Who thinks the IR board's operational characteristics leave much to be desired?

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by 647techangel

in other words it vehemently inhales

First off, I'm not sure that's the way to put it. Remember, the company that makes the IR board can read this, too.

With that said, I would have to mention- this IR board is new to us. It is something FIRST teams haven't done before, and will most definitely have bugs. Everything does. Think about the first week of regionals, every year, with the field control and scoring systems.

The first time anyone does anything, there will be a problem. It happens, and we have to try and fix what we can, instead of complaining about it. To quote my always-correct mother (who sometimes reads CD ... ), whining solves nothing.

[Qbranch]

It's not Diversified's fault at all that this board is unreliable. It's the technology being used that's unreliable.

Using IR is very similar to the old "Wireless" telegraph from long ago. There are no channels... anybody starts keying their telegraph (pushing buttons on their remote) and everybody hears it.

IR wasn't really meant to have multiple unique signals going to multiple robots at the same time. Also, remember most television remotes are made to work in a living room, and I doubt many living rooms are as big as a FIRST field (or as brightly lit).

So, not at all because of Diversified but only for the sake of physics, we aren't using an external IR input during autonomous this year. But I think our robot does pretty well without it...

Thanks Diversified for making a great donation of Time and Money!

-q

[purduephotog]

Old style party lines, ehhh?

I was actually thinking about that today. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to saturate the area with IR pulsed radiation? It would be like jamming- something several Aerospace sponsors work on for the military. Then good little programmers would have to devise methods to beat the jamming, such as perhaps specific spectral IR filters to only bandpass certain wavelengths, then authenticate with a certain code first..... anyway.

We've had no luck with the board. I looked at it when it first came in and then handed it off to another engineer. If it works at the competition, great, but since we don't really have a programming team I'm not too hopeful

What would I find really nice to see here? Telemetry feedback. Not every team has a huge gymnasium or build center to work on- or perhaps nascar style first person view of the action. That would impress me much more than a semi-teleoperated period.

Or even lastly... stateful machine. 4 command sequences each evaluated upon what the current state of the robot is. But since that's specifically outlawed I think our IR board will go sit next to the EDU robot.

[RyanN]

The board does have a lot of downfalls in its design like the brownout problem and no reverse polarity protection. Obviously these are simple problems to fix (a small code change and a diode), but this is not Diversified System's fault. All they do is put together the boards to the customer's expectations (FIRST). If I were to give them a circuit that would catch on fire and release tons of magic smoke, then they would, and they would not be accountable for my mistake. I believe Diversified Systems also manufactured our sensor strips, and it appears to be an issue with the schematic FIRST gave them, so again, this is an issue with FIRST. Don't get me wrong, FIRST is a great organization that has benefited me for 6 years now, but in the past two years, I've seen quite a few quality control issues, some of which were not FIRST's fault, but they could have been prevented by testing the KOP that every team gets in January.

I believe the big three (Dean, Woody, Dave) could have sat down in November with a prototype KOP and tried to make a robot with the parts given, then do stress tests like that of a competition robot for four weeks, and try to break some components by making mistakes like some students may do in the build season. By doing this, they could have found the issue with the BaneBot gear boxes that plagued many teams, they may have found the issue with the radios last year, they would have found the issue with the IR Board, and they would have found the issue with the gear tooth sensor board. By doing this, FIRST would save money and would ease the burden of the build season.