Sensors and Auxiliary Items
Cameras and Sensors
Purpose: To figure out the complex workings of the game while it is being played, sensors and cameras are needed for the robot to get a handle on what is going on around it.
Limelight
- It is a "plug-and-play smart camera"
- Basically we use it for computer vision
- To power it you can either connect it on the 12V 2A slot on the VRM or to a side (small) connector on the PDH
- If we do not have any ports available, we will follow the answers in this post, and slap a 20AMP breaker to the pdh. How can we power our limelight?
- Ethernet will just go to the network switch
USB/Ethernet Cameras
- The Axis M1013, M1011 and Axis 206 Ethernet cameras are used for capturing images for vision processing and/or sending video back to the Driver Station laptop. The camera should be wired to a 5V power output on the Voltage Regulator Module and an open ethernet port on the network switch.
Color Sensor
- They use use an IR Camera to detect color
- 3.3V Input
- Connected to the I2C bus
Limit Switches
- Useful to act as stop switches, or to tell us when a part reaches a certain "checkpoint".
- It is a switch, that either opens or closes (NC vs NO) when you press it.
- This lets us put it into places where a game object might pass through. For example, if we had to shoot a ball, we might have a limit switch on the top, so when the ball hits the switch, we know we are ready to shoot.
Gyroscope
- We use the NavX2
- It easily connects. We just line it up with those 34 pins in the middle of the roboRIO and plug it in.
- Here is the very shortened NavX2 documentation.
- Here is the full documentation
Additional Resources
To look at more examples of sensors, or to read more up on them, read through this documentation