Today at practice me and several other team mates wanted to drive the old robots around. But we have no clue how to run the wireless because all of the mentors that know this are not in the building right now. And of course the students are graduated. Any help would appreciated
2008 and older robots? that use the little black radios? You just connect them and power them up and they work.
The driver station computer needs power, too.
http://team358.org/files/programming/ControlSystem2004-2008/
Truer words have never been said before.
Got it thanks, the raido wasn’t pluged in.
This right here is what I miss the most about that old system. 5 second boot times and no screwing around with configs, they just worked.
QFT. And the whole “power the OI” (Mr. Forbes… You’re forgetting the good ol’ days again 
) could be as simple as plugging in your nearest 50’ tether between the robot controller and the operator interface box–just took some power off the robot battery.
[geezer]
Nowadays, you kids take longer to power up your radio than it takes to run a match! Field Fault? HA! Weren’t no field faults back in my day*! It WORKED! Fast bootup, no random radio dropouts, and after the backup batteries came along, no controller brownouts! Had to trip the main breaker to stop that control system![/geezer]
*There were, but it wasn’t because the field refused to talk to the robots or vice versa. Usually it was a scoring system problem, or an OI didn’t get connected like it was supposed to. Swap the cable or reboot the scoring system, good to go.
I didn’t forget, I just wanted to use terminology that today’s students would understand.
To remind everyone, the radios of old were really just disguised wireless serial ports.
And if we are going to get nostalgic, ‘I remember when we didn’t have back up power on the robot controller and it would reboot if drove too hard.’
Doesn’t that happen now, too? :ahh:
Nothing wrong with serial ports :yikes:
http://www.pcmuseum.ca/gallery/FanExpo2011-02-750.JPG
I feel the need, the need to get out my Hayes compatible 300 baud Commodore modem cartridge and dial a BBS.
ATDT 1877IIABDFI (442-2334)
If
It
Ain’t
Broke
Don’t
Fix
It! (credit to Bert Lance) (the link example is ironic)
(BTW that’s a disconnected telephone number right now…)
Luis, It was pretty bad in the pre backup battery days. I seem to remember an 8 volt limit. Fall below that and the controller or radio would reset. The backup battery would hold the controller and radio up while the PWM outputs would be disabled.
Didn’t all Servos run off the backup battery?
Yes, but pre-battery they were fed from controller power.
Back on the old controllers though, even if the controller did reset you were looking at a maximum of like 5 seconds of downtime, when the current system goes down you’re out for almost the entire match.
I for one support bringing back the backup battery.
Well I can say this…
I watched Team 11 drive the robot down to 6V with the RoboRIO onboard.
They periodically would loose field comms but for a short time (3 second tops).
I think the RoboRIO has some undervoltage protection going on.
We’ve had an older battery hit 5.2 volts in a match before. Needless to say, we couldn’t have done that without the backup battery.
Preaching to the choir 
just sayin’
They didn’t need no stinking wireless… they used wires…
I wasn’t there but I bet many remember this.
Is it wrong that I had DTMF tones along with handshake going through my mind when reading this?
It’s only wrong if you prefix it with a Capt’n Crunch whistle 
.
or
Follow it with: “Shall we play a game?” from an SP0256-AL2.