Serious Controller Ideas

[archiver]

Posted by Thomas A. Frank, Engineer on team #121, The Islanders/Rhode Warrior, from Middletown (RI) High School and Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

Posted on 5/19/99 10:24 AM MST


In Reply to: remote the relays... posted by Joe Johnson on 5/15/99 7:22 PM MST:



Hello All;

I agree wholeheartedly! We need two boxes, a power distribution assembly which
contains all the circuit breakers, relays, and current shunts to monitor outputs, battery monitor,
and a separate control box with the microcontroller, the analog and digital inputs, PWM outputs,
interrupts, and a PCMCIA spread spectrum RF ethernet card.

Using the ethernet would allow bidriectional communications, which would be great for
troubleshooting, and real time display of status. Imagine having a display at the player
station that showed the state of say a switch which would let you know when you were against
a pole or in some other state as desired...

FIRST could also run a packet sniffer/capture program which would store the whole match,
and allow them to show, after the fact, whether there were any problems with their equipment. That
would ensure maximum fairness in the rematch area.

The RF SS EN setup would also do away with the need for the tether adapters, turning in RNet's, and
all the related inconvienience of the present system.

Tom Frank