Instructional Material: Exercise: Using an IR Seeker

Modern Robotics has a IR beacon sensor (called IR Seeker V3) designed for use with the Tetrix control system. This sensor can detect the IR beacons used for some FTC games and provide information about the location of the beacon relative to the robot. The FTC SDK has a sample program you can use to experiment with the IR Seeker. In AS, open the path FtcRobotController/java/[first package]/external.samples/SensorMRIrSeeker. You can enable this program and work with it but any changes you make will be overwritten at the next update of the SDK. You can copy that class to the TeamCode area so any changes you make will be retained. Right click the SensorMRIrSeeker class and click copy. Then right click on the teamcode package in the TeamCode area and click paste. AS will copy the example class into the TeamCode area and adjust the package name.

Here is a discussion of the IR Seeker on the Modern Robotics website.

Note: Modern Robotics sensors or integrated motor encoders cannot be directly connected to the REV Expansion Hub. This is due to the different voltages used by the two systems. You must use a level shifter board and for sensors, a cross over cable to connect MR devices to the REV hub. Here is a video describing this issue.

Further note that with the REV Hub the IR Seeker sensor is plugged into an I2C port and configured by adding the device to the I2C Bus number matching the physical I2C port you plugged the sensor into.

 

Material Type: 
Lab Activity
Education Level: 
Middle School
High School
Focus Subject: 
Computing / Computer Science
Robotics Software
HW Platform: 
Tetrix
SW Platform: 
Java
Interactivity Style: 
Mixed
Audience: 
Learner