Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

The only information I have regarding overheating with other team's cameras is pretty vague, and based on sketchy reports, but there was at least one other camera failure at the Great Lakes Regional that I know of. If I'd known about the issues beforehand, I would have tried loading the cables up with power and then monitoring temperatures around the various connections, but I didn't suspect anything like this would happen.

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

I have personally managed to short 5 volts to ground through one of our cameras for several seconds with no breaker and no magic smoke resulting. And since the power for the camera comes from the 7.2V backup battery, I'm doubting this could've been the source of all the current to burn up a PWM. Perhaps I'll rig up something with an old battery and see how much damage it can do shorted to ground through a PWM. It'd be an odd precedent to set, being the first team to prove we need breakers for servos and the camera.

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

I think you will find a nicad battery like the backup battery can easily source 10A when shorted

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

That other robot was 857's (see sig). :o Here's what happened:

The battery was (stupidly) only secured inside the robot by three pieces of aluminum extrusion, leaving on side open. During our match, the battery fell out and instead of disconnecting, one of the wires from the battery pulled out of the connector and touched the metal frame. Sometime along the course of the build, a tiny piece of coating was stripped from the ground wire coming from the Fisher Price motor. That touched the frame as well. So now, all the current from the battery was going right to the frame, into the FP motor, completely skipping the whole breaker part (which is why the robot continued to smoke, and then catch fire long after the E-stop button was hit). The fuse in the speed controller blew, but that didn't matter because the battery kept pumping power to the FP motor. The speed controller eventually caught fire, giving off red smoke and prompting Copioli to shout something like, "Holy cow, that's the most magic smoke I've ever seen from a single robot!" ... It was a mess.

At the Wisconsin Regional, check out our super secure battery - now supported on all four side, sand velcroed two different ways, so it can never come off the robot again without some difficulty! :)

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

Wow! In addition to the most magic smoke, that's the most coincidental catastrophic failure I've ever heard of! :p

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

Remember, electrical tape is your friend, love it, use it, always. It can save yourselves from losing some very expensive components, and is very light.

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

Last year at the Buckeye Regional, a rookie team, 1532, started smoking during one of their practice matches. It wasn't nearly as much as that, but still.

One of our pit crew members spent the rest of the competition in their pit helping them.

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

Yeah there was a lot of magic smoke at GLR... it got to the point (and man was it hilarious) where whenever a robot on the field started smoking up some person would dash over with the fire extinguisher

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

Everytime it happened we put a shower curtain over our robot in the pit afraid that the sprinklers would come on. :) (The shower curtain was a thought for the robot that did not work.) :(

Carolyn Hinckley
Team 1254

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

I know this post was made a while ago, but I would like to let you know...for future reference....that smoke cannot trigger sprinklers, only heat

there is often a small plastic or was rod in the center of a sprinkler, when it melts it opens the valve/ the resulting pressure change then causes the others to open as well

Re: anyother robots smoke up?
 

to all that read my deleted post:
I apologize if I seemed demeaning, degrading, and/or disrespectful. That was not the intent of the post, nor was I trying to convey a harshness towards the specific team member (please know that my post's tone was exactly opposite of what it seemed). Anyhow, I will try to avoid that in the future.

To the topic:

My team's robot this year didn't blow its magical smoke, but we had a battery that blew all of it's, along with several chargers. 3 times it caught fire before we were able to dispose of it properly... :p luckily no permenant damage.