I was at the IR seminar at nats (which, BTW, was awesome considering it was both organized and presented by some students), and one of the issues that came up was reflection of the IR off field components. A team (sorry, forgot the number) described to me some tests they did on the field, where they found that the IR on the true field was so much more powerful, that reflections were much more common than with the relatively low power emitters given in the kits…
My question is: What is the actual emitter used on the field? Where can you purchase it? If I do any more IR development, I would like to mimic as closely as possible the true field conditions, and this is very important.
My uneducated info is that they are the same except that the actual field one has 7 emiters not 5. There is also a aluminum backing on the field one were as most teams had none. I personally tested at 3 regionals and found that there were differences between locations. There was reflections all over the place and I proved to those with me that you could not lock onto the beacons. i hope that they that this info back to FIRST. I will be contacting FIRST about this and a few other items so that next year will be even bettter. I hope this helps.
i know for a fact that they use the edu-bot for the emitter and it’s location is underneith the first “sticker” under the field control module in the player station
There have been a few posts about the reflections on the field. I also know that there are about 5 seperate fields (and sets of support equipment) that are shipped around for regionals.
It’s a Lumex OED-EL-1L2, the same device you got in the kit.
-Kevin