Scioly.org

If you are challenged, you can go online and find an old out of production VEX PIC5 unit rather cheap. VEX has a free tutorial on how to program this. You are basically looking for it to power up and be ready to work. You may be able to find used axle encoders. The quad has some future advantages. This is basically an interrupter for the motor circuit. The quadrature allows you to use it to also tell you where it is. I do not know how this works, but it is there.

retired1 wrote:If you are challenged, you can go online and find an old out of production VEX PIC5 unit rather cheap. VEX has a free tutorial on how to program this. You are basically looking for it to power up and be ready to work. You may be able to find used axle encoders. The quad has some future advantages. This is basically an interrupter for the motor circuit. The quadrature allows you to use it to also tell you where it is. I do not know how this works, but it is there.

I would recommend against VEX. Their kits are very difficult to interface to custom parts or other units while Arduino is highly integrateable.

I would agree with Windu. It's also fair to note that VEX components can be used with Arduino boards with some programming and (usually) a breakout board. I found myself limited last year because of a VEX system and wouldn't go there again.

windu34 wrote:

nitroignika wrote:

HandsFreeCookieDunk wrote:
As long as you're using a microcontroller, you're best off using the program to brake rather than engineering a mechanical system. You can be much more precise.

Alright thanks for the advice and I will use this for my build but I know nothing about microcontrollers, optical encoders, and how to program them. So does anyone have an resources for where I can read into this a little bit more and maybe somewhere I can see builds using a microcontroller and an optical encoder?

Thanks

My electric vehicle from nationals is on the "best of nationals" page on the wiki as well as youtube. There are plenty of intro to Arduino programming books online as pdf's as well as at your local university library

Alright, so I looked into Arduino and what chip do you recommend I use and is it worth getting a starter kit just to know what I am working with?

nitroignika wrote:

windu34 wrote:

nitroignika wrote:
Alright thanks for the advice and I will use this for my build but I know nothing about microcontrollers, optical encoders, and how to program them. So does anyone have an resources for where I can read into this a little bit more and maybe somewhere I can see builds using a microcontroller and an optical encoder?

Thanks

My electric vehicle from nationals is on the "best of nationals" page on the wiki as well as youtube. There are plenty of intro to Arduino programming books online as pdf's as well as at your local university library

Alright, so I looked into Arduino and what chip do you recommend I use and is it worth getting a starter kit just to know what I am working with?

Go with the Uno. Starter kit is a good place to start

The original post was for braking only which the out of date VEX PIC will work quite well. If you might want to do anything else, the Arduino would be a better way to go. It is not a plug and play system. Great results requires a good bit of time to learn the programming.

So moving backwards is no longer legal???
Chalker: Is this going to be changed in the final rules or is this final and purposeful?? Can you provide the reasoning behind this decision?