OK, so, we got autonomous this year! Well, if you’re like me, it’s hard to decide on one autonomous program to run. Especially if you haven’t talked with your alliance partner. So, we got this solution… at radioshack, you can buy a little double-pole rotary switch with 6 positions. It took awhile, but I figured out how to wire it together so it only uses 3 inputs. Then just use some code to assign each input to one bit in a variable, and when you turn it it counts from 0 to five in binary. Great for last-minute program selection! Just code it so it branches the program according to the variable. If anyone would like the wiring diagram and/or the code for it, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Good stuff,
Mike Alighieri
We had many positions on our selector…
High and low speed…
None, one, or both of our wings open…
4 positions on the ramp and 1 not…
We went where you wanted us, how you wanted us, when ever you wanted us…
Thanks to our programmer - Dave…!! W00T!
*Originally posted by Mike Alighieri *
**OK, so, we got autonomous this year! Well, if you’re like me, it’s hard to decide on one autonomous program to run. Especially if you haven’t talked with your alliance partner. So, we got this solution… at radioshack, you can buy a little double-pole rotary switch with 6 positions. It took awhile, but I figured out how to wire it together so it only uses 3 inputs. Then just use some code to assign each input to one bit in a variable, and when you turn it it counts from 0 to five in binary. Great for last-minute program selection! Just code it so it branches the program according to the variable. If anyone would like the wiring diagram and/or the code for it, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Good stuff,
Mike Alighieri **
yeah, we used one of those too, but just fpr left, right, normal, and extended autonomous modes
Ive seen some teams hook that switch up actually physically on their robot and selected it as they set up, other teams (such as us) put the switch on our operator pannel and selected it before we hooked up to the players station
*Originally posted by D.J. Fluck *
**Ive seen some teams hook that switch up actually physically on their robot and selected it as they set up, other teams (such as us) put the switch on our operator pannel and selected it before we hooked up to the players station **
Ours was on our control board. We used a 12-position switch from Radio Shack, though we only used 5 of the positions. We also had a left/right switch, giving us a total of 10 programs for both sides.
we had a 3 postion switch on the robot and a 2 position switch on the OI
I didnt know the auto mode could be set from the User Interface…we woulda won a lot more matches if we remembered to set it properly.
We had 3 switches on the robot to set auto
yeah it basically involves using the competition mode, when the robot is disabled. For a more detailed explination ask in the programming forum.
Team 330, the Beach Bots, had a system where they hit a button on the operator interface and each time they hit it, a counter added 1 and the OI displayed the current setting. They could choose any autonomous mode they wanted with 1 button. I guess they have it set so that when the counter gets to a certain number, it goes back to zero and starts over again.
We used a $5 Omron BCD thumbwheel switch from Digikey (SW505-ND, pg. 814, Fig. 3). We wired this to three digital inputs on our OI, giving us 8 programs to choose from (the switch actually has 10 BCD positions 0-9, but we didn’t need the extra programs and didn’t want to consume an additional OI digital input). The switch had a built-in numeric display to indicate the program number selected, and it was nice have 8 programs at the expense of only 3 digital inputs, but the one button counter increment solution mentioned above is an even better way to conserve I/O.
*Originally posted by Mike Alighieri *
**…So, we got this solution… at radioshack, you can buy a little double-pole rotary switch with 6 positions.
Good stuff,
Mike Alighieri **
Mike,
We used the same switch with a little twist. If you are good at bending metal without breaking it, you can disassemble the switch. Take the contact insulator from the back of the switch. You will notice two, “u” shaped contacts on the rotating insulator inside the body of the switch. Cut the inner contact on just one of the contacts. Then take a look at the metal body of the switch and you will see the metal is dimpled in two places. The dimples are the travel stops for the rotating shaft. Crimp one of the dimples up and out of the way and reassemble the switch. You will now have an eleven position switch. Wire 9k resistors between each of the contacts around the outside of the switch. Add a 10K resistor to the end contact and attach the other end to the 5 volt power supply. Tie the bottom of the resistor string to ground. Add a wire between the two center contacts and take that common point to an analog input. What you will have is a switch that simulates a 100K pot swinging from just under 5 volts to ground with 11 distinct steps. We used this method to select up to 11 different auto modes on the player control box. We were able to then have 11 programs loaded in the robot software (custom circuit board) and ran which ever program seemed appropriate at the time.
BTW this is an old Ham Radio trick. I have a home brew antenna tuner that I use the same switch to select 11 different inductors. I hope Radio Shack doesn’t catch on, they’ll either jack the price or dump it.
We bought a similar rotary switch from Glennwood Sales but there was only 1 pin that you had to remove to get a full range of motion, and the technician showed us how to do it.
Note to any Rochester, NY teams: make sure your electrical team knows about Glenwood Sales. It’s much better then radio shack (wider selection, better prices).
We had two autonomus modes. But we had one problem with them. To switch between our autonomous modes we had a little box with 3 switches on it. One for disabling the robot, on for switching between autonomous and remote control mode, and one for choosing our autonomous mode. THis box pluged into the competions port of the o/i, well to make a long story short you can only plug one input into the competion port at any given time. We did not think to hard about this and our autonomoous mode wouldn’t work because there was no way to choose which one that we wanted. Kinda funny isn’t it :yikes:
*Originally posted by dddriveman *
To switch between our autonomous modes we had a little box with 3 switches on it. One for disabling the robot, on for switching between autonomous and remote control mode, and one for choosing our autonomous mode. THis box pluged into the competions port of the o/i
The competition port doesn’t provide any inputs that could be used to select an autonomous program. The only available inputs on the competition port for teams are: Autonomous Enable/Disable, Extra Channel Access Enable/Disable, and Robot Enable/Disable.
I would like to know how to change the Auton Mode from either the O/I or the Robot Controler. If anyone has a diagram showing me the wiring schematic that would be great… You can e-mail it to
[email protected]
we had two different auto modes. We couldnt use a switch like that because before the match we had to set the wheels which way its suppose to be going, becasue we have steering.
*Originally posted by Joe Clohessy *
**I would like to know how to change the Auton Mode from either the O/I or the Robot Controler. If anyone has a diagram showing me the wiring schematic that would be great… **
http://innovationfirst.com/FIRSTRobotics/pdfs/Competition_Port_Pinout_Guide.PDF
If necessary, it should take very little effort to hack a fake autonomous mode using an arbitrary button on the OI, but the Competition port dongle would probably be more reliable.
I also believe that if you change the team number on the RC (and OI?) to 0 (setting all of the dip switches to 0), it goes into autonomous mode.