Things You Shouldn't Do
 

I thought it would be ineresting to see what things people have done that they regret...

Our team accidentally plugged an analog sensor into the digital side of the sidecar...
[magic white smoke]

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

Things to not do:
-Think you can worry about wire management after everything is wired.
-Put the Digital Sidecar in the most out-of-the-way, hardest-to-reach place on the robot you can possibly imagine. :rolleyes:

Things to do:
-Make sure the jags are not wired backwards.. ::rtm::

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

Get M+ and V+ mixed up on a jaguar... And turn on the robot

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

Connect two battery connectors together.... I still regret that to this day...

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

We had a rookie store bare steel cables in the same crate with an un-insulated battery.
It makes a beautiful green vapor!! :yikes:

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

We had the robot in the back of an SUV on the way to a practice field. Somehow, a battery fell over and the two leads connected on our drive train. We didn't notice until we got to the field about 30 minutes later. The chain go so hot that several links were welded together.

Moral: Insulate and secure your batteries.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

While we were helping set up an indoor summer offseason competition, we did not realize it was raining outside. Our robot, however, took note of that. Mostly because it was in the bed of a pickup truck at the time.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

Don't assume white dashes on a wire mean negative polarity. Buy two of everything until you figure that out.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

That's not always the end though. Out lead teacher is notorious for leaving the robot outside in his truck through all kinds of weather. Back in 2008 the robot sat through a rain storm, several days later we went to use it an a demo and noticed water dripping out of the computer (The old school IFI Microchip one) So we took it apart and dried off the PCB with a hand dryer in the men's room, 15min later the robot was up and running perfectly.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

This wasn't on my team (it happened at college), but one time a kid was working near a battery much like the FRC ones and managed to put a screwdriver across a couple uninsulated terminals.

Moral: Give thanks for insulated screwdrivers.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

I thought white dashes were always positive...

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

I believe they are :P

He was saying dont assume that, because they arn't :P

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

We had someone measure the distance between the terminals of a battery with a measuring tape. He contacted both terminals. Needless to say, the tape measure is no good from ~2 to ~4 inches. Completely burnt. It now sits proudly in our hall of shame, along with some other things.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

I would like to see what else is there.

We never do any drilling on a robot with any electrical parts attached unless a vacuum is sucking away chips and swarfs from the drill. Lexan, Wood, Aluminum, Poolnoodles, nothing is drilled unless a vacuum is there.

Once we were using a piece of scrap metal to determine angle on last year's bot's Lexan, and almost contacted bare battery terminals.

Re: Things You Shouldn't Do
 

I thought that too. :confused: