Aiming lamps

[pilleya]

Originally Posted by RyanCahoon

At the Sacramento Regional, the LRI expressed an additional concern: blinding audience members. If you have a field arrangement where the audience is behind either of the towers (as is typical when the venue is a basketball arena), this may be something to keep in mind, even if you only turn the light on when aiming.

Yes, it could potentially be a problem. The Inverse Square Law says that the light intensity will greatly decrease with distance, and the audience is usually a reasonable distance from the field. It's funny how many things learnt in Physics class at school I am able to apply to FRC.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Alastair,
That is normally true for a non-focused light source. In the case of some flashlights, the reflector and or lens make a near columnar beam that does not follow the inverse square law. The first light I inspected using one of the defense flashlights had beam spot at about one hundred feet that was only 1' wide. I could see faces in the balcony when it turned on.

[sdcantrell56]

As one of the teams who was called out for our flashlight this past weekend I think I can speak on this matter some. We have a flashlight with an aspherical lens that allows focusing the beam tight enough to see the LED die outline on the wall. We have been lazy and had it powered straight off of a power regulator so that it is always on. It is mounted on a stick that is approximately 5' off the floor. Most of the time this wasn't a problem, but if we bumped into the opposing alliances wall, it was positioned pretty perfectly to blind the drivers. We didn't really think about this as we very rarely drive in that area. When it was brought to our attention we quickly added a spike and set it to be on momentarily so that we only turn it on while aiming from the outerworks when the beam is high up on the tower.

I think it is fair to ask teams to put it on a switch and keep it off except when aiming. The only excuse for not doing that is laziness. Trying to enforce rules about intensity is not the way to go.