Static on the HDPE
 

Does anyone who has built the ramp using the HDPE been experiencing static discharge to the robot? We have been able to reproduce a condition as the robot transfers from the ramp to the HDPE of significant arcing to robot metal parts. The static discharge wreaks havoc with the custom circuit and we are afraid that other damage may also result from the severe arcing.
The teams that have lost speed controllers, is it possible you have damaged the controller with a static discharge?
Let me know what you see during practice.
Thanks for any info...

Nothing has happened from my team, but this is very wierd. I'll defanatly warn Chainsaw about this. But try to use some sort of metal transfer device such as a coat hanger to transfer the static away from the eletrical devices.

Oooo boy I just realized something. Your robot could be turned into a giant ball of static electricity. My physics teacher showed it to us where he rubbed a piece of rubber solid rod (not unlike the tires First gave us) and rubbed it up against a plastic bag. This made the rod gain a charge. This is exactly what is happening with the robots. Lol only thing I could think of is ground the robot.
:edit:
Lol I just realized our robot will not have a problem. It is a metal frame with a wooden bottom that has electronics on it. The metal frame will act (hopefully) like a faraday box diverting the static electricity out and around the electronics.

When we fried our speed controlers, they were on our wooden proto bot so it would have been hard for static to get to them. very interesting though.
eric b

Re: Static on the HDPE
 

Does this count as an external energy source??? lol... j/k


But, yeah, static can be rather hazardous... might want to look into enclosing/insulating that custom circuit.

Re: Re: Static on the HDPE
 

We are of course taking steps to protect our custom circuit at this point. However, this is not merely an electronics problem. Several team members have received painful shocks from this.

Tell them to suck it up. Sure it may be 1000's of volts. Sure it may be painful but it won't kill them in a million years. As long as they do not get shocked while holding the robot.

I hope you're kidding. Getting poked in the eye won't kill you either but FIRST still demands eye protection in the pits and on the field. A situation does not have to be life threatening to be a safety hazard.

You must have never gotten a good static shock. They can easily be powerful enough to cause pain in your elbow or shoulder that can last several hours or even a day or two. Now sure, this is mostly just annoying and nothing permanent, but it's definitely something I want to avoid in the future if possible.

Yeah the problem is that there is nothing you really can do especially with the materials first decided to use this year. It quite literally is a giant physics experiment where you rub your feet on the carpet. It is even worst in the winter. I am sure the shocks will not be as bad as you can get with a van der gaff machine.

Re: Static on the HDPE
 

You can actually see flashes of light from the arcing? Yow!

If memory serves me, you have to rub against something pretty quickly to build up a static charge. I don't see how your wheels could spin fast enough to charge the plastic unless you are having serious traction problems. Have you checked on that?

Re: Re: Static on the HDPE
 

This is not the case. We have observed this situation with the robot in disabled mode. We manually slid our robot back and forth a few inches a couple of times (for a total wheel skid of maybe 6 inches on the HDPE) and pushed it down the ramp. The sound from the arc was loud enough that even one of our engineers sitting by the player station heard it.

Back to Al's original question: have any other teams noticed anything like this? Specifically how about Midwest teams stuck in this dry, cold weather like us?

Well actually you can see arcing even from little static shocks. It just depends on how dark it is. Sigh all teams will soon experience this once they drive their robot. Rubber and plastic creates a static inbalance.

Static what Static?
 

Darn, they've discovered our secret weapon. :yikes:
Back to the drawing board the air thing still might work.:rolleyes:

it's been a few days since this has last been touched, and the ship deadline is 2 days away.

Since several teams have confirmed it, this does apear to be a problem that FIRST should be aware of. Has anyone contacted them about it?

What about modifying the playing field to fix this problem? Meaning what if FIRST attached a grounding wire to the HDPE? My team hasn't had a chance to test this out yet, but I don't really want our all-metal robot to suddenly become energized in the middle of a match.

"Static Electricity" means "High Voltage"
Yeah, if some teams have reported sparks, that's a problem. If we're sure that it's the HDPE, could FIRST fix the problem by attaching a ground wire to it?

'Fraid you can't ground out a charge from a non-conductor like HDPE by putting a ground wire on it - the charge can't move through the plastic to the wire (that's why they use plastic for insulators).

The only way I know of to remove the charge would be to put an ion source (basically a high voltage source or radioactive element) near it. That would neutralize the charge on the HDPE, but it's not likely to happen here.

To prevent damaging electronics, we're probably best off discharging the robot frame with a ground wire before touching any of the wiring or modules. Another way is to attach a static wrist strap to the robot so that you're at its potential. One "benefit" of doing that is you could then zap anyone near by (since you're now carrying the same charge as the robot)...

By the way, I think we're probably looking at charges of over 20KV here.

Well if you don't get rid of the charge by running a ground to it, IS it the HDPE that creates the static electricity? What about doing some kind of ground-wire wire mesh type thing to be put under the hdpe? would that help it out any?

Elementary physics, the charge is on the outer surface of a insulator. The only way to remove it is by placing a conducting over the HDPE. As long as you keep your electronics away from the metal frame you should be safe. If your really that concerned you could always discharge the HDPE when you set your bot on the field.

We are basically looking for other teams that are experiencing the static buildup. We are getting significant sparks when the robot drives from the HDPE onto the grid and occasionally the other way as well. We suspect that the static may be interfering with robot control but are still gathering data. We need to hear from teams that are having problems when they are running on a built ramp using the components listed in the FIRST docs. There is no doubt that the HDPE is charged as anyone who looks at it can tell it is attracting dust.

Yes it is. Actually it is a combination of the rubber tires and the plastic on the top of the ramp.

we built the cheaper wooden ramp...and although we haven't run on the ramp a ton recently we have not seen this problem yet...but then again we are still finishing up the bot....

maybe placing a humidifier near the field would help by making the air less dry and more conductive to electricity.

it would have to be a REALLY REALLY BIG humidifier - I mean, at nationals, are they going to humidify the entire stadium?

it was just an idea... i mean i dont know what kind of space other people have for testing their bots but the room we use isn't very large and we could probably get away with an average sized humidifier...
but then again maybe the humidifier could have adverse effects on the robot.

oneangrydwarf is correct that humidity would help dissipate the the charge. Which means that events in dry regions (like where winter RH is below 30%) will have more problems with this than warmer and damper areas.

Charge is built up when the robot's wheels rub against the HDPE and electrons are transfered between the materials' surfaces. Having a wood or metal support frame shouldn't make difference in the charge on the HDPE since it isn't a conductor. I think that if the wire mesh ramps were grounded they might take some of the charge off the robots though.

It's worth noting that our robots will pick up a charge on the carpet, too. I think we see more of a problem with the HDPE because, being a continuous surface, the robot makes more contact with it (than carpet) and therefore transfers more charge.

I don't think humidifying a stadium in Houston will exactly be a problem. Keeping it from raining inside will be more of an issue.

I remember a quote from somewhere "Air Conditioning - it made Dallas livable and Houston possible"

Looks like FIRST has heard of this problem (From Team Update 16):

"In Team Update #6, FIRST allowed teams to connect their custom circuit(s) to the
programming port on the Robot Controller. Unrelated to this, there have been reports of
some static electricity discharges on the ramp / field. TEAMS SHOULD BE CAUTIONED
THAT PIN 4 OF THE PROGRAMMING PORT IS RESET. Teams that connect their
custom circuit(s) to the programming port have the ?potential? to initiate ?reset? by a static
discharge, which may result in unknown actions by your robot."

Ah the joys of ESD management.

Yeah, they heard it from us. We told them that we found that the reset pin (pin 4) on the RC is very sensitive (we've seen our RC get into a constant reset situation from just having an unterminated serial cable connected to it - it acts like an antenna and picks up interference). I don't know if they knew this or not but after discovering this our team is really curious how many unexplained robot resets over the years were due to this very sensitive pin remaining unterminated on everyone's robot during competition...

Unfortunately they didn't answer our question at all - they just told us the same information that we had sent to them! Oh well, I guess they don't much care about the static buildup on the HDPE. Judging by the responses here, few other teams seem to be having issues with it, so I guess we're just out of luck.

FYI, we were doing more investigation of this issue tonight and found that by taking a big wire and holding it to the metal grate and then passing the other end over the HDPE will generate tons of little sparks.

I predict that there will be people getting nasty shocks while handling robots on the HDPE after the match, especially at the Chicago regional (since that's where we're located and the weather is nice and dry around here). If two robots get in a shoving match on the HDPE and start spinning their rubber wheels on it, watch out!

Dave,

Sounds like we'll need ground straps to clip on the robots before we (or the officials) touch them! They do that with airplanes, so we're in good company.

I like the documentation that Innovation First provides on the pin 4 reset input circuitry: a black box labeled "reset circuitry". Do you know if it is pulled up or just an open logic input?

Well, I guess you could say that FIRST is presenting us with a real-world engineering problem by making the platform non-conductive. I'm sure that people in the material-handling world have to deal with this daily.

Pete

We've not experienced large discharges while moving on or about the HDPE, but we have experienced rather nasty shocks after it returns to the ground and we attempt to tweak something. I know there are some anti-static sprays around, we used to use them at school in our carpeted computer lab, so would any of them help if sprayed on the wheels or the HDPE itself? What if the HDPE were either charged or discharged between matches to match whatever the charge of the robots might be? e.g. rub it down with a silk cloth before each match, or wipe it off with a wet paper towel, or anything to at least attempt to equalize the charge? I noticed no shocks at all while handling the robot while it span it's tires on the HDPE, but that may be because we washed the HDPE shortly before, and although it was dry, it was mopped up pretty good with water.

Any thoughts?

Have a team member slide around on the HDPE and then have them touch another team member. We found that this seems to transfer some nice shocks. It's also quite a bit of fun. :D

Static
 

Would it be at all useful to add a piece of solder wick (braided copper wire used to remove solder - available at Radio Shack) to the chassis, connected to the metal robot frame via a 1 MegaOhm or so resistor, just to limit inrush current? That or connect a Varistor, Transorb (zener), gas tube or similar device? Afrer all, it's not the voltage, it's the current that causes the real damage.

Ask the guys that routinely service the high-voltage transmission lines from a helicopter. (Check out http://www.haverfield.com/) I don't know if they grab the 765,000 volt lines or not, but they do get ahold of some pretty high voltage lines, like in excess of 250 KV ( and I understand it smarts a bit).

Grounding and surge suppression is an art in and of itself.

Wiping down the HDPE with a wet cloth could dissipate the charge on the surface - the water and the wiper (you) complete a circuit to ground (assuming the person is grounded). I'd think it might help if FIRST did that between matches. Might also improve traction since dust & stuff would get wiped off. I don't think FIRST would go for anti-static sprays, since they would leave a residue which might affect traction.

A ground strap attached to the robot which dragged on the ramp mesh would bleed the charge off the robot, again assuming the mesh is grounded. Even if the mesh isn't grounded, I don't think you'd get zapped, since you'd be standing on the mesh when you touched the robot.

Like Dick said, an art. Or magic... Which makes me wonder: we all know that electronics works because of smoke (let the smoke out and they stop working). So where does static electricity fit in? I haven't seen any smoke, but the discharges are audible. Does that mean that static electricty works on noise?

That would work until the robots started driving up and down it then both the robot and the hdpe would have a charge again.Errr what does that mean???? Im confused static electricity is totally unrelated to noise. The noise you hear is exactly what thunder is.Not true either. If you have an electronic component that is rated for 6volts and it gets 100volts from a static spark it is going to die on you.

Quick and dirty fix:

Get a coat hangar

Before the match, discharge the HDPE by placing the hangar across the HDPE and the wire mesh.

After the match, place the hangar from the frame of your bot to the wire mesh.

This won't help static electricity built up during the match, but will minimize it and keep you from getting shocked when you pick up the bot.

Semi-related life experience:

I play volleyball. We play on a surface called sport court, which is a high density plastic. We also wear gum rubber soled shoes. As you can imagine there is quite a bit of static electricity. You get used to getting shocked by the floor every time you dive or touch a wall, but one unpleasant experience is getting your tongue shocked by water from the water fountain. It burns like heck and then your tongue goes numb for about 15 mins. So we have learned to discharge the water with a finger (or let someone else discharge it). This same lessons can be applied to robotics

voltage vs. current
 

The voltage (potential) is what initiates the breakdown but it is the energy (voltage x current) or the current that melts things.

I think your wrong though because static electricity is high voltage low low current. If it was the other way around then humans would be dropping dead left and right because it only takes 1amp to stop a human heart. Some electronics are more sensitive to sudden voltage spikes then others are.

i wonder if first would mind if you just grounded the ramp yourself with the coathanger idea before the match started....
as far as having a coat hanger or the solder braid coming off your robot, i would be afraid of violating one of the rules like no metal in contact with carpet or no penetrating the surface of the mesh.

Static electricity can really hurt...i used to get nasty shocks off my trampoline in the back yard when i would touch the frame of it after jumping for awhile....then there was that faulty vangergraf generator at work that numbed my arm for 2 hours....hehehe.

Since the HDPE is nonconductive, it is not possible to ground it. If you touch a coathanger between the grid and the HDPE you might eliminate some of the charge in the immediate vicinity of the coathanger contact with the HDPE, but you won't discharge the whole ramp. And regardless, after a little while the charge will spread itself out on the ramp anyway.

Current = Voltage/Resistance (Ohm's Law) Therefore, for a fixed resistance, current is proportional to voltage. Also, I believe the safe current level in humans is in the 10's of milliamps.

High voltage causes break down of materials and interference with electrical (or neural) systems. High current flow creates heat. Once an insulator is compromised (by high voltage breakdown) it may allow a continued flow of current, causing thermal damage.

However, in the case of ESD, there isn't a continuous source of charge. Once the initial charge is dissipated, current flow stops. This is why your PDA may lock up from ESD but can be reset and keep working.

Im confused isn't that what I have been saying???

Dick,
We have tried anchor lines to no real avail. The helicopter crews actually attach a wire to the helicopter frame and then to the high line they are working on. The lineman then have a protective suit that is also "grounded to the helo frame. They found that although the lineman were not receiving any shocks they were disturbed by the hair standing up on their arms. Unlike our problem, these lines are real electricity not static and they are at such high potential they can arc across 14 ft.

Humans are an interesting scenario- we don't die from static shocks because humans have a resistance value of between 100-300k, so not much happens with high voltage but low current. Think aluminum chasis though, what's the resistance of that? Considerably less. Similarly, what's the resistance of the electrical pathways leading to the control systems? Still considerably less. Static discharges on this level are not harmful to humans, but can be killer to any integrated circuit because of the low resistances (if resistance was any higher on IC's, they wouldn't be able to do their job).

OK,
There is a lot of misinformation taking place here. 3-4 mA (that is milliamp) applied across the heart muscle will cause the heart to stop beating. (It actually adapts, thinking that the brain has stopped sending little pulses and has now switched to the bigger pulses. The heart is a muscle controlled by electrical impulses from the brain.) This 3-4 mA is critical and the reason that ground fault interrupters are tested and must react at 3-4 mA.
Most reports of electrical shock do not result in death simply because the circuit through the body that causes the shock does not cause current to flow through the heart.
As to static electricity, the voltage and current at the point of entry are dissipated by the body's tissues and a great deal flows on the surface. The shock causes localized pain, a muscle contraction and in rare cases a small pin point burn at the point of entry. In the ultimate static electricity strike, i.e. lightning, the bolt carries current in the millions of amps. Should you receive a direct hit, which is rare, the heat generated by the current flow cause significant tissue damage which usually results in death.
Now to the static problems with electronics, The spikes are not only causing false triggers, but the ringing associated with large voltage spikes also causes spurious data to be entered into digital circuits. In some cases the the protection devices that are engineered into the circuit cannot react quickly enough to limit the voltage and the resultant spike punches through the internal materials causing permanent damage to the device.

Static Electrcity ;)

- Katie

electrical phenomenon
 

Yes, Al, there is a lot of misinformation floating around. First, getting zapped by the HDPE sheet is an Electrostatic Discharge event. In our case, it is a small one. Another example of this is lightning. They differ in magnitude and in the damage they can cause, but otherwise similar. For a basic discussion on ESD, see http://www.midwestesd.org/aboutesd.html


This link (http://www.static-sol.com/61340-5-1/.../WhatisESD.htm) says "If two objects that have different voltages approach each other closely enough, charge may pass from one object to the other in a fast electrostatic discharge. While this only lasts a microsecond or less, the peak discharge current can be several Amps and the peak power can be in the kiloWatt range!" The high voltage means that even a relatively small current can generate enough power to cause damage. From what I can tell, Electro Static Discharge (ESD) waveforms are normally shown as a graph of CURRENT vs. time. As far as I can see, voltage in and of itself does nothing except initiate the event. Electrons must flow to do any harm. I suspected that it had something to do with the P-N junction and the electron depletion region - this link may shed a little light: http://cnx.rice.edu/content/m1031/latest/

In terms of protecting the 'bot, I would think a 1 MegaOhm resistor in series with a conductive string or wire (we have some conductive string from some packaging or conveyor system) might limit the inrush enough. Put one on each corner of the 'bot, and grab this first before you handle it when it comes off the ramp.

If you want a very fast device to fashion a surge suppressor, I would suggest using a zener diode or Transorb (a specially adapted zener), possibly backed up with a varistor (slower but higher current handling) if there is real energy (bust open a PC surge suppressor outlet strip and use 'em) . A resistor/capacitor arrangement might also do the trick. I've seen all of these used in the 20+ years that I've worked in the electronics industry.

As to the effect of electricity on humans, the table in this link may or may not be accurate, but gives you an indication of some of the effects of various current levels on humans: http://www.prl.res.in/~bobra/EARTH/html1/chapt3.htm

FYI, I've been zapped by 120 VAC a number of times and also by engine ignition coils in the 20,000 + volt range (not to mention electric cattle fences) . None was pleasant. I seem to recall that the body resistance was was approximately 7K Ohms, but that of course would depend on what parts touched, wet/dry hands, etc. At any rate, don't try this at home!

THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS ISSUE!!!!!

almost everytime I picked up the bot off of the HDPE at SLR, I got a nice discharge into my body. Several times over the weekend, we believe we were zapped and killed because of static.

We were actually talking about your team's design today. We figured that a tread system made of Linotex (or some other bright red non-slip material) pretty much is a Vandergraf generator - as the tread moves along the surface, it picks up electrons that are dropped off into the frame as the tread moves back across the top.

Anyways, it sounds like some teams have more problems with this than others, so my advice to everyone is to put your freshmen in charge of collecting the bot after a match ;-)

If you have a problem, try this: attatch some sharp nails to the frame of your robot, sticking into the air (but not inside the bot), or hang a conductive fringe (metallized foil decoration) from it. This will allow the charge to dissipate without building up a large charge, which lowers the voltage = length of arc. Remember, for a robot of fixed capacitance, V varies as Q (Q=CV)

Don't have the points hanging down toward the HDPE, though, like the combs on a Wimshurst machine. That would only aid in transferring charge.

If they remain insulated, your crew can approach with a math protractor pointed at the robot (as they close from min 4 feet). Once they touch the point to the 'bot, they can pick the 'bot up, and point the protractor at the end-of-field diamond plate (as the approach and touch it.

This suggestion won't help the on-board electronics, but the points on the 'bot might.

I've played with Van de Graafs and Wimshursts; they can be a real pain. Maybe the venues are way too dry at this time of year.
Are your shoes synthetic-rubber-soled ?

=-=-=-=-=-=-

BTW, There is little difference in specie between ESD and lightning, only in magnitude of charge (them's cool ohms !) and voltage. The lightning storm just "builds" charge continuously, whereas our puny efforts with fur and bakelite have limits. If we had capacitors as big as the Earth / Cloud / Air dielectric thing, and enough time :yikes: !

And, in another vein, many of the accidents with electricity aren't because the heart has stopped, but because the sudden jolt gets a reaction - somebody jerks, or drops sometihing, or loses his grip. This would apply to many static shocks !

It matters not as to what type of drive systems is in use and humidity seems to have little to do with the problem. (It reached into the seventies for outside temperature on Saturday in St. Louis and the venue was on the Missouri River so I am sure that the humidity was much higher than here in Chicago) Several robots at SLR went dead at certain intervals, many when approaching the top of the ramp or when rubbing against the walls of the ramp. Although it was not possible to interview all of the teams, we did observe both partial and full control losses during the competition for many robots.
We are still looking for input from teams that competed over the weekend. Did you experience any control loss when traversing from ramp or HDPE to the opposite material? Please give specifics such as description of loss, (full control and/or loss of colored light, radio modem, error lights, etc.) and did another robot contact yours at the point of loss of control?
Thanks for your input.

Wouldn't that violate that rule about no sharp edges on the robot?
I'm also guessing that adding a chain to the robot to discharge itself on the mesh (like trucks transporting flammable compounds) would violate the "no metal on carpet" rule.
I'm getting concerned about this, because we have a similar setup to the TechnoKats, with rubber treads... :confused:

The chain, however, wouldn't be a 'traction device' and ought to be legal.

Right now, though, my biggest fear is that the inspectors (made up of students and other volunteers) won't be clear on the rules and give teams an undue hard time. I know that, just from reading these boards, many, many teams simply don't know the rules.

This concerns me as well, as I'm fairly certain we're using the same materials as 45 on our wheels, though in smaller quantity.

Ok, that solution is back to the top of the list. :)
What about these, any chance it would work?
- Wrapping the robot controller in those plastic bags that computer hardware come in... They're supposed to protect them from ESD
- Build a Faraday cage around the RC

[EDIT]: Actually, just realized that those plastic bags are Faraday cages, in a way. :)[/EDIT]

The crazy ideas are up, now for the engineers to say if they're worth anything. :D

Sharp edges on a piece of metallized mylar ?

To answer Al's question, we made a ramp, and had generic "carpet" on the floor, in an unheated school cafeteria (60 degF +, Outside Air Temp at single digits degF). We too have 'rubber' tread, but on wooden wheels, and have NOT encountered the 'static cling' that is troubling others. We have had a few hours of practice on this ramp.

Could conductive wheels clad in a thin insulator be charging better than our non-conductive aluminum-painted wheels ? The capacitance to the hdpe might be higher, and the resistance between the frame and just inside the rubber might affect it.

Maybe the wire ramp is being charged by induction, leading to higher robot charge on top of the hill. A dragged chain might change this situation, but it could also tangle on the mesh fasteners, or even on the welds in the mesh. Perhaps some limp wire...

To add some more data...
We can carry our prototype to the top of the ramp and leave it there. Run it a few minutes on top and it will arc as soon as any part of it gets over the ramp. We have tried anchors, (pieces of RF gasketing made of woven wire and they did not help. As to the faraday cage, we suspect that the problem is not the controller itself but the wiring connected to the controller picking up the induced pulse that is causing the problem. Of course we are having problems with our custom circuit board as well. "Still needing more data...must have data!"

Was Static a Problem at Regionals?
 

So, now that we've got some regionals under our belts, were static electric charges a problem on the ramps? Any spontaneous robot controller brain fades? Or can we put this one to bed?

Re: Was Static a Problem at Regionals?
 

Did you read any of the above posts? :) There are literally dozens of unexplained robot resets and loss of signal conditions being reported from this weekend's competitions. We at team 111 believe at least some of these are probably due to static discharge. When we originally asked FIRST about this they basically brushed us off. Perhaps now that more teams are seeing similar problems they will reconsider.

By the way, there are products out there that could be used to treat the HDPE to lessen the static buildup. It's called staticide and it could be used to clean the HDPE periodically. So (in my mind) there is something that could be done about this by FIRST.

Natural Rubber
 

In its static-charging characteristics, how does natural rubber compare to synthetic rubber?

Well, at least on the pictures on the site, the TechnoKats robot have nylon (or some material like that) pulleys. So I'm guessing that even if metal does make a difference, the event is not exclusive to it. :)

we use delrin pullies, w/ natural rubber treads w/ a polyurethane backing

It does not make a great difference as to what is touching the rubber. Whether that is conductive or not makes no difference. When the rubber of the wheel rubs against the HDPE the HDPE is given a charge. When a material that is at a different potential than that of the HDPE the electrons will naturally want to jump from one to the other to even it out which causes an arc. This is the static that is being seen and felt from the HDPE.

I would have thought everyone would have figured this out by now, but I guess that this is not the case.

We had problems at the Granite State Regional, as did several other teams. During our first practice rounds, we were losing our drive system. We added a dangling wire (12 ga) to the bot and didn't see anymore problems on Thursday.

On Friday, we started having problems again. In fact, we were re-inspected because at the end of a match, when our drive system was dead, our light DIDN'T go off! It was then that we found out that our "dangling wire" had been pulled off.

After installing about a 1/2 dozen new dangling wires, we still had one more occurrence - during our elimination round arggh.

BTW, the inspectors told us that we should hang the wires off of the robot. It will be interesting to see if that is consistent at all the regionals.

Would placing your RC and electronics either on or around some anti-static foam help? It is the stuff that is used to pakage ic's so that static wont destroy them. i know that u can get it at RadioShack if anyone is interested...