High Powered Targeting light on amazon

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Which flashlight did you use?

Look above broo!

http://goo.gl/ptnOUi

[otherguy]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Which flashlight did you use?

Too fast. Tried to sneak an edit in before someone asked. Had to dig through my purchase history.

[Kevin Ainsworth]

Pwnage, student John Duffy, designed a custom Photon Cannon back in 2013 and we redesigned it this year to make it smaller and lighter.

Here's what when into it...
CREE_XPEBWT-L1-0000-00C51 Xlamp XP-E2 High Power LED Star, Cool White = $3.49
TDK_CC6-1205SF-E Converter DC/DC 6W Sngle 12V to 5V 1.2A = $15.96
Resistors to dial in voltage and therefore brightness.
Army Surplus Len?
Custom Aluminum Housing
Powered by a spike relay

More work than a purchased flashlight, but the projection is a diamond (diode shaped) that is extremely crisp edged. John designed the aluminum housing to be slotted so we can slide the lens forward and backwards to set the focus at the nominal working distance.

[Tom Line]

We used this flashlight:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I chose it because it was powered by 3 AAA batteries. That is 'nominally' 4.5 volts, but I know fresh AA's sometimes go up to 1.6V. I didn't feel bad driving it from a cheapie 12 to 5 volt DC DC converter from ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Better-Water...-/380794929775

Hint: Water Game

And here's what it looked like on field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA0_ILmJoXw

We had it focused so it spanned the bottom goal edge-to-edge.

[otherguy]

Originally Posted by tjwolter

OK, ridiculously basic question here but bear with a mentor for a soon to be second year team. I can see how these light sources would work well in tele op, just pick up the reflective tape around your target and pull the trigger. Are they also being used significantly in autonomous?

T Wolter

They are primarily an aid in teleop to get the robot aligned at a distance quickly without added software complexity.

In auto they aren't as helpful in my opinion, unless you have a game where your robots alignment, at the beginning of auto, is critical. In this case they could be used to align your robot to some target position.
In our case, the light was helpful In debugging our auto modes in that we could see if a shot was missed due to the chassis being misaligned or if there was variability in our shooter or ball compression that led to a miss. This information, while not the primary intent of the light, was helpful in getting things dialed in.