Illegal?
 

If anyone has the time, could you tell me if any of the following are illegal? Have a couple ideas for electronics next year..:)


http://xpcgear.com/ledcanonuv.html [[These will not be visible from the outside of the robot.]] (lol notice how many years they put for 10,000 hours......a tad too much, haha)

http://xpcgear.com/120blueledfan.html
http://xpcgear.com/12ccflwhite.html [[These will not be visible from the outside of the robot.]]
http://xpcgear.com/uvblueslng4.html
http://xpcgear.com/heatshrinkblk.html
http://xpcgear.com/akpaxmatacab.html

Thanks in advance....and sorry if I posted in wrong section.

Re: Illegal?
 

I am not sure about the legality of those lights since they can be called as a distraction depending how bright they are, and if they can cause tracking problems with the camera, if we use it next year. Why would you want those lights on the bot if they can't be seen from the outside?
The lights do look cool though

Re: Illegal?
 

it is to my understanding that any light can be used on the robot as long as, 1. it is hooked up to a fuse and wiring in safely, and 2. not interefering with another robots vision system (i.e. no green)

Re: Illegal?
 

The heat shrink and neon wire cover are both FIRST legal and good ideas. The fan should be aswell. I dont see what you will use the acoustic pad for and the usage dictates its legality as a potential fire hazard if too close to electronics. Aslong as those lights dont interfere with CMU, any other type of sensor or driver visability they should be aswell if wired correctly.

when in doubt refer to the FRC flow Chart http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...ot,Rev%20G.pdf on page 19 and the inspection checklists


-Simon

Re: Illegal?
 

we used similar cable sleeving and heat shrink, i dont know about the led and cathodes but they would certainly look cool. After comp we put some in makes the cable sleeving look really cool if u get the uv sensitive kind and put a black light in there.

Re: Illegal?
 

Cold cathode ray tubes are legal in FIRST.

For a very good example of how they could be used on a robot, look for info on Checkmate's (FRC 40) 2007 robot. They used a series of white and red cold cathode ray tubes on their arm to aid their drivers when manipulating tubes.

Re: Illegal?
 

-The electronics on our robot this year was horrible (wiring was everywhere, very hard to work on between matches, had several wires that came loose, etc), so another team electrician and I decided to make an "electronics box" based off a bot we saw at the competition. Their (not sure which team #) bot had a lid on the front with a 120mm fan on top, they just opened the lid and their electronics board was sitting there, neatly wired and everything. They had some type of matting surrounding everything too. Their problem was lack of light, they didn't put any lights in their box. Our idea is basically the same, just make a portable battery tray that slides in under our electronics box, and add lighting and a false floor for wiring. The lights will be there to illuminate the cable sleeving (UV reactive :D ), and will have white cathodes there if we can't see enough with the UV lights. So the lights will only be seen when we "open the hood".


-Will definitely be hooked up to a fuse, and hopefully my wiring skills will be good enough :). Will not use green whatsoever.


-Thanks for reassuring me on that, I was pretty sure the heat shrink was fine, wasn't too sure about the wire cover. The acoustic padding was just a basic idea for the surrounding(we want it to be black, but I guess I could use plexi and just have a different sort of padding on the other side, eliminating the fire hazard.) It doesn't have to be acoustic padding, just wasn't sure where to look for that type of material.


-So far so good, thanks a bunch for the quick replies. :)

Re: Illegal?
 

-Ah cool, we're not the first to try this then! Yeah the look we're going for is hopefully going to look brilliant in the dark.

-Thanks! I guess we'll be putting some cathodes on the outside now too :D

Re: Illegal?
 

Why not make the box out of a clear material (lexan, polycarbonate, etc.) so you don't need any additional lighting? In addition, you'll need to be able to see the lights on the robot controller, victors, and spikes to pass inspection anyway.
116 has been building "control boxes" for three and a half years now, and we've found you don't need any additional lighting as long as you have a transparent box.

Re: Illegal?
 

If you're in doubt about the legality of something after reading the manual, the best solution is to go to Q&A for clarification. Even better, print and bring the Q&A with you to the arena. (Inspectors have access to the printed Q&A thus far, but that's a lot to page through when you're looking for one exact question.) Failing that, be prepared to adapt if the inspector calls you on it.

That said, I don't see any gross problems with the linked parts except for the fan. Why? The fan has a motor not permitted for use on an FRC robot. The GDC explicitly blocked hard drives under similar logic. On the up side, there are fans in the kit you could use for most any purpose.

Re: Illegal?
 

UV light can screw up the camera. Though at 20 ma these probably would not be to bad.

Re: Illegal?
 

Those cathodes shouldn't be that hard to wire in. I wound up putting connectors on mine and attaching them to a Spike. Just have it programmed to have that Spike turn on when you want it to and that should do it.

Re: Illegal?
 

OK guys, I do not believe that CCFL tubes on the robot pass the flow chart and would not have allowed them during the inspection process. Sorry, but should they break, the materials are hazardous and the power supply is 680 volts!
The super brite LED also would not pass as this device is likely to over drive the camera making it impossible to see other colors.
The lighted fan does pass inspection as long as it is 12 volts supplied from a 20 amp circuit breaker and does not pose a vision system threat. I have allowed them in the past. I believe that the ban on hard drives was based on the idea that this motor gave the team an advantage. I, however, would like to see this thought changed as a drive might make for an interesting application since single board computers obviously pass as custom circuit.

<R47> Additional electronic components for use on the ROBOT must be either COTS items, or assembled from COTS items.

Everyone uses tubing for a variety of purposes especially heatshrink. What it is used for may be disallowed during inspection so make sure your intended use fits the robot rule book.

Re: Illegal?
 

I wasn't aware of the power supply voltage on the CCFLs--that would make me far more wary of allowing them. I would still wait on the implementation before banning the LED, though. An LED that may not pass inside this robot for letting out too much light may well pose no problem in this one.

Re: Illegal?
 

I have to disagree with you on a few points here:

1> While the ballast of the CCFL does boost the voltage to 680vdc, that is not against the rules, nor is it a safety hazard as long as the proper wiring / curcuit breakers are used.

2> Many items, on a robot, could be considered hazardous if broken. As long as the CCFL tube is intact, it is not hazardous materials. The key on this point is to ensure that it is well protected and that parts will not escape the robot (IE completely contained) should it break.

3> unless you place the 'super bright' LED directly in front of the camers, it will not have enough lumens to 'wash out' the CMU camera. If what you were saying was true then the 'stadium lights' would always wash out the cameras (instead of every once in a while) and cause them to never work because they are far brighter than a super bright LED.

JMHO.

Re: Illegal?
 

didnt team 40 use LEDs, not cathodes

Re: Illegal?
 

Daniel,
Besides the fact that the inverter puts out a very high voltage and requires better insulation on wiring than that provided in the kit, there could be any number of reasons to prevent it's use. The inverter should be considered a custom circuit and therefore can only feed the RC under the robot rules.

<R61> All outputs from the custom circuits must connect to the Robot Controller or to other custom circuits.

You might claim that is a non-functional decoration but decorations can only draw power from the 12 volt main battery, the inverter is the power source to the lamp, not the main battery.

<R110> Decorations may draw power from the 12v electrical system as long as they are powered via a dedicated 20A or 30A circuit breaker and do not affect the operation of other control system components.

You might even argue that custom circuits can and frequently do have local power supply regulators and/or negative power supply generators, but again the voltage is not higher than the main battery and those devices still follow the rules for custom circuits.

The lamps themselves are not roboust as anyone who built lights in 2006 can attest. I would venture to guess that several hundred lamps gave their lives to an errant ball during last year's game. Broken lamps produce dust and slivered glass. I wouldn't want to do a belly check on a robot and lay down in a pile of phosphor and glass out on the field.

Small, intense, light sources play havoc with CCD cameras especially those without an iris mounted in front of the pickup. The particular device linked in the first post is a "black light" or ultra violet output device. Although it has some visible light output, there is considerable radiation outside the visible spectrum. CCD pickups are capable of detecting a rather wide spectrum including IR and UV and this device would likely cause some interference.

Sorry, but I have to stand by my original response. Really cool but not for use on an FRC robot.

Re: Illegal?
 

Hmm... well... good points (as usual), Al. I would have assumed that properly protected blue or red cold cathode tubes would be okay (assuming green is the only target), but you've got a point about the transformer pumping the voltage up. Although I would suggest that some reasonable level of LED lighting in a colour (or spectrum range) different from any vision targets should be okay, I would suggest teams make a point of clearing up any potential misunderstandings in the Q&A forum next year before decorating a robot with shiny flashy things.

I would suggest to anyone terribly disappointed by the concept of having cold cathode tubes potentially nixed at tech inspection that they consider lightsticks, such as cyalume http://www.cyalume.com/ They are plastic, chemoluminescent tubes... crack them and shake them at the start of the day and they should last for several hours of cool glowing robotness on the field, and in the pits... without draining batteries, or exposing anyone to high voltages, or the potential for cracked glass on the playing carpet.

Jason

Re: Illegal?
 

Again, I'd disagree. The entire lamp (including it's cold cathode bulb) is a COTS item and that single COTS item is powered soley (sp?) from the 12v battery (through a breaker)


Wattage is wattage. In order to up the voltage you must reduce the current (through a constant resistance). There is no rule against having higher than 12 volts on the robot (or lower, which by your definition would not be allowed either), just that the electrical supply must come from the 12 volt battery.

As long as it is breakered properly, then electrically it should pass inspection, according to the letter of the rules.

And here we agree. Which is why I said that it would have to be contained within the robot completely if it did break.

Superbright LEDs put out ~2000mcd (give or take some due to manufacturer and wavelength). 2000mcd, unless put directly in front of the camera (less than 6") does not have enough power to saturate the CCD elements within the camera. In addition, the camera is searching for a particular wavelength, which happends to be very close to one of it's primaries (green). Thus as long as the LED has very little green in it's composite the camera will easily filter it out. In fact, at a distance of more than 6" it will be able to filter it out better than the stadium spotlights.

For cold cathode lamps, I agree. There is too much engineering to make tham safe and not enough return (other than the 'cool' factor) for use on a FRC robot.

For LEDs I disagree. I can see plenty of feedback information that could be useful here. But I would caution those who would use them to be prepared to prove that your setup does not affect the CMU camera in any way, and to be prepared to disable the LEDs should you be required to do so.

Re: Illegal?
 

Daniel,
I have to caution you, you are mixing apples and oranges here. Wattage is not the issue. 680 volts to exposed skin on students, volunteers and mentors is the issue as well as 680 volts to robot frame when the lamp breaks and the cathode touches the frame. I will grant you it is low current but I bet you wouldn't like it if you touched the exposed voltage. There is a difference between safe primary wiring practices and exposed high voltage.

On the camera, I am speaking from my everyday television experience. Small bright light sources are especially nasty to CCD pickups because the the AGC circuits and other electronics tricks used to get a nice looking picture are confused by bright spots in a normally lit frame of video. There are no optical filters before the pickup so all light reaches the face of the pickup where there are individual pixels for the three colors. Most light sources are fairly broad in their spectrum but LEDs can have some rather narrow bandwidths. A white super bright LED for instance has a rather high peak in the blue spectrum and a rather broad peak in the green. That being said, a small bright light produces a sharp image on the face of the pickup which for a variety of reasons, leaks light through the surface of the sensor and also reflects light on the back of the lens which then in turn sends it back to adjacent areas of the pick up. Besides the effect it has on the pickup, the circuitry used for making video outputs and the adjacent leakage paths, the signal then has a significant impact on white balance and local heating on the face of the sensor. All of these things aggravate the ability of the sensor to determine the presence of the correct color light. Add to that the 60 degree field of view of the lens and you are now producing problems that most teams will not be able to overcome.

Re: Illegal?
 

From someone who has been zapped by a transformer from these things I must say it hurts like a .... well it hurts a lot is what I'm trying to say. Its not likely a lethal amount but it certainly cause issues when trying to remove a robot or get to the power switch on the bot. With using UV lighting, there is certainly a problem with the CMUcams, when I brought the CMU can home to work with it I had issues with it getting distracted by my computer which is lit with UV CCFLs. This occured at a distance of roughly 3 feet. It is also important to note that the CMUcams are quite sensitive to a number of wavelengths and things such as too much red or blue can affect its ability to see green. There is an up and down to using a color in the "center" of visible light in that it is strongest and easiest tosee but it is also the easiest to interfere with.

Re: Illegal?
 

What is the power rating of the ballast? According to Wikipedia 100 watt ballast is capable of killing someone at that voltage. Even at one watt the ballast is still dangerous because Wikipedia states that you can't let go. Unfortunately, the values appear to vary wildly between website to website on how much current can kill.
This doesn't sound right. You don't necessarily need a resistor to boost the voltage to higher than the supply. In fact you might be confusing the fact that a florescent tube actually has negative resistance at a certain point and a resistor is needed to ensure that it doesn't just keep on trying to draw more and more current.

Re: Illegal?
 

I say its not likely lethal as I'm still here posting this, although I pulled my hand back VERY quickly when I felt that shock.

Re: Illegal?
 

As a rule of thumb, GFI breakers are designed to trip at 5 ma. The minimum currents for death depend on what part of the body the current is flowing through, skin conduction, etc. Across the temples interfers with brain activity, across the upper chest obviously interferes with the millivolt heart impulses, across limbs and muscle damage will result. Anyone who has contacted the 48 volt battery line on a telephone will tell you it's no fun.

Re: Illegal?
 

First off, I'd like to thank you for your patience, and thoughtful discussion. On Most boards, I'd have been flamed down. This is why I love CD and FIRST so much. We can disagree, but we do so with facts and respect.

Now back to our regularly schedualed discussion :p

I do not believe I am mixing apples and oranges here. The 12V directly from the battery has the power to weld it's wires together. Power is power, wattage is wattage. When you setp up the voltage, you step down the current. In the case above the step up transformer is a 50:1.

So lets look at the circuit current at the 2 different voltage levels. Lets assume it's a 12 watt lamp (for ease of figures)

When looking for current Ohms law is I=P/E
Thus I = 12watts/12volts ----- or 1 Amp
Now at the 680 volt level
I=12Watts/680Volts ----- or 0.0176 Amps

In a short circuit The wattage and the current both climb until the current passes the reset point of the breaker. If it shorted to the chassis could it hurt ... yes ... and it could hurt you just as much as the 12 volt battery shorted directly to the chassis. Since your breaker is on the 12V input to the device the 680V would never pass 1 amp because the 12 volt supply would have already passed 20 amps.

OK. I'll propose a test. Take your digital camera (which has a CCD array just like the CMU camera) and find something in your house that has a bright LED (Your PC hard drive is a good example, but many household electronics have LEDs). Take a picture of it from beyond 1'. Did it wash out your digital camera? I'll bet you some donuts that it won't. Thats because the AGC in cameras works for each set of RGB CCD sets. So while 1 spot may be 'washed out' the rest of the picture is still clear. This would show up as a very small target with a very low confidence level.

Re: Illegal?
 

Daniel,
OK, we disagree. What I was alluding to as apples and oranges was your discussion on "wattage". Your discussion on conservation of energy is true if you remember the efficiency of the conversion is not 100%. A 100kV power line at 1 amp is 100kW. At the output of a 100kV to 100 V transformer, the current would be therefore 1000 amps less conversion losses.
The sensitivity of the human body and electronics is more concerned with voltage and available current. Although the main battery is capable of welding wire it is the current (400-600 amps in the robot battery) which is performing that action. At 12 volts, the human body does not produce enough conductance to make damaging current flow. What I am concerned with is the 680 volt output of the inverter (not transformer although one is used in the inverter circuit). According to specifications, the inverter will put out 680 volts loaded with two tubes at 5 ma. (The output current is limited by the series resistance of the secondary winding on the transformer) In reality when the tube(s) is broken, the open circuit voltage is likely much higher, say 1000 to 1200 volts. The internal design of the inverter circuit will not reflect a high current to the input 12 volt source so it would likely never trip the breaker. The internal impedance of the inverter might cause it to burn up before a 20 amp breaker would even get close to tripping on the primary. (remember that the nature of the breakers will reguire sustained currents greater than 166% of rating for several minutes before they would trip.) Either way, 680 volts (or higher) is a voltage that is very uncomfortable to say the least. It's effect on humans, pacemakers, or robot controllers remains to be seen but I think I can predict that the humans will survive but be very vocal while the the effect on pacemakers is not something I wish to test at a First event. The effect on the RC is predictably certain death as capacitors, integrated circuits, and board traces would be subjected to voltages much higher than their design.

Now on to the bright source and CCD pickups. Remember that the CCD produces an output voltage dependent on the light falling on the surface of the device. There is a point at which the light is so bright that the individual pickups are overloaded. As with any device, there is not an infinite dynamic range. There is a point at which too much light causes there to be an excess of photon to electron conversion. As the light continues (and the excess of electrons) a variety of problems occur. The light is transmitted through the layers to other pickup areas of the device and the temperature rises. (Please keep in mind that the energy density of an object is magnified by keeping the smae energy but presenting it to a much smaller area. Ant vs. magnifying lens) The transmitted light cuses errors in the other "pixels" and the localized heating causes additional electrons to be formed. Sort of a dominoe effect. Eventually the heating will cause adjacent "pixels" to saturate and if sustained, this can cause permanent damage to the device. Even after the light source is removed, there will be excess electrons for a period of time.
Small highlights do not cause the AGC to react so small, super bright objects, are not corrected by the AGC and the effect is that the output video will also be saturated or "clipped" at the maximum allowable output voltage determined by the designer. It is also important to point out that AGC does not act on pixels independently but rather the entire output signal. Should the light source cause sufficient disturbance that the AGC circuits react, the effect is to change the gain of the entire output signal, possibly causing the intended green object to be pushed into the black. What you would see looking at a monitor, is a bright white spot surrounded by black.

Re: Illegal?
 

Yes, we used red and white LEDs, covered with plastic shielding to dampen the brightness of the LEDs. They lit up when the robot was close to a tube.

Re: Illegal?
 

I'm constantly impressed with how bright them suckers are even with a damper built over them. You need some shades to look at 40's bot most of the time. lol

Send me some specs and a link to where you picked them up Jess!!!
I want to brighten some things up as a side project...
AND... The Cavalier wants to be nice and bright for some CT summer night cruising.

;)

Re: Illegal?
 

195 used almost those exact fans on our 2006 bot. We had 2x 120mm fans with 4 blue LEDs cooling our transmissions CIMS. The fans passed inspection at a regional and at nationals.

Re: Illegal?
 

I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree :p

I would not disallow a cold cathode lamp. I would inspect it very closely to ensure that it cannot get damaged during a match, and if it was damaged it would be contained within the robot and safely shielded from any conductive surface. I would also do this for the battery, which I consider more of a danger considering that it is not (and cannot be) fuse or breaker protected.

TBH, First does a rather poor job of electronics safety on the robot. A cold cathode lamp should be fused (or non-resetable breaker,not a resetable breaker) with a 2 amp 12 volt (24 watt) or under fuse. The fact that any custom electronics must use at least a 20 amp resetable breaker (even if it's just driving an LED) leaves too much chance for injury. They should open up the requirements for electrical safety and require the teams to specifically state why they used each specific breaker.

Again, teams should design in safety and be able to explain the 'safety' features of their robot, not be dictated a 'one size fits all' answer.

What you are saying is absolutely true, but there are 2 things that you are missing.

1> The 'super bright' LED averages around 2000-3000mcd in it's wavelength. At a distance beyond 6" (due to exponential energy loss for didtance) this does not have the luminecence to saturate most CCD arrays.
2> CCD color cameras (like the CMU camera) have 3 CCD elements per pixel. Each element is for 1 of the primary (Red, Green, Blue) color bands of light. Since the target lamp is fairly close to (#00FF00) process green, as long as you avoid LEDs that emit a large portion of their energy in that wavelength you should not affect the Camera. Red (628 nm) and Blue (472 nm) LEDs are good, while White (broad spectrum) and Green (525 nm) would be bad.

I know that Checkmate used LEDs on their robot last year with no interference with other robots.

Note to all who would put an LED on their robot: Be prepared to prove that the vision system will not be affected by the LED. ;)

Re: Illegal?
 

The output of most ccf's under most circumstances and most people would cause an unpleasant shock. However, under the right circumstances and the right person, that level of current and voltage could kill. Yes, it is dangerous. If First bans them then there is no risk. If they are allowed then what is the probability or risk of a serious incident. What would be the cost and impact of an incident. CCF's are not necessary to the primary purpose of the robot. Does allowing them present acceptable risk? With the American legal system it's easy to just say no.
UV light does affect the camera. We noticed in 2006 with our tests that the camera had problems with HID lighting but was fine with fluorescents. A UV blocking sun glass lens helped allot. If UV LED's are allowed then a bank of UV LED's could be a great defensive tactic but then there is the GP aspect of First.

Re: Illegal?
 

If the CCF lamps pose as much danger as everyone here is claiming, then you all should be petitioning FIRST to disallow them and remove them from the KOP.

I don't understand how anyone can claim that they are disallowed for robot use due to safety concerns when FIRST provides them in the KOP and even asks teams to wire them up themselves.

I'm not trying to argue whether they're dangerous or not - all I'm saying is that if people think they are dangerous then there needs to be a rule about it (and that's what you should be working on). Having individual inspectors decide on their own that they don't like CCFs and therefore disallowing them is not the appropriate way to handle this. Think about it in government terms - inspectors are the law enforcement. They are not supposed to make up rules (bad things happen when the police make up their own laws). The GDC is the legislative and judicial branch, so if you think something needs to be a rule then go to them. A quick look at the past year or two with all the complaints of inconsistent reffing and inspecting shows us why it's important to have rule decisions originating from the top (the GDC) rather than the middle or bottom.

Nothing in the 2007 rules that I can see rules out the use of CCFs. The inverter for the CCFs is not a power source (it does not generate power - unplug it from the battery and tell me if you can keep the lights on). Stepping up voltage is not the same as a power source. Many, perhaps most, custom circuits do indeed step up voltage, as nearly every custom circuit I've seen uses an RS-232 driver chip which derives a higher voltage from a 5v supply.

Frankly I think the green lamps used by the camera are a more dangerous situation than CCFs on a robot. Walk through the pits sometime and tell me how many people you see standing on their toes holding up the green lights. Sometimes they're not even covered by the plastic lens. If a CCF breaks on a robot it's more likely to be when the robot is driving, and people usually aren't right next to the robot when it's driving. Again, my point is not that they aren't dangerous, but simply that if they are then a blanket rule should be made and the green lamps should go.

Re: Illegal?
 

I can't seem to find the exact company that we used this year but this is another company that carries the same products. We used 36" strips they are very bright and we definitely had to white material them to keep them legal as you would need sunglasses without it. The LED's are great as they take allot of abuse and keep working.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/light_bars.htm

We didn't use cold cathode tubes because we were worried about them breaking.

Re: Illegal?
 

Excellent suggestion on the LED light bars. Our secret plan this year... if we had time... was to do a Canadian Flag in IR Leds.

No one would see it until it showed up in photos and on the big screen.

(If you want to see what I'm talking about, use your camera phone/digital camera/video camera to take a look at the LED on the IR remote control for your TV when you hold down a button on the remote. Its pretty cool...)

We ran into reality when we couldn't find a good source for cheap IR LED's, though. So if you know a good place to get 1,000 or so IR LEDs for less than 10 cents each, let me know.

Jason

P.S. This would not be likely to jam either the camera (at least not any more than the very bright lights that form part of the field set up, or the red and blue lights over the player stations) or other IR sensors, which tend to be tightly focussed and/or modulated.

Re: Illegal?
 

Agreed and working on it.

There are some things that do need to fit under an umbrella. I have discussed certain items with a few people I know at UL and in order for this device to be considered safe it must be contained inside a housing, like the enclosure specified for the light source in the KOP and be electrically protected (fused as you have pointed out). My concern is that power supplied by the main battery and fuse panel is on until the main breaker is opened. Often this does not occur until after the robot is carried off the field.

Daniel, don't forget that the luminent intensity specification is measured at 1 meter in the center of the eye's normal range (about 550 nM). White LEDs do have a broad peak in this range that is less than half as intense as the sharp peak at 470 nM. So even accounting for the inverse square law at 2 meters, the source at 470nM is still very bright. Obviously the further away the object is from the camera, the less effect it will have on the camera system as a smaller region of the pickup is illuminated. Remember that the pixel size for this camera is 8x9 micro meters and the entire image area is only 3x2.5 mm.
Now for further discussion...Dave, I expressed an opinion on custom circuit voltage convertors earlier in this thread. +/- 15 volt power supplies are very different than 1200 volt unloaded power supplies. Although the GDC has stated that fluorescent light sources are allowable, the implementation, type and use of any light source is subject to inspection. I am stating a general opinion of CCFL light sources based on the device questioned at the beginning of this post. As to the use of any light source on a robot that might interfere with the camera vision system, the decision is generally a consensus of opinions from the head ref, Lead Inspector, FTA and any FIRST official present. The height of the light source in 2006 and 2007 was less likely to be influenced by robot color or lighting due to the height of the target. (robot vision design should have prevented the camera from seeking a light source below 6 feet.) In 2005, the vision system was looking at the floor and that made inspections for interference a much more difficult task. As to good electrical design in this case, a 20 amp breaker to protect the wiring between the breaker panel and the insulated enclosure followed by a 1 amp, fast blow, non-resettable, fuse inside the enclosure would, in my opinion, be an appropriate method of safe CCFL/Inverter implementation.

Re: Illegal?
 

[quote=dtengineering;630971]Excellent suggestion on the LED light bars. Our secret plan this year... if we had time... was to do a Canadian Flag in IR Leds.

No one would see it until it showed up in photos and on the big screen.
/QUOTE]

We still get people oohing and ahhing over it. Moe from 88, after seeing it for the first time, put it best:
Me: "So when it lights up, we know we can get the tube..."
Moe: "And everyone knows you have a tube!"
Me: "Yeah. We didn't think of that until later."

We really scoured the aftermarket car decoration market for possibilities. Our runner up was electroluminescent wire, or EL wire, bunched within a clear lexan tube four bar linkage. However, the weight of the claw forced the tubes to bend to a point where the linkage couldn't reliably hold a position. Thus, the LEDs won out in the end.

Re: Illegal?
 

Alright....so I'll take the UV lamps out for sure, and I'll reconsider the CCFLs and maybe replace them with those LED light bars (not green or white). I'll leave the fans up to the inspectors....We're also putting a switch on the lights...so if they really don't want us to have LEDs in the match, we can just turn them off before the match correct? Or would they have to be completely removed? I also redesigned our box, and it will allow the indicators on the victors and RC to be completely visible.

Re: Illegal?
 

I am not 100% sure this would work properly, while many inexpensive consumer cameras do no block UV light most higher end consumer and professional cameras have a UV filter that will block out UV rays. I know this is true for my digital camera as well as many others.

very cool idea though

Re: Illegal?
 

Since the Original Poster's intent is to put his lights on the inside of a closed box, isn't CCD interference irrelevant?
Also, I agree that, for various reasons (mostly the broken glass/plastic from the tube) Cold Cathode Lights would not be a good idea on a competition bot. After the end of the year, soup it up for summer demos:D

Re: Illegal?
 

One thing with CCFLs breaking is that the small filament inside the tube is what is glass, the tube itself is acrylic and designed to contain the glass and electrical elements inside in the event of damage. As long as the CCFL is positioned securly and in a place that it will not take strong enough impacts to break the acrylic tube, and didn't interfere with other CMUcams, then its use on a competition bot would likely be legal*


*As I tell everyone I give advice on legality, I'm not an inspector nor am I am member of the GDC, so I would recommend strongly that next year you look at the rules then ask in the official Q&A to be sure of the legality of anything.

Re: Illegal?
 

I know that the heat shrink is legal, we use it every year. The inspectors never have a problem, they just complain that we have sharp plastic edges and wiring mounts. As far as the lights if they aren't green or bright enough to irritate the drivers in the control station then they are legal. For more info on the legality of the lights go to the FRC sight and see the rules and specs area you should find anything you are looking for in that area. I like the electric box idea that people have brought up... Next year we are going to make extension for the tether and the program connectors on the RC that way we don't need to worry about the accessibility of the ports then we are going to mount a piece of lexan towards the outside of the robot so its easy to tether the robot or program it. We have found that to be the best way.

Re: Illegal?
 

1 more quick question! Are false floors illegal? I want to hide some of the wires with a false floor, do the wires have to be visible to the inspectors? Or just the contacts?

Re: Illegal?
 

I think that they are legal to have but if an inspector wants to get to the wires it needs to be easily accessible for them otherwise they may think that you are up to something other than just hiding your wiring and may not pass your bot at inspection.

Re: Illegal?
 

I would be hesitant to pass a robot whose wiring I couldn't see. Now, if you can remove a panel for inspection (and repair, don't forget repair), you'll generally be fine.