Control System, Joystick mod?

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Wayne Doenges
[b]According to the rules last year you couldn't modify the joysticks. Team 234 should have been told that they had to change there control.
Someone on Team 234 said that they "held their breath" everytime a judge stopped by. But they won the innovation awards, so it must have been legal.

If I remember correctly, the original rules last year said no modifications to the joysticks, but FIRST removed this stipulation in one of the updates, saying you could, but if it was damaged beyond use, it would not be replaced free of charge.

We would like to use a glove to control part of our robot but some of the things we want to use are not in the AHL. But than again, I didn't see a backpack listed last year.

FIRST has always said that structurally, there were no limitations on the operator controls. The only things they do limit are how things can be connected electrically. I don't have an exact rule in front of me, but that is how I remember it...

[s_alaniz]

I think the intention of FIRST in allowing teams to wire joystick ports was to encourage people to build from scratch using potentiometers and swtiches.. to develop their own controller..(Note well, no other components have been allowed on the OI side... the digikey components are, at this time, ROBOT side only...and pulling parts out of a different style controller would not be legal, so don't try to sneak them by...).. BUT this year's rules would make the Team 234 control system Illegal under the rules... I don't remember if it was illegal last year, but I remember seeing it in competition and wondering how they got away with it. Still I was relying on Gracious Professionalism by team 234 to self-police and left it at that. We had two similar controllers ...completely built from scratch... but had abandoned ball control in our strategy so neither system was used.
Anyway, Please don't be offended if other's call you on a rules violation. I, myself, intend to be a bit more vigilant this year and push FIRST to stick to it's own rules without being overly picky, (that includes the $100.00 limit but it's in the rules so you know that) so...no bending the rules... it's not gracious.


Best wishes


Steve Alaniz


"What good is technology if you can't abuse it?" - Ted Forth