What is the preferred setup of the two joysticks for your robot? Do you like to have one for driving and one for arm control? Or do you like to have one run the right side wheels and the other run the left side. Then just use the buttons for arm control? Whyich is easyer? I would like to have one per wheel so you can make one go forward and the other the opposite making for a much tighter turn.
But we are newbies so what is the best method?
P.S. I have read about the singal stick script but I never thought I found the one that would do what we wanted.
Im far from the programmer of the team, but as of now we are trying to make the robot dual stick, and the arm another stick. Last year we used only one stick, personally i didnt like it. Too much area that didnt respond. But i think its going to be personal prefernce. I find 2 sticks for driving to be easier, mostly because i grew up with the cheap remote cars w/ the 2 little sticks.
We have always (past four years) controlled the drive base with two old style CH Flightstick joysticks. The old style CH flightsticks are my favorite and what I think is the best joystick ever made, at least for our purposes. Then we have driven arms with two or three more joysticks. Yes, last year we had 5 joysticks. It was a little rediculous but it worked well. Many teams do use butons, switches, and knobs for their arms/mechanisms.
As a former driver, I always liked two joysticks, one for left, one for right. Works very well for Tank Drive. Anything else you need specialized designs, and there’s too many to go into, but for me at least, dual joysticks was the easiest and most fun to drive.
My team always use 1 Joystick drive and another joystick for the arm or other mechanism. We try to keep are controls as simple as possible so that one person may drive the robot completely by him/herself. So far sense I have been programmer we have kept the controls to the two Old CH sticks using only the 4 buttons on them.
if you’re tank steering use two sticks. it allows the best control and adjustability.
for arm stuff we always use a combination of sticks buttons and potentiometers…sometimes we build arm models which provide control for our arm on the field.
in your post it sounded like you think you can only use two sticks. the operator interface is designed so that teams can build custom controls. teams have even controlled their robot with a backpack mounted cyborg style arm thingy.
look through the gallery for control setups and ideas.
/Coding really has nothing extra to do for whatever you choose. Our team has used 2 joystick drive, and either buttons or another joystick for the manipulator in the past. The change just requires your PWM cables to be in ports 1 & 2 (2 joy drive) or 13 & 15 (1 joy drive). Personally I prefer the 2 joystick drive, but that’s just my opinion, and not necessarily the best option for your team./
the 3 years that i drove we had 3 seperate control setups, each one had its advantages and disadvantages.
When we had a crab drive we used 1 stick for wheel positioning and one stick as the trottle, this was great for that type of drive.
However i agree that with a tank drive you cant go wrong with tank steering, 2 joysticks, one for each side.
the arms and other mechanisms are a whole different story, depending on what is needed as far as controls go, we deisgned systems that used custom control boxes, with switches, pots, and buttons and we have used simple joysticks to do it.
My senior year of high school had the most advanced controls out of the 3, we had 2 stick drive, and we had a arm mechanism which was either manual controlled with a joystick or could be set in 3 preset positions using buttons. We also had a custom control panel on the OI with switches for doing things like turning off the compressor to conserve battery life, turning off the light because the old ones got really annoying in the pit, and doing other things.
Really to sum all of this up, i think it comes down to driver/operator preference. I found that the controls were tweaked to perfection throughout the year and that having the drivers be able to communicate with the people who design and implement the code and controls allows for the robot to perform exactly as they wanted it, in our case i was designing the controls which i was using, so they were exactly like i wanted them, and i could talk to the programmer and have him tweak things as needed if they weren’t working the way i saw fit.
Doesnt anyone use a one joystick drive type thing? Last year that is what we concluded was the only thing thatcould possibly work for our bot. But it was unbeleiveably fast (like 15-20 ft per second when it got going), and very touchy, so a slight dif in the two joysticks when we tried it would throw it way off. By the way, how do you use five joysticks? Arent there only four ports? Or does each port have more than two axes? And is that cyborg backpack thing allowed this year? Last year werent you required to fit all your controls on their shelf?
As other have said, it ultimately boils down to driver preference. The most common setup that I have encountered in my driving days were two joysticks for the drive and a joystick and button box for the “boxman” that was the second drive. The two joysticks always gave me much more control…if I wanted to go full speed forward with a very slight arc, I had no trouble. If I needed to spin on a dime, again…no trouble. I never got the feel or complete control with only one joystick…but then again, I only tried after I had been used to “tank” controls. Having two joysticks also allowed me to have more control over driving functions. The buttons on one stick would shift me from two wheel to four wheel and back while the buttons on the other stick would activate any sort of plow device (or anything else that relied on driving…not manipulation).
On the other side was one joystick for whatever sort of arm we were utilizing (pull down on the stick and the arm goes up and vice versa). In addition to this (or in place of, depending on functions) was a custom made box that had anywhere from 3 to 8 rocker switches on it. These controlled all other functions, i.e. rollers, lifts, grabbers, arms, shifting to low gear (that one we put a box over the button so we didn’t hit it accidentally…but with the drill motors this year, no worried about that problem!).
The setup worked very well for us, but for others, it may not have. The driver of my team the last two years preferred one stick for driving and one stick for the rest of the functions. One year we had quad tank treads that needed to be raised onto the middle points (making a v with the treads) so we could turn. One stick drove, the other raised the treads.
It all boils down to your preference and what is most comfortable.
I have used the one joystick drive, I think some of the stuff you are describing with the controls being to touchy could be fixed on the programming side, by just changing the repsonsiveness of the controls.
As far as using more then 4 joysticks. This can be done through the use of a Y-Cable. For more info on Y cables they talk about them in the IFI OI manual and also in a whitepaper found here: http://www.ifirobotics.com/docs/y-cable.pdf
There are just 2 axis on each one, but usualy in a 2 stick drive set up, all you are using for the drive is the y axis anyways. The wheel and buttons are still able to used on either joystick hooked to the Y cable due to the number of inputs on the OI ports.
For any drivers out there, get with your Opertaor Interface team, and programming team, and learn the capabilities of your operator interface, this can help you come up with ideas as you see them needing to be intergrated.
Over the years, teams I’ve been with have tried one and two stick driving. Most drivers have preferred two sticks, though each arrangement has its advantages. With two sticks, if you know you want to move one side of the robot and not the other, you move the appropriate stick. A single stick drive has the advantage of making it easier to apply power to both sides of the robot uniformly, so it’s easier to accelerate in a straight line without swerving. If you have time, let prospective drivers try it both ways and see which seems better for your driver(s) and robot.
Thanks guys for all the input. It will really help our team decide. I’m all most sure we will go with the two stick drive.
What is the rule for this year about number of drivers you can have at one time? I thought you could only have one person controlling the robot, but everybody talks like you can have three joysticks and another person controlling the third. If you can have another person, what kind of joysticks can you use? I am now sure that we will be using two sticks to drive and another to controll the arm but what kind of joystick should the third be?
/I don’t believe there are any restrictions on joysticks, so just a joystick that doesn’t use a USB connection. You could ask around your club to see if anyone has an older joystick, check a garage sale, or ask another (veteran) team at your regional (most likely they will have brought an extra, or could help you find one)./
You can have two people, who must be pre-college students, to drive, operate arms, or whatever, and one coach who may be either an adult or student. You can have control functions split in any way you chose between the two student driver/operators.
Personally, I prefer tank drive with two other joysticks for an arm/elevation mechanism like we used last year. As far as one joystick, I can’t stand it as it doesn’t offer as much precision as a dual-joystick system. I guess it’s all up to user preference but I recommend tank drive. Another idea might be (depending on many things you need to control) is too have p1_y = left drive, p2_y = right drive, p3_y use the splitter for arm controls on both of the Y axis’s of the other two joysticks, and p4_y a controller box w/ switches. Of course if you still needed more you could always combine p1_y and p2_y using another splitter.
We used the old CH Flightsticks, does anyone know a place to get these or something similar. We are going crazy trying to find something new, since the joysticks FIRST gave are both lefty and seem kind of flimsy. Last year we used the joysticks from 02/03 and 03/04 year but they are starting to get shot. If anybody has extra black flightsticks and would like to donate/trade to a fellow FIRST team please contact me. Thanks.
Last year we used some newer type CH Flightsticks. They have a bigger “lump” at the top with more buttons which we don’t use, but the gimbal at the bottom is the same as the old ones. They are much better than the sticks that now come with the kit IMHO and in the opinion of our drivers. I’m not sure where we bought them, but I can try to find out if anyone wants to know.
I’m in a huge argument with our team faculty advisor. He’s being very stubborn and saying (literally) “We WILL use one joystick to drive the robot this year! I’m not going to let you use two. It’s not as elegant.” So I’m fighting with him over the fact that elegance is secondary to efficiency. If I have anything to say for it, we will be using two joysticks for the robot and one for the arm.
