Is there a comprehensive list of legal beam break sensors for FRC?
As long as they don’t use a laser above class 1 (which most don’t) any beam break or ToF sensor is legal.
It would be faster to tell you which ones aren’t legal to be honest.
If they are < $600 and don’t violate the laser rules… and can be powered by the constraints of the FRC electronics system.
These are some I know of or have used once before.
Adafruit Beam Break
5mm
3mm
Banner Emitter/Receiver
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/banner-engineering-corporation/QS186E/10652727?so=85246293&content=productdetail_US&mkt_tok=MDI4LVNYSy01MDcAAAGRFKawsBz8pflbFPjyQ84xun6HgYd20LnF2Em71D8LZCeb2LBxP34h0UwjU1hJisdEAIkFf9n6w3cidUo78mL2WqGEAy8-ZY7FFSOljBlH
AND
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/banner-engineering-corporation/QS18VN6R/10652714
LaserCAN
Playing With Fusion TOF Sensor
3 Likes
As others have said, most beam break sensors are legal.
I’m going to add a recommendation for these IR Reflection sensors I’ve had teams use in the past:
https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-E18-D80NK-Infrared-Photoelectric-Avoidance/dp/B07VKR1GBJ/
If your intent is to use a beam break sensor to detect game pieces going into your bot, I really recommend this. You can adjust the sensitivity of the sensor, you get a simple digital output, it is easy to securely mount, you can easily adjust the sensor forward/back using the threaded portion, simplified wiring, and you don’t have to worry about making sure your beam brake elements are “perfectly” in line with each other and won’t be knocked about.
Edit: Forgot to add that you should even be able to even wire these directly into your motor controller’s data port as a limit switch if you wanted to avoid wiring back to the RIO since they are an NPN/NO photoelectric sensor (floating output when not no object detected, and LOW output when object detected). Just make sure to disable the limit switch pins from actually stopping your motor output from going a given direction if that is not intended behavior.
I’ve had good experience with the previously mentioned 5mm Adafruit beam break sensors.
Just wondering how did you used 5mm Adafruit beam break sensors in your code. Like how did you get the value from the sensor and get that data into wplib. Is their a vendor library or something else.
We connected the beam break sensor to the Spark Max, as a limit switch. From there, you use it just like you would any other limit switch connected to a Spark Max. You can look at REVLib to see how to use it in this way. The Spark Max has built-in pull up resistors, making wiring it up a breeze. Just use the data port breakout adapter, and solder to the 5V, ground and limit switch pins of your choice.
You can of course also connect this to any other motor controller in a similar fashion or directly to the roboRIO. If you connect it to the roboRIO, you can use the DigitalInput class in WPILib. You might need to put in your own pull up resistor in that case too, but not sure
1 Like
The Adafruit 5mm beam break sensors can connect directly to the roborio digital I/O, no pull-ups required.
2 Likes
Ok thanks
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.