Interesting IR sensor test results

[Mr. Freeman]

My team just got our board today (we were on break and unable to get into the school to retrieve it). I decided to take it home, get it working, and preform some unofficial tests. I searched before posting this and didn't find anything similar, sorry if someone has already posted this.

I found that the board will reliably receive and indicate signals from much over 30 feet in the presence of a lot of ambient light. I took two mag-lights and pointed them straight at the IR sensor on the board and the board still reliably received and indicated signals from the TV remote I was using. (30 feet was actually 30 paces, and I only stopped there because I ran out of room)

I also found that the board could receive signals from 360 degrees. With my hand covering the LEDs on the remote the board reliably received and indicated commands from 2 feet away.

Now, the really interesting thing I discovered is that it takes only 1 other signal to jam the board. I made sure the board could reliably receive and indicate the signal from 2 feet away, then pressed a button on another remote while also pressing a button on the remote the board was trained with. With all of the remotes I tested (5), it took only one of them at any one time to completely jam the receiver.

I suspect things will get interesting with 6 teams all sending signals to their robots at once. I guess you probably shouldn't program your robot to drive very fast during autonomous or else you might end up slamming into a wall before you can get your bot to acknowledge your turn command. I hope no one will abuse this and just jam the entire field for everyone with their remote.