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Unread 15-02-2005, 19:12
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Arena Controller

Hey,

We are having a media day in Sacrmento. I know how to build the standard port overrides, and have built a central control system based on the same in the past. This year, however, we are trying to build a more advanced control system which can automatically interface the team colors, timing, etc.

Several people claim to have created such a thing, but I am curious how this was done.

Please respond with ideas.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 00:14
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IFI Secrets?

Hi, some team members and I were thinking it would be uber-cool if we could hack together a fake IFI "arena controller" and the field controller computer, to supply most of the functions that the real IFI stuff does for an off-season competition.

Specifically:
-LED Color
-Channel (all of them, remotely, not just enabling the dip switches)
-Auton & Disable (really easy)

Also if we could figure them out...
-Data being transmitted - I am guessing there is some sort of comms between the OI and the AC, I say this because of the "heartbeat" LED you can see on the AC's, that flashes at about the same rate (im guessing now) as the status lights onthe OI/RC (the 26.2ms loop). This could just be indicating the program loop, or it could mean that there is serial communication between the Arena Controller and the OI.


[EDIT] I just remembered that the radios run through the comp port now too. The new arena controllers must be a tad bit more complicated because of that since they have to rebroadcast the radio data to and from the modem tree. Just throwing this out there. We would have people use their own modems in our competition. [/EDIT]

Now, we were going to go ahead and try to map out as many of the comp port pins as possible (probably not too many). My question is, does anyone know anything at all about the IFI back-end controllers? Has anyone volunteered and touched/seen/used them? Can I not ask this...i.e, has IFI sworn those people who operate the field to secrecy? Is there any hope for us to get a full pinout of the comp port or at least some hints?

As far as I can tell, the only reasons IFI would have for not releasing any info on the AC or comp ports are 1) so people dont burn out their $350 OI, 2) so people dont hack it and download new firmware (i'm guessing that, as the only mystery port, the comp port is used to communicate directly with the OI's microprocessor and download new firmware. But, these reasons exist for other info IFI has released, such as using the program port, etc.

IFI seems to be doing a good job of avoiding liability for anything teams do to their comp ports, so I is there any other reason (besides wanting to keep trade secrets) that IFI couldn't release more info about how the arena system works?


Sorry if this seems pointless, but I think the IFI control system is extremely cool and it would be a great project to build our own arena controller.
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Last edited by cdawzrd : 06-03-2005 at 00:19.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 00:26
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Re: IFI Secrets?

I always thought something like that would be awesome, but never had the time/resources to actually do it.

I would be darn careful with what your doing given the rather large warning from IFI
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Unread 06-03-2005, 11:05
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Re: IFI Secrets?

IF (big IF) I were going to do this... here's where I would start...

1. Get a screw driver.
2. Open OI
3a. See what's inside...
3b. Look up the data sheets for the chips inside.
4. Pin out (w/ meter) what connects where and draw up
some kind of basic schematic. (Do this UNPOWERED)
5. Be happy.

Common stuff I would expect to be there (never having opened an OI).
A. Some kind of voltage regulation circuitry.
B. Some kind of microcontroller (probably another PIC18 series)
C. Some kind of RS232 driver circuitry.

Here's what people before you have noted about the Comp Port:
1. There are power and gnd pins.
2. There are some GPIO pins to control Auton/Disable
(GPIO is general purpose IO, think the digital inputs/outputs on the RC)
3. And the other pins are a mystery... but I'd bet there are
serial i/o pins, given how IFI has magically done away with
the radios directly connected to the OI.

Also from what I know about the Arena system:
The arena actually functions over ethernet (hardwired).
Each alliance station actually has a private IP address
(man... it was pretty cool to ping an alliance station ).
So here's the setup (on each side):
3 Arena Controllers somehow have an ethernet interface.
Each AC appeared to have 5 ports of interest:
1. 1 ports for Competition controllers
2. 1 Comm Port
3. 1 Power port

Now If I were a betting man (ie how i would design the system)...
I would use some kind of embedded linux to talk to a commercial
Single board computer that has a serial port (or 3, one for each AC)
over IP and relay data over some custom protocol over TCP.

Now... disclaimer. If you are not a CE/EE and know what you are doing
I would suggest not doing anything. Those things are darn expensive.
(I've never been brave/crazy enough to crack one open...one day maybe
and I'm a 5th year CE Grad Student)

Secondly, as a budding engineer you have to ask yourself what the
ethical implications of reverse engineering someone else's design are.
(I'm not touching this with a 10' pole)

Lastly, IANAL. Don't annoy IFI. Cease and Desist letters are not fun.
They do good work for FIRST.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 13:58
steven114 steven114 is offline
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Re: IFI Secrets?

Why not just email and ask IFI themselves? Many of the people that I've met have been very nice and helpful, and they may just share a few secrets.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 21:00
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Re: IFI Secrets?

I have opened up an OI after someone spilled soda all over it and I cleaned it out. It is an old one so we're not that worried about not being able to get it repaired on warranty... I think the soda pretty much killed that :-)

Anyway, I, not being an EE, didn't get much info out of the OI except for there being at least one microprocessor.

Keep in mind, my goal here is making something functional for an off-season competition, not duplicating what IFI does. That means, I would prefer to make it wired directly into an interface, not with single-board computers as AC's with ethernet...as cool as that would be.

What i was thinking:
-Each OI gets a comp-port cable that goes back to a game controller. This would be the _only_ control device (apart from computers). This would tie together the disable/autonomous from each one and interface with a computer, either with a serial driver or with another IFI-RC talking to a PC through its program port (those RC's are the most useful pieces of hardware I've ever seen).

There would be two computers networked. One would be running a display program I am working on, outputting a color-keyed fullscreen display of time and scores to a video mixer/projector. The other computer would be running the control program that would network with the display computer and the field controller, telling it when to disable and autonomous-enable the various robots. That in itself would be enough, but for one problem:

Radio channels.

I could ask each team to go through the process of setting the MSB of the team number and then assign them a radio channel, but it would be so much nicer to set it remotely. Unfortunately, that might only be accomplished through another IFI-proprietary data stream that would be extremely hard to decode without their help (kinda like the stream from the dashboard port).
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Unread 06-03-2005, 21:08
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Re: IFI Secrets?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jzampier
Also from what I know about the Arena system:
The arena actually functions over ethernet (hardwired).
Each alliance station actually has a private IP address
(man... it was pretty cool to ping an alliance station ).
So here's the setup (on each side):
3 Arena Controllers somehow have an ethernet interface.
Each AC appeared to have 5 ports of interest:
1. 1 ports for Competition controllers
2. 1 Comm Port
3. 1 Power port
So, after the Arena Controllers, everything is done on computers? Like, there aren't any more small rectangular black boxes from IFI labeled "Uber-Master-Multiplex Controller" etc?

In that case, the AC would handle just about everything... oh well.

Before I directly email IFI, if anyone working for or related to IFI is reading this, what is your feeling? Should I stop this right now or is it ok?

If there is an easy way to set team color, that would be neat. It's interesting that autonomous and disable are plain digital switches, instead of being part of a serial data stream. Did they intentionally break off those two to let teams build competition adapter dongles? Does this mean that any other functions (read-light color) are plain digital inputs?
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Unread 06-03-2005, 21:18
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Re: Arena Controller

I had the same idea.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=35833

Someone responded who had seen the control system there, and honestly, it doesnt look very promising. I suspect that all functions other than the standard disable/auto are enclosed in serial comms between the OI and the Arena Controller.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 21:46
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Re: IFI Secrets?

If you did research through IFI and read the Robot Controller and Operator Interface manuals you would find that the LED colors are selected in the master controller based on which radio channel you use. This is as of 2004, and I do not believe they changed that this year. As for selecting channels, you can make switches for the competition ports (or interface them to a computer) to select the channels. Teams do it all the time for offseason competitions. It's all in documented resources on the Innovation First website if you look around, it's been done for years. If you can't find them, call IFI and they're very helpful. Autonomous and disabled are also simply shorting out 2 particular pins on the OI...
DISCLAIMER: IF YOU DO THIS AND MESS UP, YOU CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR OPERATOR INTERFACE, AND IT WILL NO LONGER BE COVERED UNDER WARRANTY. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE RESEARCHED BEFORE PLUGGING ANYTHING INTO THE COMPETITION PORT.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 22:04
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Re: IFI Secrets?

If you are planning on hosting an off season competition i would seriously suggest you to get an official FIRST field, which would come with the field electronics. While this may cost a lot for insurance and is normally refunded, barring no damage, see if a sponsor will help out. Also in the long run it probably will be cheaper for if some reason your home brew arena controller surges power to the teams OI, it will start costing you a lot to replace damaged units for teams.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 22:12
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Re: IFI Secrets?

To Miketwalker: I have read the manuals. The system you are talking about sets the LED colors based on the channels that teams can set on the channel switches. There are only two channels that have a blue color, therefore Triple Play wouldn't work that well... Also, the goal was to see if we could set the channel externally without the hassle involved (changing the team number MSB and getting every team to change their channel switches correctly).

To dez250: The reason we are doing this is 95% for the fun of hacking together (the good sense of the word) the back-end control system, not to have official stuff. We also don't have any money :-)

Note that the OI doesn't HAVE to receive power from the Arena Controller---we would have them bring their bricks to plug in. Same goes for the radio modems, we would have teams do it the old way.

We merely would have this system _available_ in the case we want to have an off-season event. As a programmer and electrical person, I would be doing it for the fun of it.

Also, no offense, but enough with the disclaimers. I have seen an OI blow up because of a miswired comp port dongle. We will be taking precautions and doing extensive testing before actually using the system with other teams' OI's.
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Last edited by cdawzrd : 06-03-2005 at 22:14.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 22:26
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Re: IFI Secrets?

Quote:
Originally Posted by miketwalker
As for selecting channels, you can make switches for the competition ports (or interface them to a computer) to select the channels. Teams do it all the time for offseason competitions. It's all in documented resources on the Innovation First website if you look around, it's been done for years.
Are you sure about that? The channel selection is in none of the documentation I have found. In fact, the competition port pinout guide explicitly states that connecting to any pins other than the four called out (ground, disable, autonomous, and practice) will void the OI warranty.

The three offseason competitions I have attended either used the official IFI field controllers, or had the radio channels set manually using the OI switches.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 22:27
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Re: IFI Secrets?

Quote:
Originally Posted by cdawzrd
Also, no offense, but enough with the disclaimers. I have seen an OI blow up because of a miswired comp port dongle. We will be taking precautions and doing extensive testing before actually using the system with other teams' OI's.
I wasn't necessarily placing the disclaimer just towards you, but if some person comes along reading this thread and says "OH I SHOULD DO THAT!" and when they blow something up say that I helped them out with ideas... I'm not in the mood to be yelled at and have people say I suggested something that cost them alot of money because of a mess up.
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Unread 06-03-2005, 22:42
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Re: IFI Secrets?

Alan and all, as far as i have been told by IFI up to last year 4 channels were available to everyone to practice with so you could scrimmage. This year 6 are available for the same reason. Now to access the other 34 the Firmware that is in your RC and the Firmware thats in the Arena Controller have sections that do some of that. Without IFI equipment you really cant open all 40 channels yourself.
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Unread 07-03-2005, 09:07
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Re: IFI Secrets?

For everyone's reference, here's how you select the channels: Set the MSB of the team number (to make the team number higher than 2048) while having the OI tethered to the RC. Then, select a new channel from the six and reset.

I realize that it would be easy enough to get everyone in a scrimmage to set their team numbers correctly and then assign them channels. However, the idea behind this thread was to learn more about how the Arena Controllers work to set the OTHER 34 channels, not to be able to quickly hold an off-season event.
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