We are planning to do an x drive with tank drive mode and gravity strafing.
Probably need to do some math and expand the accelerometer dead zone to ease driving. Protection code is required. That is why you have so many buttons on your secondary controller!
Actually, because our team consists of two programming nerds, our program decides our driving style. But if you do have a talented videogame player, you probably want to ask his driving habit first.
Okay, this is confusing but its how i like my controller so stick with me here.
For the following explanation, assume joystick 1 is the left joystick on the remote. (up and down) will refer to the forward/back or up down motion of the joystick.
joystick one: forward and back (up/down) is driving forward back
joystick one (left right) is strafing
joystick two (up down forward back) is arm up/down
joystick two (left right) is turning in place
so its essentially like your the robot, and your in a video game (like call of duty) arm up/down is like looking up or down in call of duty. turning in place is like spinning in place in call of duty and forward backward and strafe is like cod too. Wierd but hey! it works so i wont complain.
rest of my team has arm as forward and back on right joystick and arcade on left.
Keep in mind that Both controls above are for teams that have one driver so they are controlling everything themselves.
As always for us, triggers are used for wrist and intakes.
I also like this configuration except I prefer having my arm on the triggers so I don’t accidently lift it.
We don’t have a partner remote but is it useful ? I managed to drive the robot myself this year and I have the impression that having two drivers would require a lot of coordination. Is it wort the investment ?
i drive solo. too much co-ordination and i want to know its my fault if i dont succeed. keeps the team from making it a blame-game. triggers for me are intake and wrist (we often have a wrist)
I drive arcade because I learned how to program an arcade drive before a tank drive so I just stuck with it. If it was the other way around I’d probably do tank.
That being said, I see a lot more people driving with tank than with arcade.
Arcade, it came a lot easier than tank because I play a lot of forza. I also enjoy the one controller setup because me and the other driver who was also captain would argue
alot when driving, but I would let your driver decide by using a little of both, because he needs to feel comfortable.
Personally I like tank, and nearly every robot we use uses tank. However, we did have a seasoned gamer who preferred arcade cause it was identical to shooters
I prefer arcade. It makes me more able to multitask since I only need 1 finger to drive. Also, I like to put my lift on the other analog that way I can be more exact with powering it.
I drive with a partner and I think it’s great. It does take a lot of co-ordination, but if you stick with a set of drivers for the whole year you learn to work as one. you would also need a good coach to make the executive decisions for the group.
We divide the robot so that controller 1 gets the drive and controller 2 gets the lift/intake. I am on the drive and I prefer the tank style over the arcade mode because I feel like I can be more fluid with it.
I think another problem to consider with arcade is that it isnt possible to strafe. you have a choice between strafing or turning. however with tank you can accomplish both. but i may be missing something that would allow you to strafe with arcade
I use a mix of arcade with both joysticks. I used to use tank a long time ago.
Left joystick forward and back makes me go forward/back.
Right joystick left and right makes me turn left/right.
This lets me have a hand free when I am doing other things with my robot. For example, when catapulting for Toss Up, I had my catapult button on the top right buttons. For catapulting, you only needed to go forward and back to rock the ball, so I let go of the right joystick when doing so.
That sort of solves your problem of being able to strafe with arcade controls @TheSheev.
I think it depends on what drive you have, and how co-ordinated your driver is… We used tank for Toss Up, and I felt it was better to drive with (mind you, I’ve never driven arcade in competition) as it felt more accurate and better to turn with etc.
However if you’re going to do a lot of things that require buttons (eg, catapult), you may want to use arcade, so that you have an extra hand to press buttons with.
It’s all up to personal preference in the end though. I’m not the full-time driver, so I can’t really say much from a competition perspective, only a practicing/backup perspective.
If you want to know about ways to program strafing/holonomic onto different types of drive, you could easily program a button to swap between tank mode and strafing mode. You could also make one joystick basic arcade, and the other one for strafing. There are plenty of options, you’ve just got to think of them!
The problem with that I have this year is that our lift will have 2 buttons. So driver 1 gets main wheels and intake and other intake. The second driver gets strafing wheels and lift.