Aerial Assist High Goal LEDs

[Ununtrium]

While our team was going through the manual, we found the High Goal LED's and went looking to shop for them. Specifically, the product is called "Phillips Color Kinetics iColor Flex LMX LED." We looked online but the items we found are too pricey: http://www.superiorlighting.com/Colo..._LMX_s/957.htm.

Is there any alternative that is cheaper?

[bhylak]

+1 on this thread. 900 dollars for a strip of 50? The specs for the LEDs say 6.56 candela per LED but I've yet to find a beam width that I could use to convert to lumen. I think that it changes depending on the lens that it is using, but I have yet to find any info on the lens that will be used. Philips website, instead of Phillips as it is spelled in the manual, lists the following types:

101-000067-00 Black, Clear Flat Lens
101-000067-04 Black, Translucent Dome Lens
101-000067-02 White, Clear Flat Lens
101-000067-06 White, Translucent Dome Lens

and another set

Clear Flat Lens
Translucent Dome Lens
Clear Marquee Lens
Semi-Frosted Marquee Lens
Translucent Marquee Lens
Clear Flat Lens
Translucent Dome Lens

In addition there seem to be two types: 4 and 12 inch.

Source: http://www.colorkinetics.com/ls/rgb/flexlmx/

I wonder what the equivalent would be in a fixed yellow led strip? Without this information, I'm not sure
how they expect us to do any type of targeting.

[RufflesRidge]

The teams I'm working with are planning on using the retro-reflective targets because we can test with them in our shop.

[engunneer]

Adafruit and sparkfun both have programmable led strips. You will have to write some arduino code, but you can probably make a good simulation of the goal for $100 or so.

[bhylak]

The LED strips seem to be very specific however. From the vision example pics on WPILib, the LEDs show up more like bulbs than a solid line.

Ben

[MisterG]

Bump.

Any more experience either constructing or simulating the LED strings?

[MoHottaMoBetta]

Originally Posted by bhylak

The specs for the LEDs say 6.56 candela per LED but I've yet to find a beam width that I could use to convert to lumen. I think that it changes depending on the lens that it is using, but I have yet to find any info on the lens that will be used.

You can find technical details of the strips in their spec sheets ( http://www.colorkinetics.com/support..._SpecSheet.pdf ). They discuss intensity, viewing angle, etc.

Originally Posted by bhylak

I wonder what the equivalent would be in a fixed yellow led strip? Without this information, I'm not sure
how they expect us to do any type of targeting.

I dont see that asked in the FIRST Q&A system. Have you asked there? Without some specifics on what "Yellow" should be, targeting just that that will require some flexibility on your part.

We wanted to do the same thing but without more details its not something we feel can be done reliably and consistently at all regionals.

Has anyone tried mocking up a system using cheaper LED strips and using that?

[geomapguy]

Honestly there is no reason to track the bulbs...

If you're concerned about doing HOT or NOT, use the vision targets on the left/right of each target.


The bulbs are just for show

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by geomapguy

Honestly there is no reason to track the bulbs...

If you're concerned about doing HOT or NOT, use the vision targets on the left/right of each target.


The bulbs are just for show

You could say the same thing about the vision targets. They're just for show; there's no reason to track the vision targets, you could just track the bulbs .

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Hallry

You could say the same thing about the vision targets. They're just for show; there's no reason to track the vision targets, you could just track the bulbs .

Except that if you look at how the LEDs are used and positioned, it's quite clear that their primary purpose is for spectators and drivers to be able to tell how many assists have happened and whether the goal is hot. Really easy to see bright lights on from 100 feet away, really difficult to see a small, retroreflective rectangle at an oblique angle.

On a note more related to the original topic of this thread, my team (which builds a practice field every year for a Week 0 competition), decided to simplify the lights to a yellow strip across the top and three colored red or blue strips across the bottom, which lets us fulfill what we saw as the primary function (informing spectators and drivers with field cues). We understand that some teams at our Week 0 might not appreciate this, but frankly, dropping four grand on LEDs just wasn't in the budget this year.