alexsleat/projectChimaera — Issue #52: 2012 Rule - Mission Initiation
Author: GarethG
Created: 2012-01-04 20:56:37+00:00
State: open
Labels: Hardware

The following is taken from a report the organiser published shortly after the 2011 event

* The teams will be required to have at least three ways to initiate their vehicle‟s autonomous mission. An example can be wireless connection, wired connection with timer for mission start, a magnet swipe, or some other mean. This will enable the teams to run their mission even if there are problems due to overcrowded wireless network environment. Also, this will eliminate the tether from any mission in qualification, semi-finals, or finals.

Basically most teams were either trying to start their runs over WiFi (which is actively jammed by NURC) or with a tether which makes judging the run as autonomous difficult.

We did have a magnet swipe last year that worked OK, the magnet had to be so strong to penetrate the hull that it messed around with the compass a little bit (this is mostly down to a crap reed switch). So if we call that a fall back we need two more ways of setting off. Maybe this would be another good DsPIC module that can sit on the outside of the sub and give a go signal over RS485?

So I don't forget, send DEADBEEF in Hex, there's a good reason behind this, its one of the few words that are human readable in HEX form, this guarantees that its time to start rather than an error. You could use DEADCAFE if you wanted to stop!

You could do it optically, magnetically....

I think it would be a good idea to combine this with the Strobe light, you could use the strobe lights as a sort of countdown to when the sub is going to start, useful for everyone, and a neat little feature for the judges. It's one thing just blindly conforming to the rules we are given but making them better is a real plus.