Lights to help aim

[jijiglobe]

Fair warning, our team used a flashlight to aim our shot with incredible success throughout all of our qualifications matches, however, in Eliminations, our opponents said that our flashlight was distracting/blinding them during the match. We were forced to unplug the flashlight, significantly dropping our accuracy. Be careful about relying on a flashlight to aim, I highly recommend you have some sort of fallback solution.

[BenBernard]

Controlling your light via a relay should avoid this complaint. I've seen several teams (oursleves included) that turn their light on as part of their firing sequence. We tend to already be turned towards the tower by then, so we don't shine in anyone's eyes.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by BenBernard

Controlling your light via a relay should avoid this complaint. I've seen several teams (oursleves included) that turn their light on as part of their firing sequence. We tend to already be turned towards the tower by then, so we don't shine in anyone's eyes.

Does anyone referee the validity of the claims of distraction from opposing teams? You definitely don't want to legitimately distract people with bright lights, but at the same time, I could see saying "hey, that's distracting! make them disable it!" as a way to gain strategic advantage.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by jijiglobe

Fair warning, our team used a flashlight to aim our shot with incredible success throughout all of our qualifications matches, however, in Eliminations, our opponents said that our flashlight was distracting/blinding them during the match. We were forced to unplug the flashlight, significantly dropping our accuracy. Be careful about relying on a flashlight to aim, I highly recommend you have some sort of fallback solution.

Did your light have a lens to focus or was it just a light?

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by jijiglobe

Fair warning, our team used a flashlight to aim our shot with incredible success throughout all of our qualifications matches, however, in Eliminations, our opponents said that our flashlight was distracting/blinding them during the match. We were forced to unplug the flashlight, significantly dropping our accuracy. Be careful about relying on a flashlight to aim, I highly recommend you have some sort of fallback solution.

We have the same head referee at Tech Valley that we did at Pittsburgh, so if he suddenly disallowed our flashlight at Tech Valley because of some team's bogus claims, that would be a fun discussion indeed.

Did you leave your light on all the time or turn it on only when the shooter was on? Is your flashlight very large/bright?

We used China's finest Cree LED $6 specials from amazon.com. Cheap, light, bright, effective. And not overpoweringly so. I remember seeing the light sweep through the opposing driver stations at Pittsburgh on the way to aiming, but the hardy Ohio and Western PA types must have less sensitive eyes than those in New York City, cuz no complaints were lodged.

I remember 25's ridiculously large and bright lightzooka from 2012 being on all the time. I was standing behind the driver's glass watching matches at CMP and I remember the thing practically blinding me. I'm fairly sure it could induce migraines in people. I don't believe anyone asked for that to be turned off.

If you are pointing the light at the opposing drivers for an extended period in an attempt to intentionally distract them, that's one thing. If you are merely using the light for its intended purpose of aiming and shooting, that should be TOTALLY acceptable by ANY head referee. Running the light off a relay will certainly help matters.

If this becomes a thing, you can rest assured I will wage war against all those annoyingly bright green LED rings that are on 24/7/365 during a match. Those are CLEARLY meant to distract and annoy, right? They don't serve any other useful purpose in a match, do they? [/sarcasm]

#teamflashlight #allyourvisionledbelongtous

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

If this becomes a thing, you can rest assured I will wage war against all those annoyingly bright green LED rings that are on 24/7/365 during a match. Those are CLEARLY meant to distract and annoy, right? They don't serve any other useful purpose in a match, do they? [/sarcasm]

#teamflashlight

That is absolutely absurd those bright green led rings are and have always been crucial structural elements on a robot.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

That is absolutely absurd those bright green led rings are and have always been crucial structural elements on a robot.

The keystone of any rock solid robot frame is welded-on Green LED rings, to be sure.

[Kristian Calhoun]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I remember 25's ridiculously large and bright lightzooka from 2012 being on all the time. I was standing behind the driver's glass watching matches at CMP and I remember the thing practically blinding me. I'm fairly sure it could induce migraines in people. I don't believe anyone asked for that to be turned off.

We were never asked to turn off our light in 2012 because we did so ourselves. It was only ever turned on for a few seconds at a time while lining up the shot.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Kristian Calhoun

We were never asked to turn off our light in 2012 because we did so ourselves. It was only ever turned on for a few seconds at a time while lining up the shot.

OK then, exactly what we do this year. Precedent established. Use a relay. It's more than those vision teams usually bother to do.

#teamflashlight

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by jijiglobe

Fair warning, our team used a flashlight to aim our shot with incredible success throughout all of our qualifications matches, however, in Eliminations, our opponents said that our flashlight was distracting/blinding them during the match. We were forced to unplug the flashlight, significantly dropping our accuracy. Be careful about relying on a flashlight to aim, I highly recommend you have some sort of fallback solution.

What height was the beam at? I could maybe see their point if it was pointed at eye level. We aimed our beam to hit the very top of the tower, but that was more out of convenience for mounting than anything else.

-Mike

[ejscribner]

Is the use of a laser pointer allowed on the robot? I feel like a laser would be exceedingly helpful for aiming and such.

[ollien]

Originally Posted by ejscribner

Is the use of a laser pointer allowed on the robot? I feel like a laser would be exceedingly helpful for aiming and such.

No. Typically, visible lasers are of Class II/III. The blue box on R9 says that you can only use Class I lasers.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Coach Seb

Yes, we removed the circuit board and solder the LED directly to the voltage converter.

I don't know what kind of flashlight you started with. If it's a typical LED, then you have probably fried it by letting it have too much current. You need to have a resistor in series with it to set the current to a level where the LED will work properly.

[Coach Seb]

I bought the exact same thing that was recommended by apm4242....

- LED Flashlight with zoom
- DC-DC Voltage Converter/Regulator
- Spike Relay

I'll check the voltage again... last night we had 10V on the spike relay, i did not check the voltage after the converter yet as we assumed we fried the spike... but yet between test it worked... still wondering...

[JesseK]

I need to do more than a cursory look at electronics for legality, but is it possible to run two flashlights off of one spike relay? We'd like to run one flashlight off of the positive signal and a different flashlight off of the negative signal. Our electronics team has an idea of how it may work, but nothing concrete until they're back from Spring Break.