Competition port Wiring diagram

[Joe Clohessy]

I want to make a all in one unit for auto, disable chan selection and power thru the competition port. If anyone can help me with this please e-mail DragonMan@si.rr.com



--Thankyou

[Frank(Aflak)]

nothing like trial and error . . . . . .

for auton mode, we used a lightswitch and a AA battery, and I assume that the disable pin would take the same voltage, so maybe just test ports until you find the disabled one. Power is a bit trickier, because it probably needs a higher voltage and you don't want to be sticking higher than AA voltage wires in those ports at random . .

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will answer soon.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Well... this would be a good start:

http://www.innovationfirst.com/FIRST...nout_Guide.PDF

Also, check out this thread:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=16002

It contains instructions on how to do the above with a single switch.

If you're looking for power information, beware. Trying to power the OI through the competition port is a dicey proposition at best, and there is no official documentation on doing so. Pin 1 is the OI power pin, but I would be VERY, VERY careful with that. Doing that would almost certainly void your warranty. Building an autonomous dongle is very easy (you can do it in 45mins to an hour), and it will get you auto, disable, and channel select. I would stay away from powering it, though. It's much safer to just use the provided AC adapter, or if you're ambitious, a battery.

[Kyle Fenton]

Be careful about powering through the competition port. If you screw up you could fry the OI board. And will void the warantee.

What I can tell you is that power is supplied through pin 1, disable is pin 6, auto is pin 5, and to create a path between 10 and 13, and ground is at pin 8.

At first I though to get more channels than the 4 selectable ones, you had to power the OI through the competition port. However I was proven incorrect. At the beginning of Rally in the Valley, there was a problem with the field, and had to use our AC adabter to power our OI, and we still got channels that were not available on a regular dongle. I really wish I can spend more time with an Arena controller to unlock those channels, but I don't have access to one.

Good luck, but be careful with power it up.

[FotoPlasma]

First of all, the Competition port has been (at least minorly) documented, so that should take care of the Autonomous, Disable, and Channel Select functions of your dongle. Second, one thing to note is the fact that even if you enable manual channel select mode, you need to set the DIP switches on the OI in order to change the channel, and there're certain combinations for the switches in order to use the four available channels (the combinations are documented in the above linked PDF file).

Umm. Information about providing power to the OI through the Competition port hasn't been published by Innovation First, so I can't say much about it, at this point.

Also, what Frank said about providing 1.5VDC to the pins on the Competition port scares me, or, it would if I were on his team. The documentation states that, in order to enable the Disable, Auton, or Channel Select modes, the cooresponding pins should be connected to GND (ground), pin 8. I have made 5 different dongles this year, and every time I never needed any source of power. All of them worked perfectly. Four were used at a pre-season practice event by Ken Leung, and the WRRF, and the other was used by myself, and my team, 258. I wouldn't suggest connecting a AA battery to the system, at all, but if Frank says they did it... well, it's my personal feeling that he and his team were just really lucky.

The same goes for providing power to the OI through the Compeition port. You run the (VERY POSSIBLE) risk of destroying the OI if you guess-and-check this kind of thing. If you want, you can rig up a power supply to provide power through the port on the OI to which the provided AC adapter connects. I would, myself, feel much more comfortable doing this than risking destroying the OI (they really aren't cheap).

If you have any more questions, or would like some clarifications, feel free to ask.

[Joe Clohessy]

I want to make a all in one unit for auto, disable chan selection and power thru the competition port. If anyone can help me with this please e-mail DragonMan@si.rr.com



--Thankyou

[DanL]

You asked this four days ago in the other forum, and people have responded. Why did you post again?

If you also would have taken three seconds to search ChiefDelphi, this topic has been brought up before, here, here, here, and here.

There's also a whitepaper on it here.

In the upper-right, there's a search option. It's there for a reason.

[Brandon Martus]

I merged 2 threads, if you're confused by the duplicate question in this thread.

[computhief263]

Just a word to the wise,
I dont recommened building the yellow dongle!!!
b/c in my opinion its overly complex and if u screw up the wiring (as I did when i built it) U will fry the OI.
and trust me its a pain in the but to try and get IFI to fix it.

if u build the dongle thats at the top of this thread:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=16002
it works great, just CHECK ur wiring

[DanL]

eek, you guys fried your OI? That sucks =/

I build a dongle this year myself, but I didn't think it was so bad. Like computhief said, though, you have to test connections. Most multimeters have an option to test if current can flow between the two probes - if it can, the thing usually beeps. When working with a $1000 piece of equipment, it IS important to test your connections. Here are some more tips I learned from making mine

• You need to use a DB15 connector for this, and the easiest type is a solder-cup connector. It's very easy to do sloppy soldering and have some solder slip between two cups, creating a short circuit. Test for connectivity between adjacent cups that you worked on. If the thing beeps, take an exacto knife or desoldering thread and get the solder out of there. Short circuits are bad.
• Download the IFI wiring diagram and print it out, or if you want to do something creative, make a wiring diagram and have it in front of you. Things are NEVER as simple as they seem, and although this seems very simple, a wiring diagram's going to prevent you from soldering the wrong wire to the wrong pin.
• CAT5 cabling is very helpful for this. In a CAT5 cable, there are eight 22-24 guage wires, each a different color. Different colors help A LOT in organization (i.e. label on the wiring diagram which wire is to be what color). Stay consistant throughout the diagram - something like for each circuit, make the solid-color wire go from the pin to the switch, and make that same color but color-stripe wire go to ground (CAT5 wires are green, green/white, blue, blue/white, orange, orange/white, brown, and brown/white - do something like blue goes from pin X to the switch and blue/white goes from the switch to your common ground). If you're making a box-type of dongle (see my dongle below), CAT5 cabling is also very helpful because inside the box, you can have the individual wires go wherever you want, while outside the box, it's just one cable.
• Test the pins. I said this before, but I'll say it again. Would you rather spend five minutes putting multimeter probes into the different pins, or spend $1000 getting a new OI?

Compared to other electrical things we'll all do later, wiring this dongle is pretty simple. The key is to pay attention to what you're doing, and if you do make a mistake, take an exacto knife and get the solder out of there or just break the solder connection. With the help of one of our mentors, I even got a bit creative with my dongle. I threw in a battery, some resistors, some diodes, and some LED's. The result was that there's an LED for the auto vs. manual mode and a nice bright red LED for the disable button. If anyone wants my wiring diagram for this, I'll try and find it or make a new one.

My dongle:http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...&postid=135152

[Josh Hambright]

Sorry to hear that you fried an OI coputhief, and yes building a dongle is not something that should be taken lightly. But if you take your time and you check your work after your done and if you have knowlege of soldering and wiring it shouldn't be that bad.

I built 4 dongles in 1 hour last week because we had to do a demo with some other teams and we weren't sure if they had enough dongles for everyone so we just took em with us.

One easy thing that you can do if you want to build dongles for competitions with more then 1 team is to just hardwire in the multichannel function. Its 1 less switch to have to worry about. Then you just have a switch for autonomous and a switch for disable.

Currently I am working on my own homebrew competition controller, that can control autonomous and disable from one box, we talked about having a program and interfacing it to run the whole thing off of a computer so you could have timers controlling the stuff, haven't decided yet if i will take the leap and try to power them though as that seems a bit risky.

Good luck with your dongles.

[Lloyd Burns]

During the 2002 season, I created a competition timing system that disables (Comp Mode shorted to ground) (and will probably in future signal auton_mode by shorting that to ground), and the competition port cable takes the power from a Wall Wart Power Supply to the power and ground connections in the connector. The channel-selection enable is permanently wired, and the channel assignment is printed on a label on each connector, with the switch positions (UP and DN instead of the IFI version ON and OFF ("Gee, Ref, Which way is "ON", Up or Down ? I didn't bring the 50 page IFI System manual with me to the field.")).

A single AA cell is an ambiguous tool, as it delivers a voltage which is in the unpredictable area for a TTL-style input. Usually, TTL compatible inputs are guaranteed to pass a low into their circuits below about 1.2 V, and guaranteed to pass on a high with vltages greater than 2 V. Two cells in series, negative to ground will always give a high, but two in series, positive to ground, could blow an input, if it is not protected (from you) with enough resistance. Two in series, negative to ground, but weak, may not produce enough to make a CMOS compatible input go high. New Carbon-Zinc cells gave about 1.4 V, mercury based cells gave 1.3 V, if memory serves, dying cells could give 1,2 or lower - Use that multimeter !

As mentioned in the first paragraph, as well as in the IFI documentation, these TTL or CMOS inputs should be connected through a resistor to positive, and shorted to ground for a signal.

[computhief263]

ok i dont know about anyone else but lloyd jus throughly confused me

/me looks at post dumbfounded

[Lloyd Burns]

Originally posted by computhief263
ok i dont know about anyone else but lloyd jus throughly confused me

/me looks at post dumbfounded

OK, how's this ?

As to batteries as test voltages for IC's :

Batteries are not a good way to test the inputs : As explained above, a voltage between ground (the "negative rail") and the positive rail will not give reliable info.

Digital inputs are just that: on or off; connect them to ground or (through a resistor) to positive rail voltage, don't test them with a "bias" voltage somewhere in between.



As to powering OI's through the comp port :

I've done it - I verified it on my team's equipment. It works on other team's equipment. I connected the 9V power supply to the Comp Port. I do not recommend that you do this; be very careful if you aren't sure.



As to channel selection using the four pole DIP switch on the OI :

The then-current manual only had a chart re: channel selector postions, with ON Off and X, and when we tried to use my system for the first time, no one could get the correct positions, or their assigned channels, and we abandoned the system for the rest of the match, although we used my Comp Port connector as a dongle !?!?!.

The current manual says ON is down, up is OFF. BTW, what does the light switch on your wall do ? The switch is clearly marked in tiny raised red-on-red letters which, when eventually seen and deciphered, say OPEN.

[The Lucas]

The 3 Switch Competition dongle we made was the most demanded tool we had this year. It was small (about the size of a Post It note) and would just sit on top of the competition port. It was often on loan to another team working on their autonomous code. I think every team can and should carefully try to make one or two of these very useful dongles. Be sure to double check your work and test for shorts before you plug it in.

We had to scavenge through scrap piles to find an appropriate box for the dongle, so we only made one. This presented a problem when we needed to run several bots at once for a practice round. In a pinch, you can obviously just strip a wire and short pins 8 and 12. Do not do this unless you satisfy all of the following criteria:
1) You know exactly what you are doing.
2) You have good eyesight or good corrective lenses.
3) You have a steady hand.
After the wire is in place, do not let anyone touch the OI. Stand near it with a hammer and threaten anyone who comes close. You don't need a broken OI for a simple multi-bot practice round.

We also have a couple of disable dongles (with only one switch to disable the bot) from the 2002 year. A disable switch is a safety necessity for all exhibitions for the public. You can even let the kids drive the bot, just keep your finger on the kill switch.