports open, and has built in SPI support which is the fastest method of communicating with the LED strip.

Once we had the I2C figured out, it was easy after that.

[Peck]

this year, we went to the local auto shop and grabbed some lights meant to "pimp out" cars.

It u put lights on it, judges seem to like fancy lights that also have practical purpose. one practical use we had this year was lighting up the path the ball went through so we could see the number of balls in the hopper through the smoked polycarb we used for our sides.