Shipping

Technical Control System
#1

Section 6.3.4 of the Manual says “FIRST will allow you to keep all of your robot controls (Operator Interface, OI Power Supply, Joysticks, etc.) and not ship it with your robot on Tuesday, 2/22/05. This will allow you to continue to work on your programming.”

I’m wondering what “etc.” refers to? To continue with the programming, we’d really want to keep our Robot Controller, since that’s what we actually program. But the RC is a bit different from the items listed, since it’s actually part of the robot itself. I’ve just assumed that it’s OK to hold onto the RC, but after re-reading I’m not so sure…

#2

Why would you want to keep your RC? Unless you have a spare robot to practice with, the RC is of no use to you.

My advice would be to keep the Control system if you want, and practice coding and then DL the code to the bot when you go to your competitions.

This saves you the time at the regional where you don’t have to re-attach or re hook-up any RC wires to the bot.

Also, kind of a strech, but a minimum ROBOT is defined as I believe, a battery, radio, RC and everything else.

So, when they say you must ship your robot by the deadline, I take that as meaning you must ship your RC as well…

Somone correct me if I am wrong though… :slight_smile:

#3

Not quite true… if you have the RC, you can download your code and debug without actually running any motors. This can be helpful for debugging interrupt handlers, for example.

However, your comments about the RC being part of the robot make sense. But then I’m wondering why FIRST would suggest that having the OI and joysticks would allow you to continue code development…

#4

Because some teams attempt to build significant capabilities into the OI, and being able to hang on to those parts of the system permits the teams to develop and debug the OI-side software.

But in regard to the original question, the RC and everything else that is going to be on the actual robot (i.e. not at the operators station) has to be shipped in the crate with the robot, and cannot be retained for further development after the ship date.

-dave