2003 robot controller & interface

Technical Control System
1

Hiya guys, new here!

I was wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction as to how i can set up the robot controller and operator interface from 2003 (on loan), i tried to just connect everything, following the power distribution guide, and i connected the interface and controller via tether, and the “Valid Rx” light was blinking green on both parts (if im not mistaken its supposed to be a solid green when there is a connection?) and the "no data radio was red (of course, it was on tether).

When i tried to use the radios (yes i connected them to their respective controllers) one was set to receive (the one attached to the robot controller with the rubber antennae), and the one with the metal antennae (operator interface) one’s all the lights were on and green (meaning trasmit/power and receive all at once), oh and even with the radios attached it still gave a “no data radio” as blinking red on both controllers.

Further more, i tried to test if it would work with a controll, so i hooked up a victor (following power distribution) and attached the 3 pin cable to one pwm output at a time moving a joystick around to see if the motor moved (it was on tether by the way) and no matter what pwm i set it to nor what port the joystick was on i got nothing from the motor (and the motor does work, and yes everything was powered properly for you wise guys :wink: )

So, is it obvious what im doing wrong? It cant be that the controllers are busted, can it?? Any help would be appreciated. Oh, and if i can get this to work, ill return shortly to ask how to get those spikes hooked up to solenoids (meaning, would i have to code in pbasic? or is it qbasic? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it)

Thank You In advance :slight_smile:
-LGuY

2

With the older (pre-2004) controllers, the robot controller and operator interface must be set to a common team number manually to communicate. The dip switches to set this are on the bottom right side of both controllers, and are set in binary. Both the RC and the OI must be set to the same team number or they will not communicate.

3

Well, yeah, my face is red. Thnx! Marc! (i had overlooked the fact that i was toying with the team numbers before that).

One more question sort of related to this. How would i go about hooking up solenoids to this thing? (once again, all the spikes are there and what not), im just worried that i would have to do some coding to make it such that “pressing joystick 1 fire button extends” and other similar actions. I would really appreciate it if there IS a white paper to do this, point me in that direction, or maybe the appropriate documentation for connecting circuitry (beyond the power distribution) for 2003!

Thank you again! :slight_smile:
-LGuY

Im feeling inspired and innovative already! :wink:

4

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the legacy documentation page from IFI, but that should answer most (if not all) of your questions about the old control system…

http://www.innovationfirst.com/FIRSTrobotics/documentation-legacy.htm

Check the Full Size RC Reference Guide for info on wiring things to the RC and the Programming Reference Guide for info on changing the default code.