Make Robot Glow with Alliance Colors Automatically

[wre136]

I would think to white LEDs in the shape of the team number on the inside of the pool noodle would work, but is that legal? Cool if it was!

[ekapalka]

Is there something like Get Alliance in C++ as well?

[ykarkason]

Yeah, there is, something like that:

DriverStation.GetInstance->GetAlliance()

Even though the syntax may be wrong, I'm a little rusty with C++...

[Chris Hibner]

We did this on team 308 in 1999 (the first year of alliances). We had a 6" x 12" grid of LEDs on each side of the robot that we could switch from red to blue. That was the only year we did it, but it looked great.

[MikeE]

One of our students developed something similar this year with SPI bus driven tri-color LED strips running under Arduino control.

• During the initial disabled period before the match the LED strips show a slowly chaning rainbow pattern
• During autonomous the alliance color would flash along the LED strips
• In teleop we would use each side as a bargraph to display the wheel encoder readings for each side of tank drive
• On successful climb & dump the driver operates a switch and the LEDs show the team's "tie dye" colors in a flashing pattern
• We had a few other modes programmed but didn't use them in matches
• 4 DIO pins were used to communicate "mode" and 2 PWM to transmit "analog" values from the cRIO to the Arduino

Definitely the prettiest robot I've been associated with.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by ekapalka

Is there something like Get Alliance in C++ as well?

There is. In C++ see DriverStation::GetAlliance(). In Java it's DriverStation.getAlliance()

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by wre136

I would think to white LEDs in the shape of the team number on the inside of the pool noodle would work, but is that legal? Cool if it was!

Not currently (or any time in the foreseeable future), but one can hope!