Here is what our team robocoach will be wearing at the Hartford Regional. The NVG headmount allows our high-powered IR transmitter to be naturally aimed at the robot’s IR antenna, with only a low likelihood of getting off-target and frying opponents IR receivers. All while leaving the hands free for the XBOX360 controller used to signal the robot in the first 15 seconds, and play NASCAR for the remaining 2 minutes.
Um, isn’t the Xbox 360 Controller on RadioWave Frequencies? Thats way off the charts on whats allowed and whats not, is it not?
The shirt cooler than the headgear… I can see alot of people bumping into things this season. 
I should have mentioned we use the wired version of the xbox controller. It is plugged into a USB port of a tiny laptop hung around the neck of the robocoach, which reads the button inputs and sends them to the IR transmitter.
Unfortunately, I am going to HFord, but not with my team. Therefore, the Bobcat will not be there this year. I’ll look for him tho, and try to get a sig.
Wait a second… are you encoding data from the XBOX controller over the infrared and transmitting it to the robot? (aka IRDA)
We wanted to do this too… but the game manual says that you can’t encode data into the infrared in any fashion. You must have four distinct functions each assigned a unique IR code.
<G49>
ROBOCOACH Signaling – If the ROBOCOACH will be providing signals to the ROBOT,
then prior to the start of each MATCH the ROBOCOACH must place a Signaling Card in the
ROBOCOACH STATION. The Signaling Card shall be a 3-inch by 5-inch card listing the
one to four actions that can be commanded by the ROBOCOACH.
(excerpts)
SIGNALING DEVICES shall be designed to communicate signals from the ROBOCOACH
to the ROBOT. SIGNALING DEVICES are excluded from Rule <R64>. SIGNALING
DEVICES shall:
>not use changes in the signal states to encode or transmit larger messages (e.g. Morse code)
-q
Yes, we are sending four ASCII codes, one for each button press (or Left/Right toggle):
‘A’ - turn left 10-degrees
‘B’ - turn right 10-degrees
‘C’ - speed up 2-fps
‘D’ - slow down 2-fps
That should meet the spirit and letter of the rules.
We are using a different carrier frequency than IRDA to minimize interference.
In that case… Cool! When you said XBOX controller I thought you were sending a few bytes of data (such as X and Y axis position on the joysticks) over some kind of serial interface.
Guess it’s an odd conclusion to jump to… but its just me being unhappy to find out you couldnt do anything too crazy with the infrared. When we first herd about the IR our team wanted to make an IR joystick… then we read the rules.
Sorry!
-q