pic: The new driver station

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

As opposed to 16 digital inputs, 16 analog inputs, and 8 LED digital outputs on the old system.

I like the ease of connectivity. I dislike losing so many OI I/O points - especially the digital inputs. This may limit what we can do on the button box. You can never have enough pushbuttons, rocker, and toggle switches. We often wire spares up to support future use applications developed as the season progresses.

Switching the joysticks over to USB will help offload some of what we used to wire to the digital and analog inputs, but I still feel we'll be a bit lacking for button box I/O.

However, perhaps we can use a laptop keyboard to take up the slack - who wants to create some custom keyboard overlays for FIRST robots? That would be kinda fun.

In the end, though, I'd rather just rely upon the simple pushbuttons and switches wired to the digital in's - tradition is a good thing, as Bill Gates may decide to intervene and not let us operate our "laptop button box". That would not be fun - Bad, Bill, bad!

You could always pick up a gameport to USB converter at the RadioShack or simiar and use that to provide the additional inputs you want. The loss of LED outputs is harder to counter though... no more HUDs, I guess.