NJ Regional: IR Legality

[ALIBI]

Would commands like this be legal?

A: Turn Left
B: Go Straight and increase speed 5%
C: Turn Right
D: Go Straight and decrease speed 5%

Note: The straight command would be from 0-250 with 125 being in the middle of reverse and forward so that if you decreased speed enough, you would end up going in reverse. You really end up with four commands, forward, reverse, left or right. I am just not sure about the legality of the incremental increases/decreases in speed. On the other hand, increasing straight speed by +5% is a single command and decreasing straight speed by -5% is also a single command. Each time you push the "B" button speed increases by 5% and each time you push the "D" button speed decreases by 5%.

If this is not legal, would having:

B: Go straight at x% speed forward
D: Go straight at x% speed reverse

A and C would be in the direction and speed previously set by B or D

From what I saw in Hybrid today, it appears that some teams are using this type of setup.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ALIBI

Would commands like this be legal?

A: Turn Left
B: Go Straight and increase speed 5%
C: Turn Right
D: Go Straight and decrease speed 5%

Note: The straight command would be from 0-250 with 125 being in the middle of reverse and forward so that if you decreased speed enough, you would end up going in reverse. You really end up with four commands, forward, reverse, left or right. I am just not sure about the legality of the incremental increases/decreases in speed. On the other hand, increasing straight speed by +5% is a single command and decreasing straight speed by -5% is also a single command. Each time you push the "B" button speed increases by 5% and each time you push the "D" button speed decreases by 5%.

If this is not legal, would having:

B: Go straight at x% speed forward
D: Go straight at x% speed reverse

A and C would be in the direction and speed previously set by B or D

From what I saw in Hybrid today, it appears that some teams are using this type of setup.

A and C are definitely legal, provided that they are not dependent on time of button press.

B and D are a little harder. It looks like they are legal, but you might want to have them "at a given speed (> or < current speed)" instead of "at a given percentage of speed".

[ALIBI]

To clarify. I am not a programer by any means. They talk about speed as some kind of multiplier and percent of power, turbo mode etc. As our robot stands right now we only have the foward motion at a set speed, whatever way they set it, I know it is not full speed (18fps) which you could not rely on IR to control very well. You just push whatever button and the robot goes straight at a constant speed. And they have a button to stop all motion, just in case. From what I saw today, it looks like some teams have a reverse and I know our programers talked about adding it and that they wanted to keep stop, probably wisely, as the fourth option instead of reverse. It also looks like teams are changing the speed of the forward motion.

[BrianT103]

What team are you talking about.......because we scored 28 points in hybrid (3 lines, 2 balls knocked down), and we certainly don't drive the robot fully. Basically, the robot is already preprogrammed to do a desired route around the field with input from the gyro and optical encoders, the job of the robocoach is only to "nudge" the robot left or right depending on where the balls are. We spent significant time working on and developing the remote and the code t make it just righht. If you are at the NJ Regional we have a Design & Manufacturing Notebook where it goes into more detail.

P.S. Sorry if i sounded a bit mad.....

[galewind]

we have 4 commands on our custom IR transmitter. They are

0. Raise our lower mast section for 4 seconds, then retract
1. Set a timer to 0 and Drive forward for two seconds, then stop
2. Set a timer to 0 and Turn left for two seconds, then stop
3. Set a timer to 0 and Turn right for two seconds, then stop

Pressing the buttons repeatedly result in the same function, thus we can mash the buttons for continuous driving. In addition, we can have multiple functions functioning simultaneously because of timers (IE we can raise the arm up and go foward)