How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

I've been going through all the forums trying to figure out how to power the Kinect on the robot. (I'm leaving the programming question to others...)

I can disconnect the Wall-wart transformer/rectifier and have a cable that gets fed 12VDC. However, how do I connect it to the PDB? The dedicated 12V connector goes to the Wi-Fi. The main outputs have 30A breakers or something ridiculously high for the 1+ amps the Wall-Wart puts out.

Can I get several amp breakers for the PDB? Any other suggestions?

One of our team members thought of using the spike relay as it will take a small fuse, but wouldn't that have to be turned on during initialization... more work for the programmers.

Comments/Suggestions are appreciated.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

You can get smaller amp rated Snap Action breakers online at:

http://www.snapaction.net/pdf/vb3.pdf

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

I try to find at the manual they don’t mention any thing

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

If your programmers are able to successfully use the kinect on the robot, they can turn on a spike in their sleep. On the other hand, if you are worried about turning on a spike, trying to put a kinect on the robot may not be the best idea.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Oh, programming the Spike isn't a problem... just trying to keep things simple. If I can legally plug a kinect into the PDB with a small Snap-Action breaker, and perhaps plug a panda board into the PDB with a 12V-5V DC-DC converter we're golden... I know these can PHYSICALLY be done, but concerned about legality.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Be careful about using different snap action breakers. I think there is a rule that you can only use 20, 30, 40 amp breakers on the robot.

But don't quote me

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

R43 Blue box

"
Smaller value Snap Action auto resetting breakers may be used on the PD Board for circuitry not defined above.

In addition to the required branch power circuit breakers, smaller value fuses or breakers may be incorporated into custom circuits for additional protection.
"

So you may use a 20A breaker, or substitute a smaller one, but it must be the same make, model, etc of the ones included in the kit.

Personally, I would use a 20A that you already have, and put a fuse inline if you are worried about trying to protect your device. In reality I have never seen a fuse protect a device that was miswired, unless that device had a crowbar circuit built in.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

One thing to consider is that the PDB doesn't regulate the voltage outputs, so you could potentially end up somewhere in the mid 13V range with a fresh battery or higher.

So you should be able to go down to 20A breakers, but nothing less than that. I don't see why you couldn't make a little regulator circuit for the Panda Board.

If you guys DO get this working, I will have to come by and see it. With an OMAP I guess you'd be running some flavor of Linux and running the SDK. The fun would be in interfacing to the cRIO. LOTS of code. LOTS of time. Good luck to you!

- Bryce

EDIT: WHOOPS! Yep, smaller Snap Actions are allowed. Thanks Justin.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

I would suspect that the voltage dips may be a larger problem than the 13ish volts of a fully charged battery.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Yes, watch out. Something like this sounds right. Ask FIRST or read the manual before doing anything.

It kind of sounds like FIRST didn't really plan out how teams might use the Kinect on the robot. They really meant it for the driver station. So now that it is proving to be quite difficult/not easy, it's kind of a loss to us because we've got to get it working in 6 wks. Maybe there wasn't much they could do, but it's kind of a bummer.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

That is a REALLY good point. I guess it all depends on whether the Kinect has a regulator build and how low it drops the voltages.

- Bryce

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Do you mean to use the Kinect on the robot. They really meant it for the driver station. There is no need to contact with the Robot.
I hope I understand right that should connect with classmate. So there is no need to connect with Robot.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Correct. FIRST meant it for the driver station and you don't have to put it on your robot.

But FIRST has allowed us to put it on the robot if we want/can. Benefits include being able to sense the environment really well.

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Just jumping in as this rather pertains to me -- has anyone been able to power the kinect on the robot yet?

Re: How to power the Kinect on the robot.
 

Our systems team has changed its mind as they weren't happy with the resolution the Kinect provided, but we had been planning to cut the power cord from the output of the wall transformer/rectifier and connect it to the PDB with a smaller SnapAction breaker than provided by FIRST... never did get to try it though...