Outreach Robot

In these lessons we will be using the rPi to power a simple outreach robot by receiving input from a USB Wireless Gamepad and sending PWM signals to FRC speed controllers. Obviously this is not useful on actual FRC robots, as it violates a large number of robot rules, but it is great for non-RoboRio robots since it has the right amount of complexity compared with other options:

• Just using a plain Remote Control Rx/Tx requires zero code, but provides very little flexibility and requires users to use a big, clunky controller.

• Using the actual RoboRio requires a lot of code, a driver station laptop, and expensive hardware.

The video shows a medium-sized outreach robot powered by FRC-class motors, but the same approach could be used for smaller robots using miniature speed controllers and motors.