pic: Controllers

[Alexander McGee]

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[n0cturnalxb]

Whoa, this is just.. whoa.. wow..

Heheh, I shouldn't have looked at this. Now I'm not just in awe.. I want to build one for my team now! Too bad we don't really have the extra money to spend on materials and stuff.. and I don't have too much spare time to spend on designing and building something like that

It's so pretty! And.. I love blue, so.. -drool-

[Billfred]

That. Is. Sexy.

If I show this to our drivers this year, why do I get the feeling I'm going to have to find a nearby Cadillac dealer? And run to Auto Zone to get spinners for a cart?

[Rich Wong]

SWEEEEET!

Now.... all you need is nice pair of Jensens or JBLs and YOU ARE READY TO ROCK!

[VGMasterShadow]

Ooooh, shiny glowy thingy with lots of buttons.

Very nice controller, and very amusing, but mostly amusing.

[Billfred]

I'll throw out one question...what's up with the seat belt buckle on the side in the bottom picture? And the small box on the right in that one?

[Alexander McGee]

Ahh yes.

The seatbelt buckeles are for a strap with the male ends of a seatbelt. You could "buckle up" and throw it over your shoulder like a gym bag. At 15 lbs, it was a nice feature.

The box at the end is actually a battery pack for a Bosch drill motor (like the old drills from 2002). This powers the LED's and neons, as well as providing a source of power for the RC controller. This way, we could sit in the back of a trailer at a parade, and drive the robot alongslide without a tether or AC current to the controller.

It took me 6 horus to build the first one. Then, i re-read the rules and realized it was 6 inches too long. For fun, i took it to the band saw and cut off 6 inches. It looked kinda funny. Anyways, it took only 2 hours to do the second one, because i had all the dimensions drawn out now, and knew how everything would fit.

It's all made of aluminum, and is fairly inexpensive to make. The lights costed 20 bucks total, the aluminum worked out to around 35 dollars, and the seatbelts were free from a scrap bin.

I plan on helping my students come up with something awsome this year. Stay tuned.

[Kyle Love]

Originally Posted by Billfred

That. Is. Sexy.

If I show this to our drivers this year, why do I get the feeling I'm going to have to find a nearby Cadillac dealer? And run to Auto Zone to get spinners for a cart?

I agree that is really sexy next year put spinners on your robot and then everything woud be pimped!

-Kyle

[NotaNerd]

Where are the rules on controller size? I've never seen anything about that before.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by NotaNerd

Where are the rules on controller size? I've never seen anything about that before.

There are no rules perse, you'll just have one end of your controls hanging off in space since the controls tray only goes out a certain distance.

[pakrat]

kinda matches with the blue gound FX our bot had. for example http://www.huronrobotics.com/gallery/2004/index.htm
theres a bunch in there

[Alexander McGee]

Originally Posted by Cory

There are no rules perse, you'll just have one end of your controls hanging off in space since the controls tray only goes out a certain distance.

Actually, read carefully.

It says that the controller board may not exceed 48". It did last year. This is to ensure that the board will fit on the platform that they provide. I forget where this is documented, but it's so you don't hit the e-stop button, or damage it since it is on the opposite side of the center. Else, you would be taking up the space for your alliance member. If you get two teams with large boards, things get awkward fast.

Not a heavilly enforced rule, but i didn't want to make it awkward for myself while driving.