Tally of Working IR Boards

[Mark McLeod]

With 1500+ teams receiving the IR board as an early holiday present it's impossible to use a thread to discover who's board is working well, who's isn't, or which ones are caught up in the holiday mail crush.

Thus a poll.

Try to answer only once per team. You can check to see if any of your pals have already answered.

Anyone who hasn't received their IR board yet, just wait until it comes then test it and give us your report.

Engineering is all about collecting meaningful data to act on.

[Bryan Herbst]

Do you have a preferred testing method?

Ex- Plugging into a battery, hooking it up to the 2007 RC and checking for input/output, etc.

Just checking our definition of "working."


When we first got it, some people tried simply touch two wires from a 9-volt battery to to the correct pins of the board, but with no results. Wasn't a serious test, so I'm going to wait to give a definitive answer.

[EHaskins]

I marked ours is fine, but I haven't tested the outputs. The LEDs turn on when I press a buttons, so I'm assumeing the outputs are also working fine.

[Aren_Hill]

we need to change our vote.... it did work then yeah.... watch wear bare wire ends go

[popo308]

Originally Posted by Aren_Hill

we need to change our vote.... it did work then yeah.... watch wear bare wire ends go

so who knows where to get a new 5v regulator??
eh?

[Taylor]

Ours reads the repeating signals from channel up, channel down, volume up, and volume down. The lateral range seems to be pretty good - it reads from nearly all directions from the half-sphere surrounding it. Perhaps this could be coupled with the camera technology from last year that uses the signals to triangulate position?

[Mark McLeod]

A full checkout would be as you say--power it, train it, have it respond correctly to the remote, monitor the outputs with a scope or an RC. Post details about any failures and what worked/what failed. Normal room lighting conditions, not direct sunlight or any stress tests like that.

A basic checkout would be all but checking the digital outputs since that can be done pretty quickly and with the fewest parts.

If you have the equipment to do a full test, then do that and report.
If you can do a basic test quickly then a full test sometime later, then test the basics and report. If the digital outputs later turn out to be faulty then post about the problem and you can have a second teammate put the changed answer into the poll.

Also, use "Worked and we broke it" even if you're not sure you actually broke it as long as it worked then stopped working. You can post any useful details about that experience too.

Anyone with other ideas about what else we could be looking at?

Originally Posted by Tanis

Do you have a preferred testing method?

Ex- Plugging into a battery, hooking it up to the 2007 RC and checking for input/output, etc.

Just checking our definition of "working."

[Binome]

2273 up here in BC reccived our IR board today, and it worked flawlessly. Programmed the random old remote I found burried under some stuff years ago.
All the outputs worked, and responded clearly. Range is really nice on these vishay reccivers, making me think even more that this is some kind of field element, that will be triggered by a transmitter on the bot. Also, they decided to code protect the pic in it . There goes my fun of trying to decompile the hex and fetch some information about the game.

[popo308]

Originally Posted by Binome

2273 up here in BC reccived our IR board today, and it worked flawlessly. Programmed the random old remote I found burried under some stuff years ago.
All the outputs worked, and responded clearly. Range is really nice on these vishay reccivers, making me think even more that this is some kind of field element, that will be triggered by a transmitter on the bot. Also, they decided to code protect the pic in it . There goes my fun of trying to decompile the hex and fetch some information about the game.

We had are IR board actually hooked into are RC and it was sending/receiving power and data back and forth until it randomly went up in smoke?? i would not recommend it until we get the official use of this board with diagnostics.

[Rapt0r9]

Our board hasn't had any problems yet. It took the first remote which we programmed it with and has been properly functioning since.

[Richard McClellan]

2158, 2468, and 2538 got together today for a pre-season workshop on programming basics for FIRST. Our last project of the day was hooking up the IR sensor to a Vex bot, which allowed us to drive our vex bot around with a TV remote It was definitely exciting to get it working, and surprisingly easy. I'm definitely looking forward to whatever we have to do with it in the actual competition....only 14 days to go!

Here's a video of our working vex bot with IR sensor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUx2w3J_jDk

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by richardmcc2

2158, 2468, and 2538 got together today for a pre-season workshop on programming basics for FIRST. Our last project of the day was hooking up the IR sensor to a Vex bot, which allowed us to drive our vex bot around with a TV remote It was definitely exciting to get it working, and surprisingly easy. I'm definitely looking forward to whatever we have to do with it in the actual competition....only 14 days to go!

Here's a video of our working vex bot with IR sensor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUx2w3J_jDk

can you do this with the big bot now???

[Richard McClellan]

Oooh....now there's an idea, we definitely could

Maybe I'll do that a little later tonight if I can get my hands on our robot from last year

[daltore]

You can't just do it with that robot David showed us that spun around fast enough to give him a static shock? Surely that would be lots of fun to add little motors onto to pick up sodas.

[popo308]

does anyone know where to get the little 5v regulator for the board?
are 5v regulator went up in smoke..