IR Board Fried?

[da_dove]

what's the regulation regarding changing/fixing/modifying the IR board?

Are the judges going to examine the board to make sure that it's the original/approved modification?

How would anyone know if I swapped the IR receiver for a stronger one to get more distance? Is that allowed?

thanks

[Mark McLeod]

The IR Sensors themselves are not explicitly required by the rules, the rules refer only to "SIGNALING DEVICES," so you can treat the IR sensor as a custom circuit and do pretty much anything you'd like with it. Even replace it with another device that fits within the rules.

Originally Posted by [B

8.3.8 - Control, Command & Signals System[/b]]
<R65>
SIGNALING DEVICES shall be designed to communicate signals from the ROBOCOACH to the ROBOT. SIGNALING DEVICES are excluded from Rule <R64>. SIGNALING DEVICES shall:

• use either passive (no emission of any electromagnetic radiation) or active (emits some restricted form of electromagnetic radiation) means of communication
• be hand held and completely supported by the ROBOCOACH when operated
• does not attach to anything or anyone other than the ROBOCOACH
• exclusively receives input from, and is operated by, the ROBOCOACH
• not receive any input or feedback directly from the ROBOT (the ROBOCOACH may receive feedback from the ROBOT and use it to control the SIGNALING DEVICE)
• be no larger than 3 feet tall by 3 feet wide by 1 foot deep (to fit within the confined volume of the ROBOCOACH STATION
• remain entirely within the ROBOCOACH STATION
• use a maximum of four different inputs from the ROBOCOACH (e.g. use four different buttons) during any single MATCH
• communicate no more than four messages, states or conditions to the ROBOT (please refer to Rule <R69> and Rule <G01> for additional information) during any single MATCH.

Active SIGNALING DEVICES shall:
• use visible light, infrared communications, or sound as the transmission method – no other form of electro-magnetic radiation is permitted
a. All radio frequency communications (as defined by the United States Federal Communications Commission) are explicitly prohibited.
b. All laser-based communications by any device classified by the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as a laser are explicitly prohibited.
c. All communications must satisfy Rule <S01>.

• not be used to interfere with any other ROBOT
• be able to switch between no more than four states or conditions (i.e. send no more than four messages)
• be operated through only a single input at any given time (e.g. may not be operated by depressing two buttons at one time)
• not use changes in the signal states to encode or transmit larger messages (e.g. Morse code)

[Jonathan S]

Hi, my name is Jonathan and I am from team 1660 the Harlem Knights. The same thing happened to our IR board to. But we got a solution. Our voltage regulator was reducing 9volts in to 5volts. But no signal was being sent. So we diagnosed that the voltage regulator was electricly burned. So we went online and searched for voltage regulators and we found it at www.digikey.com. We found a Regulator TO-92. The part number is 296-1365-ND.

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...keywords=78l05

If you have any questions email me at johnnyrocksursocks@gmail.com

[Mr-Shutter]

Determining Why Your IR Board is DEAD
There are two main possible causes for IR board death.
First and most common, you hooked up groud and v+ backwards.
To confirm this apply a +12V supply to pin 1 and or 2, then ground to pin 3 and or 4. Messure the voltage at the top of capacitor 4. This should be +5v, if it is 0v then your power supply has died. You need a LM7508 5volt power reulator and replace with the one on the board. A quick fix is to use the +5volts from the RC board and hook it up to 1 and 2 then 3 and 4 to ground.
Jump the connections on the power regulator (u2) on the back of the PCB. You will notice a close cluster of 3 solder point. You must jump the outer connections of the group of 3. This is how you jump the regulator. If you do this YOU MUST MAKE SURE YOU INPUT IS +5. If it is not you will kill the board.

Otherwise order a replacement power reuglator for U2.

If you have a +5 voltage from c4 then you must have fried the board. You need to order a new one D:

Hope this Helps.

[StevenB]

From FIRST's schematic, the part is an LM78L05, available from Digi-Key.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...ywords=LM78l05
Any of the TO-92 package chips should work.

[Shivang1923]

you can always make your own. Programing it would be a little hard without knowing the rate of the IR signal from the remote, but if you can, you can make a replacement one until you can buy another.

an example is:
(MADE UP BTW)

on remote, pressing play will make its IR LED pulse on,off,on,on,off (10110).
If you have the replacement circuit board's IR sensor look for the IR signal pulsating at 10110, it can recognize the remote button.

This isn't a complete fix, and I'm pretty sure you cannot use this in the actual match, but it's a way to practice while you don't have one. This way if you get one 3 days before ship, you're not screwed because you will have the code worked out. You'll just haveto tweak it a bit for the FIRST IR board.

[Team 135]

We did not receive one in December when everyone else did, due to a mailing problem in our building, so we emailed FIRST and they said that we would have to buy a new one from IFI. We called IFI and placed an order for it about 2 weeks ago and got it in about 3 days.

[akaria]

There is an IR Receiver Breakout board available from SparkFun Electronics, all you would have to do is hook it up to a digital in on the main controller and program in the stream of bits. It would make the process a lot easer.

Board:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...ducts_id=8554#


I will post some example code later once I get mine setup.

Erica Young

[tagger]

sorry for the harmless bump, if anyone has some sample code for the sparkfun IR Reciever Breakout board then it would be welcome =D.