Exercise for the Robots' Electronic for not to ruin the Controlers:)

[beemgruem]

Hey Guys!

This is my Rookie year so I believe I need to practise first before touching the pieces that we took today:)

Do you know any experiment or kind of exercise that I can do before building the electric and electronic part for the robot or should I just play with the pieces and find my way??

[Elgin Clock]

For the electronics components of the robot, there are certain rules you have to follow in the interest of safety.

Certain gauge wires to certain things, fuses, spikes, relays to certain things.. etc..

Use the following as a guide, and just build a test board with everything mounted to a piece of plywood or something for now, being sure not to cut any cables or trim any cables yet.

Your final electrical setup may vary from what is shown obviously with whatever components you decide to use or not use, but this will give you a good idea of how each component should be laid out and how they need to be hooked up.

http://www2.usfirst.org/2008comp/Manual/2008_Robot_Power_Distribution_Diagram.pdf

Good luck!

[BQuennell]

In one phrase RTFM, really read the manual and check out the wiring diagram before you do any real stuff, get confortable with the system then you can fiddle around. I'd say look into if you've never done it before practicing crimping wires of the diffrent gauges to make sure you get good connections. Best of luck to you

[keen101]

If possible try and get access to an older robot from previous years. That will help you get ideas.


Other than that the best advice i can give you is... make sure you have an accessible design. keep the RC, battery and PWM's accessible. There is nothing that slows down a team more than having to dig through wires and around gearboxes to try and fix a problem. I learned that the hard way. :D

[lukevanoort]

Other than that the best advice i can give you is... make sure you have an accessible design. keep the RC, battery and PWM's accessible. There is nothing that slows down a team more than having to dig through wires and around gearboxes to try and fix a problem. I learned that the hard way. :D
Yep, that is definitely key. Our electrical setup last year was crammed into a really small space (our turret took up almost half of the robot) and it really hurt us. Our first qualifier at Palmetto we couldn't even take to the field because the common wire from the battery fell out of the distro block in queuing, and it was too difficult to reach to be fixable in the short amount of time we had. The following match we couldn't score because, in the process of fixing the first problem, we had accidentally unplugged the solenoid that controlled our gripper actuator. Don't be like us and learn the hard way; make accessible electronics.

[EricVanWyk]

Practice crimping your wires. Crimp a wire, tug on its connector a few times. Repeat until you can reliably get it to stick.

Bad crimps have a high "badness caused" to "difficulty to fix" ratio, so it is a good place to invest a little time.