Your testing beacons vs. competition beacons

[Mr. Lim]

All,

Our team had difficultly with the beacons at the Pittsburgh Regional this past weekend. The beacons we manufactured ourselves, driven by the default beacon code via an EduRobot controller, worked fine with our robot. The ones we constructed were 7-LED arranged in a gradual arc, with the proper spec current limiting resistors on each LED. No housing (we had no drawings for them).

When we put our robot on the field, we only were sporadically picking up FIRST's beacon signals. It would find it for a fraction of a second, then lose it. I'm not talking about our trackers oscillating back and forth in the general direction of the beacon, but it would find the beacon, stop while looking directly at it for a short time, then start sweeping back and forth over our entire servo travel distance. A few seconds later, it would find it again.

As if someone was turning the beacon on for a split second, then off for 2-3.

We had a team member with a PDA standing right along the side of the field during a few of our matches. Normally he can read and "capture" the signal being sent out by the beacons from the opposite side of the field. In fact, we did this to verify that the proper beacon signals were being broadcast on the proper sides of the field, by "capturing" the signal, and then reproducing it with the PDA in an isolated place for our robot.

The problem we found was that we had to be within 5 feet of FIRST's beacon to properly "capture" the signal with our PDA, whereas our beacons, we can be 40 feet away and still capture them.

And yes, we held the PDA at about 3'8" off the ground at all times.

We asked the Innovation FIRST representative that was present to check the beacons, and he told us that they were working properly.

Am I missing something about the specs of the beacons? Was there anyone else who noticed any differences between beacons they had built and the ones at the competitions?

I'm disappointed we couldn't get our IR working properly at our 1st regional this year, and now am seriously doubting to even try IR at our 2nd event. We reverted to a series of dead-reckoning programs after blowing away our practice sessions and most of our qualification rounds =(.

Any kind of help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

-Shawn...