We got our Seeker sensor this week and have been trying to figure it out. We did a few test programs where we work on our code and it seems to work fine. Our field is setup in kind of a dusty area with different lighting. When we run the program there it doesn't work at all. It seems to be affected by the different lights in that area, or maybe the dust in the air.

Any tips or suggestions for dealing with this? We had a similar issue with the light sensor in FLL a few years back and don't want to run into the same problem at the FTC competition next weekend.

Thanks for any help.
Scott

I have had similar issue, but the codes I have tried don't work at all, can't even compile

code RED

Some lights will emit infrared light even though they are meant for the visible spectrum. My school has fluorescent lights, and they have never caused any issues. But I've done some testing in my basement (I believe we have LEDs, but I'm not sure), and my IR Seekers were giving me readings even though I did not turn our beacon on. You could potentially try to filter out weaker IR signals with the sensor in a program (you can get the light intensity from them), but I don't believe that would ever be reliable. My suggestion would be to try and work around your light sources, like dimming them or finding a room that does not have that effect. If nothing works, you could try to put some sort of shielding over the sensor to block out overhead lights.

Luckily, all the venues I have been at for competitions have never had this problem, so if you get something to work in practice, you should be fine in game. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any good programmatic way to fix the problem.

Out of curiosity, do you know if you are getting AC or DC readings from your sensor? If you use the 3rd party driver, you can get whichever one you want. But, if you use the built-in ROBOTC ability to read the IR sensor, I think it gives you DC. For reference, the IR beacon used in FTC pulses AC at 1200 Hz. So, if you can use AC readings, you can get better results.