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View Full Version : Our 2013 driver station

ferret_guy
06-04-2013, 19:37
This is the driver station we used at the Las Vegas regional

http://i.imgur.com/WPbz0rv.jpg

Front coming soon....
ferret_guy
07-04-2013, 22:23
Front
http://i.imgur.com/2o17BWI.jpg
nekojess
08-04-2013, 14:17
Lovely. Ours is boring; it's just a laptop and a joystick ._.

Only have two gripes. Charge/power should probably be on an on-off-on rocker switch, and the labels are an OCD nightmare :p

What's the charge/power for, anyway? And how are you interfacing the LEDs with the laptop inside?


(also, *brohoof*)
ferret_guy
08-04-2013, 15:23
Internally there is a standard 17Ah battery (makes the thing very heavy, the only downside) connected to a charger, and an inverter the charge switch connects the battery to the charger and the power switch connects the battery to the inverter. We were planning on using somthing like this (http://www.ebay.com/itm/AC-380V-20A-Self-Locking-0-1-2-3-Position-Cam-Combination-Changeover-Switch-/321058309808?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ac09106b0) for the power and charge swiches, but due to time constraints we used 2 30A double pole switches

Also the power led, and the power button are soldered directly to the motherboard of a small laptop later i can post a picture of the (less than flattering) internals
synth3tk
08-04-2013, 17:46
Also the power led, and the power button are soldered directly to the motherboard of a small laptop later i can post a picture of the (less than flattering) internals
The [digital] guts is always the best part. ;)
ILikePizza555
08-04-2013, 21:37
I've always wondered how buttons were connected to the driver station.
ferret_guy
08-04-2013, 22:32
I've always wondered how buttons were connected to the driver station.

I don't quite understand what you mean...
bumblebee3339
08-05-2013, 15:19
I don't quite understand what you mean...

I know what he means, and I want to know it too.
We want to know how do you connect all of the buttons on the physical driver station to the computer itself.
Hypnotoad
08-05-2013, 15:26
You use a cypress module. Its a very convenient board with a bunch of analog and digital input pins. It connects conveniently through usb and can be reprogrammed to your liking in the IO tab of the driver station. just click configure and pin configurations are available.

After that you would use the cypress module class/VIs to get the actual info on your robot.