Custom Drive Stations
 

Does anyone know of any teams using custom drive stations?
If so, how do they look and function?
I'm interested to know as our team is working on one of our own and some ideas of what other teams use.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Not sure if this is what you mean but Here are some picks of the drivers console we used this year.

As for other teams with custom ones that stood out to me all I can think of are teams: 27 Rush and 3641 the Flying Toasters, I'll reach out to toaster's driver to try and get a pic for you. 27s folds ontop of itself to store the controllers and laptop, I never had a good chance to look closely at it i could explain it better, hopefully somebody is able to.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

If you mean control board here's what we made for ours. Documentation and code included.

https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...31&oe=57CF8E73
https://github.com/GarnetSquardon490...-Control-Board

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

This is our second year constructing a custom driver station. 1250's Driver Station

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

This year, Team Neutrino redid their driver station. It is 36" long and 2.5 inches tall. I think it is 11 inches deep. We made it out of 1/8 in Aluminum for the top and bottom plates with 1/8 in polycarbonate flanged pieces between them. We have singly addressable LEDs (from Adafruit) controlled by an Arduino.




If you have any questions or want CAD, feel free to ask.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

We'd love the CAD! Just email us at robotics@cwnchs.org
Also- I think those LED would give me a even bigger headache after I'm done driving the bot hahah

Also- we just use plexiglass with a rev extrusion rod frame, giving us a cool look and a stable place for a computer.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Nice! I like the green LED lit translucent controllers!

Creative use of the twist button(is that an E-Stop button??) and the arcade player buttons!

Not sure if there's a picture anywhere, but the Robocubs had a nice setup.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

We actually use that twist button as our scale function. By default, the button is pressed down and once twisted, the scale sequence starts. Pressing the button back down after getting aligned on the batter, activates the winch at the base of the robot.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Here's a quick render of the new drive station that 4911 made. The structure is .063" 6061 powder coated aluminum sheet metal, and the decorative block in the middle is made of plastic. We also decided to add strips of red LED's to give it a bit of glow

Dimensions
8" tall
36" long
14" wide

Attachment 20775

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

General warning about Plexi-glass.

Plexi-glass AKA acrylic and is rather prone to cracking and breaking. If your resources allow it I would try and use Polycarbonate it'll be easier to work with, last longer and will be pretty much unbreakable for what your doing with it.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Yeah our team learned the hard way:o we used plexiglass for our electronics board and belly pan for our first competition this year and boy did that get MESSED UP! The bottom of our robot was mostly duct tape by the time we were done with qualifications:D We will now use aluminum or poly carb for a belly pan. Acrylic is good for a driver station tho because it is supported by the extrusion rods. Never cracked on us yet and works well. Use it for decoration and NOT for support/ for anything weight bearing!!!

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

I have to weigh in here...
Many teams went to extreme lengths this year to support cameras and make some unusual driver stations. However, the shelves on the field suffered from the extra weight these placed on the shelf and the supports. I measured several driver's stations that were over 40 lbs. If you are planning for next year, please limit your design to something less than 30 lbs, less than 20 would be better. The fields will last longer and we will minimize risk to our drivers.
Additionally, if you make a big driver's station, don't make the smallest student on your team carry it out to the field. Please! I will thank you and they will thank you.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Currently I am working on a driver station that has a full sized desktop in it. Should be done for next season.

It is going to have a full sized ATX motherboard, 2 ssds in Raid 0, a nvidia Quadro, and sometimes around the line of an i5 or an 8350.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

I can't recall what team number it was, but at 2015 Finger Lakes Regional, there was a team who brought a TV to the driver station, pretty sure over 30 inches. They just connected their laptop to it via HDMI and then had a 30+ inch screen for their robot's webcam, which was positioned in a perfect position to see pretty much everything.

Now, I'm not saying it's a viable driver station, but I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more. :D

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

That is awesome. How heavy will that be, and do you require that kind of power to run the driver station program? I think a laptop will suffice.

I think the issue with the weight was to have camera poles and TVs (also done this year) that shown the field, but I feel they were quite unnecessary and just added extra weight. Our driver station only weighed about 7 lbs with the computer and joystick mounted.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

You definitely do not require that much power. Its just fun.

It will probably be around 20 pounds. Most of which is due to the monitor.

Your last point concerned me. Trust me camera poles helped a ton. They are were not unnecessary at all and probably go down as the biggest game breaker of the year.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Are you planning a ups? that is the big advantage of laptops, over desktops, one power blip and your gone...

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

999 made our driver's station more portable this year by building one that is able to fold in on itself and has a removable handle for carrying. It fits 3 joysticks and a laptop, and has been a huge plus for our driver, who used to have to carry our wooden station on a strap around his neck!

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

We didn't use camera polls for seeing the field. We just used dead reckoning to get through defenses such as the back side of the drawbridge. I think the polls were dangerous and heavy too. Plus many teams brought TVs to hook up to their cameras which again added stress to the shelves. Ultimately I feel they were unnecessary for our team did fine not using camera polls or cameras on our robot, but that may not be the case for other teams. This is just my opinion and I do not reflect the opinions of my team or any others.
::safety::

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Yes I am. We will do some testing. If it becomes too much of an issue it will probably just be a showpiece.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Our driver station is linked below. There is a description of the driver station in the picture caption. Thanks.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43832

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

If there were teams using "dangerous and heavy" poles at events they didn't look very hard for them. We found 3 different size window squeegee poles at our local Home Depot that worked great for our camera and were very lightweight. Had the rules not been changed we would have been able to extent up to ~20ft and it would have added maybe a few lbs to the driver station at most.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

This sounds awesome, but why?

Sometimes you have to question whether or not the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Personally, I believe there are too many things that can go wrong with a desktop computer (I've built many myself) that would cause issues in matches.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

If built right and with correctly tested and maintained components the pc will be fine.

Again If there are issues it won't be used it match but I think it will go alright.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

This is the driver station that I built for my team back when I was a student several years ago. The top has velcro to secure all of the controls and laptop, and the whole top piece comes off to allow you to get inside the box and manage all the wires. The lights only turn on when the driver station is plugged in correctly. It is make out of 1/8" acrylic with aluminum supports along the top and 1/4" acrylic on the bottom. The ends are laser engraved with the team name and number. The velcro on the top allows us to change out the controls from year to year depending on the game and robot, and since these pictures were taken we have switched out the laptop for a Macbook.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Attachment 20791

I know this isn't a competition, but... I think ours is the biggest :p!

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

That must have been a pain to carry from pit to field.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

I think that team that had the like 40" screen still holds that title, not sure where the picture of it went though. :confused:

I believe you are referring to 3419's. Pretty sure it was 46" but who's counting.



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Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

Yup, that looks about right.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

This is not a good idea. The power outlets on the field only allow current of up to 3 amps before it trips its internal breaker. Powering a computer of that size AND a monitor will definitely pull more than that.

See 2.2.3.1 here, under PLAYER STATION: https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.n...-manual-02.pdf

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

What laptops do you guys recommend for a driver station?

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

I would suggest anything that had decent processing and ram. We had no problems with our laptop this year. I'm pretty sure we used a dell Inspiron 15 which worked fine for code and as a driver station.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

I always recommend Thinkpads.

Re: Custom Drive Stations
 

We got an HP Pavilion 17" with an AMD A10-8700P Processor, 8GB RAM and R6 Graphics; we also added a 500GB solid-state to it after we got it (cause 5400rpm drives are worthless). It came with a backlit keyboard and a touchscreen too, which is nice. All for around $500.

Having a bigger laptop can make it a bit clunky, but the larger screen size is great for custom dashboards.