Electrical Quick Connections for Large Amounts of Wire
 

Over the past two years, the robot our team builds has had two main pieces: drive train and mechanisms that go on top of the drive train. However, the system for connecting all of the pieces together has always been a massive bundle of wires going up and down a main strut. This means that to take off a component from the mechanism, a massive bundle of wires needs to come undone, and subsequently, redone.

I have seen a lot of teams that use other types of connectors, but I do not know how to start implementing this process. The main question: What are some of the main ways to connect electronics for ease of disassembling and reassembling the robot?

Re: Electrical Connections
 

I just copied tim-tim's post from a previous thread since it is exactly what will help you out!


Using D-sub connections is also a great way for connecting sensors!

Re: Electrical Connections
 

Thanks. I was looking into using a 50-pin connector for all of the PWM wires instead of making two separate PWM wires that connect in the middle. Would that be the same process as making a ribbon cable?

Re: Electrical Connections
 

This sounds messy. Do you have a specific use case where you will need to connect/disconnect all your sensors/pwm devices at once? If not, I would just take the standard route for PWM.

EDIT: nvm, misread. I would just get the larger housings (1x12?) on hansen hobbies for structure to structure connections.

http://www.hansenhobbies.com/product...ools/crimp_ec/
http://www.hansenhobbies.com/product...vo/sw_dx22_fu/
http://www.hansenhobbies.com/product...tors/pt1in_ft/
http://www.hansenhobbies.com/product...tors/pt1in_mt/
http://www.hansenhobbies.com/product...ors/pt1in_1x3/

Re: Electrical Connections
 

One of the best connection choices would be to use a D-sub connector. Here is an example that you can solder to (make sure to look at the pin count and not use the photo - we've used a 53 pin connector with a great result). You would then select a male end to mate up.

Here are some photos of our 2012 robot, Frizz Bee. These photos show how the entire electronics board can be dropped. I wasn't able to readily find photos of the shooter assembly removed, but the shooter was attached by the D-sub connector and could be interchanged/removed by one plug for sensors and another pair of APP for the shooter motor.
BEES6944 by FRC Team 836, The RoboBees, on Flickr

BEES6917 by FRC Team 836, The RoboBees, on Flickr
BEES6974 by FRC Team 836, The RoboBees, on Flickr

Re: Electrical Connections
 

Exactly this. Andersons are the way to go. Plus if you want to get creative there's different colors of Andersons, they're easy to label, and it makes connecting motors and motor controllers an absolute breeze.

Another benefit of Andersons is that you can connect them to each other to organize positive and negative polarities.
And then you can connect those connections into an even bigger block for more ease of access.

tl;dr--Andersons are the best thing since sliced bread.

Re: Electrical Connections
 

Besides connectors, there is a number of other things you can do to pretty up your wiring.

• Using fused wiring for the power runs helped my team substantially. Since power wires for each motor are stuck together, they were easier to route together and they look very nice. (might post pictures later)
  
• This season, my team used the harness environment in Inventor to lay out all our power and signal runs before constructing the bot. This not only allowed us to make a very organized design, but it took less time to wire the competition bot and the practice bot than it did to wire just the competition bot last year.
  
• Wire sleeve is extremely helpful for keeping lots of small wires (i.e. solenoid and PWM) together, and it can help protect wires from damage.