i was at the hawthorne scrimage this past sunday, and i saw a team using a wii controller to control their arm. does anyone know how team 1661 hooked up a wii controller to their operator interface?
Are you sure it was a wii and not a xbox 360?
the wii controller would require external power most likely, and therefore be illegal… unless they found a way to hardwire it and draw power off of the chiclet.
my guess is they hacked a wiimote and a chiclet together.
my guess is they hacked a wiimote and a chiclet together.
The chicklet is based around the USB standard, whereas the wii is meant to be used wirelessly via the bluetooth standard.
They must have had it connected to a PC (drivers exist for this), then had the PC sending data to the inputs of the OI. Or they were faking or joking around or something.
Here is wiinRemote, a program to use the wii remote on your PC: WiinRemote. You need bluetooth capability. If you got the source code and modified it, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to get data onto the OI.
it was in fact a wii controller, and it was wireless, the team captain said that it was a mix between hardware and software but that it was in fact an unmodified wii controller.
Then it is illegal as the wiimote needs batteries to work.
My guess earlier was a pretty extreme hardware hack that wired to USB and then a chiclet. But, you said no wires.
The laptop seems like the logical bet. That program is easy to use, and it’s not to hard to rig up a few analog or digital outputs from a laptop (atleast not for us robotics teams).
But, once again… if it is wireless… it is entirely illegal due to the fact that requires external power and only the chiclet is allowed external power.
Well I think it would have to be wired. I thought there was a run prohibiting the use for wireless devices. Ill have to check though.
its against the rules no doubt, its just really cool and i wanted to know how it worked, wierd tho, cuz it was completely wireless and it wasnt hooked up to a pc…team 1661 is really good with electronics i guess…
heres a new question on the table, how many robotics nerds does it take to figure out how to hook up a wiimote to an operator interface?
I don’t think it’s against the rules.
<R83> All equipment connected to the joystick ports of the Operator Interface must be powered solely through the power available through the port. External power sources of any type are not permitted on any equipment connected to the joystick ports. Portable computing devices can not be connected to joystick input ports on the Operator Interface. Power-passive devices (e.g. joysticks that draw their power solely through the Operator Interface joystick port) are permitted. The one exception to this rule is Innovation First incorporated USB adapters (IFI Part Number USB-CHICKLET) may be used to connect USB devices to the joystick ports of the Operator Interface. If used, this USB adapter must be powered with a 7.2V battery similar to the back-up battery. Teams can not use power from the competition port or any other source to power the USB adapter. The USB adapter must be positioned within the OPERATOR CONSOLE so that the indicator lights may be seen during inspection and operation in a match.
IMHO, there are two reasons for this rule:
- So that we don’t fry the OI
- So that we can’t have a computer run our robot (though you could just as easily put a computer onto the robot itself…)
It says that anything attached to the joystick ports is not allowed to have an external power source. The wiimote would not be attached to the joystick ports, and therefore should be legal. The wiimote also doesn’t really violate either of the reasons I can think of for this rule, so I don’t see any reason why it should be illegal.
The rule about extra radios is this:
<R66> The radio modems provided in the 2007 Kit Of Parts are the only permitted method for
communicating with the ROBOTS during the competition. Radio modems from previous
FIRST competitions can not be used. The radio modem must be connected directly to the
Robot Controller using one of the DB-9 cables provided in the 2007 Kit Of Parts. No other
form of wireless communications can be used to communicate to, from or within the ROBOT
(e.g. no Bluetooth devices are permitted on the ROBOT).
Says nothing about extra radios attached to the OI.
However, if I were a judge I might be a little wary of having a radio attached to the OI. I could see a non-GP team having someone in the stands control the robot.
It would be illegal because of R66:
The radio modems provided in the 2007 Kit Of Parts are the only permitted method for communicating with the ROBOTS during the competition. Radio modems from previous FIRST competitions can not be used. The radio modem must be connected directly to the Robot Controller using one of the DB-9 cables provided in the 2007 Kit Of Parts. No other form of wireless communications can be used to communicate to, from or within the ROBOT (e.g. no Bluetooth devices are permitted on the ROBOT).
…combined with R11:
<R11> For the purposes of determining compliance with the weight and volume limitations specified in Rule <R07>, these items are NOT considered part of the ROBOT and are NOT included in the weight and volume assessment of the ROBOT:
- The OPERATOR CONSOLE.
However, for all other purposes the items listed above are considered part of the ROBOT and must comply with all other applicable rules and requirements. In particular, these items are subject to the shipping deadlines specified in Section 4.5.1.1 and must ship in the crate with the rest of the ROBOT.
So, the operator console is part of the robot and must follow all robot rules. R66 says no wireless communication can be used other than the radio modems.
I’ll give you that. I wasn’t aware of that rule.
However, in my opinion a wiimote attached to the OI still doesn’t violate the reasoning behind the rules. Remember that we’re not supposed to ‘lawyer’ the rules, but instead consider the purpose behind them. I think any team which can manage to get a wiimote hooked to an OI, and have it control the robot intelligently should not be penalized. Instead, they should be given an award.
QUOTE=meatmanek;582808] I think any team which can manage to get a wiimote hooked to an OI, and have it control the robot intelligently should not be penalized. Instead, they should be given an award.
Yes, I agree. The Chicklet supports a wireless gamepad. We use the wireless for debugging and testing. It is great, you never have to get up from your computer to “man” the controls, you can walk behind the robot to get different perspectives. They operate at 2.4 GHZ and should not cause any interferance with the radios. We are not using it because we are not certain about the rule.
I actually was wondering if someone would be able to make that work. Using the GlovePIE scripts available online, it’s more than plausible that you could rig something so that wii_accelerometer_up = globemotor_forward.
Come on FIRST, loosen those wireless controller restrictions 
We had something like this running.
GlovePIE would rip all of the WiiMote Datas (yes, datas) off of the controller and export it to a virtual parallel port joystick.
Then we had a python script that would read the button and analog axis values from the virtual joystick, bundle it up, and shoot it over serial. On the RC side, we had software running to rip the Wiimote datas out and map them to motors and such.
Getting this to work with the OI would be super cool though.