Recommendations for Off-Season Control System

Technical Technical Discussion
#1

We are currently designing our off-season project, an (American) football-launching robot for the Denver Broncos. It will have a six-football capacity and launch from midfield to the end zone, with adjustable velocity (wheeled shooter) and azimuth.

We are looking for a reliable control system that meets the following criteria:

  • Does not require connection (wireless or wired) to a laptop or other computer (no driver’s station)
  • Ease of use with minimal training for adults from the Denver Broncos who are not members of our team
  • Must control direction and speed of drive base, speed of shooter wheels, azimuth angle, loading of football from the magazine, and release of the football
  • Sufficiently robust for use at public events, including halftime shows and school displays

Any ideas and experience would be appreciated. We are leaning toward the Quick & Dirty from AndyMark, but would like to explore our options. Thanks in advance!

#2

You may also want to look at the HERO board, which talks to Talon SRX controllers natively. Marshall shared 900’s experiences retrofitting their 2014 robot in a white paper.

(Full disclosure of what is probably obvious: I work at AndyMark that sells HERO boards, Talon SRXs, and wireless gamepads that work well with HEROs.)

#3

Ooo Ooo. Can I call you at work? I’d love to get details from you

#4

You really don’t want to talk to me specifically about it, but that’s what we have engineers for. Have your people call my people. :slight_smile:

#5

Can confirm the HERO is solid IF you are using CAN. I’ve found the one major weak point it has is that using it with non TALON SRX speed controllers is difficult (correction, idk how to do it yet) I think the Canifier should let you do at least 3 motor outputs and you should be able to plug a breakout board into port 3 to get 5 additional PWMs on pins 4,6,7,8,9 as detailed on page 59 of the Hero User Guide (3/06/2016 revision). I haven’t tried this yet. I guess I should order a breakout board and give it a shot.

No disclaimer - I’m not an AM/CTRE employee just a big fan of the HERO board.

#6
#7

One thing you could consider is simply using a Raspberry Pi talking to an Arduino Mega using Firmata or the like. The rPi talks to a simple driver station app you write, and then sends motor controller settings to the Mega, which controls PWM motor controllers (anything that isn’t a Talon or SD540C). It’ll be simple, dirt cheap, and not require much programming. You could set up an easy ZeroMQ server between the driver station and the rPi, then just send the joystick inputs (using Jinput) using it.

#8

Going back to the OP, you may also want to consider AM’s Quick and Dirty control system. It has a pre-fab control unit with six potentiometers, and a tiny control board with six PWM outputs, each driven directly from the potentiometer. 3946 has never built a system with this, but we did some mechanical repairs to a PR robot operated by a local fire house that has been in operation for at least a decade, operated by firemen (some of our students remember this robot as always having been there) that used a similar (if not identical) system. It is rather easy for non-roboticists to use!

It doesn’t sound like you’ll need this, but AM also has some “mixers” for mecanum and kiwi drives that will take “forward” “sideways” and “rotate” axes and convert them to PWM outputs for Mecanum or Kiwi drives.

#9

To be precise, a Cheap and Dirty radio has two joysticks (each with two axes) and two pots that can be left in a position (which could be good for intakes and shooters). Both years I’ve done Fight Night, I’ve added a V-tail mixer off Amazon to allow me to drive arcade style so I can use the other stick for the weapon controls. (Normally, I’m a tank-style guy…but the application called for it.)

Sent from somewhere other than my desk at AndyMark

#10

You can also, if you have a programmable transmitter, just use v-tail mixing on the controller (it’s what I’m doing for a personal project)

#11

My team recently created a prototype power supply with a setup very similar to the AM product. We bought some random RC remote and 6 channel receiver from hobbyking, then ran PWM from the receiver to sparks we had from the KOP, sent power from old PDP and VRM’s, and bought little voltage displays from amazon. It’s been great practice for new electrical students and has worked great in our initial testing! This setup has been awesome for us and we spent very little money cause most items we had in stock from old robots. With some forethought on which controller to use and how to wire each system, making your own setup like this would accomplish what you want.

I’m happy to provide more documentation/pictures upon request.