Robot Lighting

[taichichuan]

We used an Arduino Mega with an Ethernet shield this year for the RPM on the shooter and the angle of our ball launch. Using the Ethernet wasn't too hard. But, the cRio had something odd in the robot code where if you started sending packets, but there was nothing actively reading them, that the robot would eventually go offline. We were using UDP on the local link as a directed unicast to keep packets from going across the link to the driver station.

It's definitely related to the robot code because I've been using VxWorks for over 25 years and I've never encountered anything like this failure in the main OS. Nonetheless, if you have a thread reading the packets all of the time, then everything works well. I'll be doing some tests as soon as I get access to a cRio again to see how much data the cRio can absorb via the Ethernet during normal operation before the driver station packets start getting dropped.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

Appreciated!

The lights were first put on the robot to look cool for the video, but it wasn't until we found an actual use for them that we were able to get the momentum to actually integrate them electrically.

We used an Arduino Uno to talk to this LED strip (mentioned above). The interface between the cRio and the LED strip were some of the relay outputs on the sidecar. Specifically, there was one relay output (two bits) to run the lights for our co-op assist feature, and another for the fancy lights that fired when we picked up or shot a ball.

At championship, we added a switch to tell when the stinger was touching the ground, and wired that directly into the Arduino, which was simpler and makes a lot of sense, because we weren't doing anything else with that data.

Cheap additional processors like the Arduino hold a lot of promise for enhancing the possibilities for sensors on these robots that might have been limited by the number of inputs in a sidecar. I know that we explored some redundancy in our sensing this year, and that can exhaust the digital and analog input ports very quickly. A good off season project might be to explore interfacing something like the Ethernet Arduino with the cRio in order to fully exploit these possibilities.

Thanks for sharing your team had some of the best lighting I have ever seen on a robot!

[AlexH]

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/...ight-strip-led

they are super bright and can plug into the extra pwm slots on the digital sidecar.

[AlDee]

Originally Posted by mikets

I am not familiar with the power interface of electroluminescent wire but it seems it is powered by high AC voltage (90-120V 1000Hz) so it needs a power controller. If you manage to interface 12V DC to this power controller, it may be feasible. Searching the Internet, it looks like they sell these with a power controller that can take AAA batteries. So in theory, you could DC-DC convert 12V to whatever battery voltage the power controller uses.

Relay is mechanical, since we are trying to play with pulse width modulation on the RGB lights, relay has a limit of how fast you can turn the light on and off. BTW, in case you worry about whether the solenoid channel can power the LED lights, each solenoid channel can source up to 0.75A current, an LED light strip generally consumes about 100mA.

I'm sure these can be made to run off 12V, My question is are they FRC legal since they generate high voltage internally? I have the same question about neon light strips.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Neon tubes have been allowed with a DC-DC high voltage convertor, but must meet all electrical rules and then be inspected. Insulation and safety are the prime issues but leaving broken glass on the field is another. If you can't satisfy all of these concerns, it is better to use the weight for something that plays the game.
The high voltage from one of these convertors is not likely to kill anyone but it does give the gift that keeps on giving as we say in electrical circles. Burns, localized nerve damage and scars are common.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by AlexH

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/...ight-strip-led

they are super bright and can plug into the extra pwm slots on the digital sidecar.

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

[AlDee]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

WHOA! That's a bargain! $16.99 for 16 feet of lighting? We've been trying to add lighting effects to our robots for years but have only come across the automotive type strips that end up costing more than $10/ft! This is awesome. Thanks for posting it!

[AlDee]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

WHOA! That's a bargain! $16.99 for 16 feet of lighting? We've been trying to add lighting effects to our robots for years but have only come across the automotive type strips that end up costing more than $10/ft! This is awesome. Thanks for posting it!

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Those are very nice, but we never have open PWM slots. We do have open solenoid connectors though, and this 16 foot long strip works beautifully:

http://www.amazon.com/Zitrades-Flexi...86079&sr =1-1

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W. You can trim leds off the end to make it match whatever available wattage you have. It's bright as all get-out. You can see one here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielernst/7001842862/
(it's much brighter than shown in the photograph)

We used very similar LED strips this year and last. We've generally run them directly off of the Power Distribution Board, or through a Spike if we wanted to be able to trigger them on or off.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Jeff Waegelin

We used very similar LED strips this year and last. We've generally run them directly off of the Power Distribution Board, or through a Spike if we wanted to be able to trigger them on or off.

That's the way we started doing it, but this year they made a nice change that lets you runs loads off the solenoid board. I was very happy to save the wiring and weight of a spike.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

That's the way we started doing it, but this year they made a nice change that lets you runs loads off the solenoid board. I was very happy to save the wiring and weight of a spike.

For our ring light we connected it directly to the PD board saved the wiring and weight of solenoid breakout (yeah, my team has been reluctant to switch over to the breakout due to the 'hassle' of putting 2-pin connectors on all of our solenoids. Also the solenoids look cooler with 12 gauge wires, and the connectors for the solenoid breakout don't play well with wires that big.)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Be careful though, it's near the upper rule-legal limit for total wattage. The rule is 21W for the 4 slot crio solenoid breakout, and this runs 20 mA * 100 * 12V = 24W.

Please note that the 9472 is only rated for 750ma per channel which is 9 watts at 12 volts, or 18 watts at 24 volts when used in either Crio chassis.

[kevinle]

I found the same lpd8806 individually addressable rgb strips for 117 bucks. A full tutorial on the strip and some code, pretty good for those who haven't come across it yet: http://www.ladyada.net/products/digi...rip/index.html

First thing I suggest you do is load that library, pull up the strand test example and load it onto your teensy then have some fun with it.

[apples000]

During the offseason, our team has made a neat light controller for two independent colors of RGB LED lights. We used our own PCB with a MAX232 IC to connect the cRIO serial port to the serial connection of a ATMega328 microcontroller(The one found in newer ardruinos). The ATMega328 would receive a color command from the cRIO and it would use its 6 pwms to switch the transistors for the common anode LED's. It makes a great project and it only requires 24 components so routing the PCB was really easy. If anybody is interested, I can post an eagle board and schematic, as well as our labview code and the code we used on the atmega. The atmega has the arduino bootloader so it can be programmed through the arduino enviornment.

[Burbelm]

Originally Posted by Meshbeard

Our team is looking into putting some led lighting on our robot next year. If any teams that have previously done so would like to offer some advice, it would be much appreciated.

I know team 118's robot had some nice lighting this year, and team 148 always has underglow on their robot.

Try led lights they will consume less battery.