Wiring an LED from the OI

[Windward]

Recently, in the robot showcase section, a team showed off a "HUD" where they had three LEDs attached to his goggles. This made me ponder how to wire an LED from the OI that would light up if certain parameters are met (which I assume I would have to program.)

Any advice?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Windward,
The OI has several outputs that are meant for direct connection to LEDs. We use them all the time for position, tally and calibration. See the OI manual for pinout and description.

[jgannon]

The pins that you can use for wiring up LEDs are enumerated in the reference guide for the Operator Interface. These pins correspond to the LEDs already visible on the OI, and thus are addressed the same way in code.

http://ifirobotics.com/docs/oi-ref-guide-11-21-05.pdf

[Windward]

Thank you very much for the links and quick reponses! Hopefully we'll test this out soon enough.

[Gary Dillard]

Sorry to resurrect this, but it didn't really answer the question I have: how to do that physically and simply. We had a HUD on SPAM last year, but it went into a custom control box so it was just some additional wiring.
We currently are using joysticks into Ports 1-3 and a custom box into Port 4; that means we only have to wire up one custom harness, as the other three can just use the existing joystick connector. If I want to use the LED outputs in Port 1, do I need to make a Y cable leading to a 15 pin connector for the joystick and a smaller connector or wiring splitting off to the LED's? Is it possible to take apart the joystick and take it off there? (I haven't looked so I don't know if the cable carries all 15 leads) Is there a simpler way?

Also, do I just need to split off the LED pins and one ground pin?

[karlcswanson]

A Y cable would probably be the best option, the hood on the joystick connector might be molded around the db15 connector, and all 15 pins might not be accessible inside the joystick. You would only need to split off the led pins and a ground pin.

[Drwurm]

Well, I believe you might be referring to my team's (294) '06 robot. I can't actually tell you how it works because this is my first year on the team. But I can tell you that it wasn't very complex.