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Basic Control for Rogue
Rogue Part 2: Basic Control
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Rogue's chassis has a nice protected area between the battery bay and the rear axle, but it's jammed with the original control unit, the battery charger and a rat's nest of wires. Rogue runs with the original control unit and joystick, but that really only helps if we plan to ride him. I'll admit it's fun, but I want Rogue to do some work for us, and the seat platform that came with him is nearly 60 pounds! We could (and will) replace the top platform, but want it more available for water cannons, robotic arms or as a stable platform on which we can pile all of our stuff. If he's going to carry 160 pounds, we'd rather that be our stuff, not one of us.
Just in case our desires change over time, we're holding on to the internal controller and joystick, and have thoroughly documented the connections. It should only take us 20 minutes or so to yank the replacement control components and reconnect the original control unit and joystick.
We jumped in with both feet and picked up a Sabertooth 2x25 motor controller. That means Top Ramen for a little while, since it really wasn't planned... The Sabertooth is half the size of the original control unit, which makes us happy. We can really clean up the rat's nest and add some fun capabilities. We're hoping to hook it up to an RC transmitter/receiver for some short-term testing. Unfortunately, unless we can find some creative ways to hack the DIP Switches on the Sabertooth, we're not going to be able to be able to easily switch back-and-forth between control schemes.
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