Lap Counter IR Interference?

[Larry R]

What technology is used for the lap counter. IR? I heard this is true. If this is the case, it could interfere with the robot's IR board and Robocoaching efforts. Has this happened at other regional competitions?
Thanks, LR

[The Lucas]

Team 25 seemed to have problems with it.
It is also one of the many things I suspect in our IR difficulties at FLR. We got it working, but I have not isolated the problem. Other possibilities include: abrupt power up of the sensor when it was attached to a spike and extra interference on the Blue side (always worked on Red side, never on Blue). Our IR board works flawlessly when not on the field. At Philly I should be able to isolate the problem.

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Larry R

What technology is used for the lap counter. IR? I heard this is true. If this is the case, it could interfere with the robot's IR board and Robocoaching efforts. Has this happened at other regional competitions?
Thanks, LR

Yes, the lap counter uses infrared; it is actually an IR transmitter! Accordingly, the robot's IR board should not be placed close to the lap counter. At our regional, quite a few teams needed to move their IR receiver boards to be away from their lap counters.

A tiny bit more information is provided in FIRST's Team Update 14. (See the second section within "General Notices" on the first page, entitled Mounting your IR receiver.)

[eugenebrooks]

Place your IR receiver below the lapcounter, and use something
to shield it from IR light bouncing down (off the overpass metal)
from above.

Eugene

[Larry R]

Thank you all for the good info. I even managed to find a photo of an installed IR transmitter. I will take this into account when we mount the IR Detector.
LR

[JoshD]

We were having some problems with it while waiting in the queuing line. Our programmers took notice that our IR board was getting a signal (one believed it was even to the beat of the music).

But our flag and IR board were at about the same level. We did check the surrounding area to see if anyone was spamming IR signals (don't know why they would) and our results were inconclusive.

Didn't matter though, they took out the code because our dead reckoning got us 3 lines 95% of the time anyway, and the IR board was just going to stop the robot if it got out of control.