So my team has been using the new GPS sensor to drive around during Programming Skills. It’s been helpful and pretty accurate, but something that we’ve noticed is that the GPS code strips that we had been using were shorter than the field perimeter wall by a couple of inches, and that the black parts of the strip was blurred, indicated by the text on the strips (see picture below).
The problem is that when we went to our first tournament using the GPS sensor, we noticed that the code strips at this tournament were different. These strips were not blurred, indicated by the letters on the strips, and were longer than the field perimeter. This caused major inconsistencies in our robot’s code.
A week later, however, using the exact same programming code in our autonomous routine, we went to another tournament with code strips that were identical to the ones that we owned (Blurred, shorter than the field perimeter, etc.). This time our code worked accurately.
Has anyone else experienced this before, and is there anything that we can change to our robot mechanically to fix this problem and compensate for the change in strips?
I have not seen enough strips to know what it is like across the region.
That said, the forum is not the way to solve your problem of production quality. Contact VEX Support ask for clarification why your blurred strips and those at events with blurry strips work, but those events with crisp print dont work.
Skills fields must have GPS strips at qualifying tournaments. Events can place strips on main competition fields, and all fields then must have strips. In my mind, I think it is pushing a technology out very quickly and causing some concern about consistency.
As with everything engineering - problem solve and share with community:)
Can @Jon_Jack or someone else from VEX comment on this? This is concerning, because if the GPS strips are going to be off by a couple inches depending on the tournament then their utility is drastically reduced for skills…
We got our new GPS strips a bit ago (after waiting 3 weeks for VEX support to reply) and they look pretty good. Im just worried that the screwed up ones will show up at tournaments and screw up teams that payed the 200$ to own the gps
