The Blue Alliance

You really thought you were going to have to wait all the way until New Year’s for more of The Blue Alliance?

The second episode of The Blue Alliance brings you a more advanced topic than the first: custom controls. Have you ever seen teams with their own array of buttons and wonder how they did it? We take apart team 177’s 2006 custom controls box to show you how it works. Want to know the difference between a switch and a potentiometer and how to use them to control your robot instead of the kit of part joysticks? Then check out this episode.

All of that is relatively simple, and at The Blue Alliance, we are all about taking it up a notch. So instead of regular boring buttons, we take apart an Easy Button from Staples to show you how to wire it up to control your robot. Warning: If you add an Easy Button to your controls, other people may ask you to push it non-stop.

The show notes for this episode are key, since they contain illustrations showing you how to wire up different parts, and the complete pinout for the joystick ports on the Operator Interface. There is also a guide to how to program the robot to incorporate your new custom controls. Also, we include high-resolution photos of a custom controls box and the modifications you will have to make to the Easy Button. Make sure to download the show notes and check out all the great information inside.

Visit the Chief Delphi thread for this episode: Click Here

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Downloads

 Episode 2 - Show Notes: Download
 Episode 2 - iPod (low) - 29mb [8:05m]: Download
 Episode 2 - xVid (med) - 53mb [8:05m]: Download
 Episode 2 - xVid (high) - 83mb [8:05m]: Download