My team recently discovered that if you plug a cable into both ports of the V5 controller, the controller acts as both the primary and partner controller. For example, you can program an arm/lift control on your primary controller, and your tank drive on the partner controller. In the case you don’t have your partner controller (which happened to us a lot) you can just plug the V5 controller into itself, allowing you to access the partner-controlled drive.
There’s no mention of this in the rules, so I’m just putting it out here - is it a feature/intentional, or should we not do this?
If it’s not illegal, then it’s legal! Rule of thumb in robotics unless it’s obviously implied, if never stated.
This wouldn’t give you any competitive advantage over the other, similarly controlled robots on the field, so I can’t imagine why it might be illegal unless there’s something in the controller’s programming that would be put into a paradox or something.
Why disable it? I understand it’s not an intended function but it appears useful. I don’t understand why you would remove it when it helps in situations such as OP’s. What’s the purpose for disabling it? What does it harm?
Ok, we will leave it as is. Understand it’s an unsupported feature and may have side effects. I would avoid using during a match. If it becomes disabled by a future code change it’s not something we will make any efforts to fix.
I suppose this means button mapping must be mutually exclusive.?. But what happens if different functions are mapped to same buttons on both controllers?
Yeah there’s apparent side effects like overlapping controls. I think if there was an easier way for users to know they wouldn’t be as confused on what’s happening. Sorry if I came off as rude. Thanks for being there for the community though.