I’m proud to announce the release of the VEX LED Indicator Pack:
http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex-logic-products.shtml#276-2176
http://www.vexrobotics.com/images/LED-Indicator-Pack-160x160.jpg
Awesome, good price too, I bet these would be good for trouble shooting autonomous code.
I’m thinking of lining the the lower sides of the robot to give off a really cool underlighting effect.
And if you could sync them to some music…
Hmmm… brownouts with the push of a button! 
But really, would hooking up tremendous amounts of LEDs have a significant impact on the robot? And does the one-splitter-per-port rule also apply to them?
Only in California… 
Can we use regular LED’s now as functional parts of our robot, or do they need to be VEX LED’s with the red connector thing?
I totally agree. I saw these in Dallas too and thought that they would a great way to get some feedback from your robot. Not only would they be good for trouble shooting, but you could use them as indicators while your robot is running to let you know what’s going on.
I’m going to order these along with the High Strength Chain and Sprocket Kit this week.
BLUE?? Where is the Blue one? If I had a blue one then I can make colors by having them next to each other!! You know Green, Red, Blue, light mixing…
Blue! Bleu! Azul! 蓝色! Blau! 青! синий!
There is space in the 9 pack for one more LED, make it BLUE!
Since we can paint our parts or use things that are different colors from the version that Vex sells (like zip ties), I don’t think that there is anything wrong with taking a blue LED and replacing one of the other LED’s with it.
Please excuse the “duh” question, but I was wondering exactly how one would accomplish the above. Would you connect the LED’s to the digital outputs, then write into your code “turn on digital output” at certain checkpoints in your programming? Or do you have something more elegant in mind?
Yeah that would be one way. Though in the past sometimes I’ve had to figure out where in my code a problem was. You could make it so that after each step it lights up the LED. You could also tell it to light up if it sees a line to make sure the sensor works which could mean your code is wrong.
Foster Blue LEDs are generally much more expensive than others so that is likely the reason why they are not included in the pack.
I have a Hex to Display LED that I use. I take the four bits and use them to drive the LED display. In the last robot the Sonar Sensor dumped the output to the bits so we could externally see how far it was from the robot.
We would use these LED’s to light up when sensors go off to get visual feedback. It will make debugging routines easier.
Of course I’m going to make the assumption that the new Vexnet device transmits the values of all the D/A, interrupt ports and what the transmitter is sending back, along with a debug string to a laptop that’s listening. Thats the hidden coolness of having a device like that.
Snicker. As I glance over to a few thousand dollars (retail price) of robot parts I’m reminded of my business learnings that says “Cost is not tied to price, but value is.” The overall cost of the LED kits should be under $3 (unless they are buying by the LEDs at Radio Shack one at a time) so chucking my Blue LED in the bag won’t cost that much more, but the Value will increase.
If you get a chance you should do some costing models. Start with Pizza, you will be surprised/depressed on what pizza “costs” vs. “price”. And then start a new thread on “Cost / Value / Price” to tell us what you found out. We can then talk about why Vinny’s pizza has a price thats twice that of the local Acme, but is worth ever penny.
may we use common LED’s too?
or do we need to use the VEX ones?
because personally i would like to spend the money on something more “valuble”
like gears or tank treads something
$9.99 just seems too much for LED’s…
Guys,
The answer to all of this speculation is easy - In VRC Tournaments, you can use Vex parts and nothing else that isn’t specificly allowed by the rules - Blake
This includes vex equivalents, but you need to provide receipts and/or documentation to prove that.
If you’re using your own LEDs, what I’d do is use an extension cable leading to some place that’s easy to see and plug in my own LED. If they say it’s not a vex legal part I can remove it easily, but it’s there if anyone wants to inspect it
do they sell identical LED’s cheaper anywhere?
somewhere like radioshack?
thanks
I guess Corpralchee beat me to it, but that’s what I was talking about doing. You could just insert “turn on digital output” at certain places in your code. Although, I was thinking more of using them to let you know when a certain routine is running or as a warning when using the Power Expander for instance. The Power Expander as an analog output from which the microcontroller can monitor it’s battery voltage. You could use the LEDs as a visual indication that the battery is getting low. The possiblities are endless though.
Radioshack has TONS of LEDs in every shape, size, color, and form. I recently got a full color LED there. It’s awesome!
RadioShack does indeed have a decent little supply of electronic doodads… but if you really want to find the mother load of this stuff, try DigiKey at http://digikey.com/ and you can even get a print catalog. It is as big as a phone book 
When I priced out an IR receiver (for my computer), I was able to buy the parts for 6 of them at digikey for the same price as 1 from RS.