DS Power Source

[Tom Line]

While operating tethered, for instance at one of the "practice fields" they set up at a competition venue, what is the power source for the DS?

Perhaps I'm missing something - I rescanned the controls documents and didn't see anything, however.

Is 110AC required for the DS, or can it obtain it's power from the robot, through the ethernet tether cable? I suspect the answer is yes you need 110 AC, but I wanted to find confirmation and have been unable to.

This could be problematic if a team needs to run out to the field after an aborted auton round, etc to reset their robot - they likely won't have 110 AC power to hook their DS up to on the field.

[EHaskins]

The DS needs external power. You can improvise 12v power sources other than the 110v adapter.

[Mike Betts]

Tom,

To the best of my knowledge, FIRST is looking at this issue. I would hope that we see something in an update soon...

Mike

[Mark McLeod]

I've been running ours off a 9.6v Vex battery with an adaptor to the barrel connector used by the DS.
You can do the same with AA batteries in a 12v cluster.

If you ever built a battery supply for the old IFI Operator Interface that works with the new DS too.
Although it seems to work at least down to 9v, I'd probably upgrade it to use 12v.

(http://team358.org/public_files/OI_power.jpg)http://team358.org/public_files/Vex_power_sm.jpg (http://team358.org/public_files/Vex_power.jpg)http://team358.org/public_files/OI_power_sm.jpg (http://team358.org/public_files/OI_power.jpg)


(http://team358.org/public_files/OI_power.jpg)

[Tom Line]

Well isn't that interesting.

I think I'm going to find a use for our old back-up batteries, since we don't need them anymore.

Woot!