OK, to some of you this might seem like a stupid question, but… The new control system uses wifi to control the robot right? And iPod Touch/iPhones have access to wifi… SO, with a jailbroken iPod and a third party app would you be able to control the robot using your iPod?
NOt sure about this.
But another idea for you to toy around with is mapping out robot paths using touchscreens and saving plotted paths onto a GUI of the field on the screens. We’re playing around with this right now…
First of all, iPods do not have WiFi 802.11n. But if you configure your router to work on 802.11g, it could theoretically be possible. However, I would think that it would be quite hard to program.
I’m sure you’d be able to. It’s just a TCP connection…
Though I’m VERY confident it won’t be competition legal.
It’d be interesting to look at the data going between the bot and the DS. I’ll take a peek on Tuesday 
Can u say Rockwell Automation in control award?
Before we started reading the rules this year we had the crazy idea of using an iPhone and using the gyro in it to control our robot then use the camera to stream the video back to the iPhone itself. We were all stoked until we learned that you can’t stream video then we dropped the idea. You would have to buy a bluetooth receiver for your DS anyway
Before we had the KwikByte DS, we actually used a Nintendo DS to drive prototypes around. It was very James Bond-esque, and way too much fun.
However, this was two summers ago and I don’t think it would pass inspection now.
The communications protocol between the DS and robot isn’t terribly complicated but I’m not sure how “open” it is. It’s fairly simply UDP packets going back-and-forth. I would LOVE to have an iTunes-downloadable app version of the FRC Diagnostic Window.
“Don’t try this at home” (actually regionals) - during competition, FIRST will be on the lookout for teams that are trying to bypass the field for WiFi access to the robots. They obviously need to lockdown wireless access to the robots for safety and reliability reasons.
Russ
You cannot use anything other than the DS to communicate with your robot at the regionals and championship. This has to do with on field safety, other ways do not have the means to safely communicate with FMS. So please don’t try to break the rules…