A few questions
 

A few questions from our team:

Are there any rules against putting two plus cylinders to the same relay?

Are there any changes in the wire gage requirements from last year?

Are we allowed to use a third party camera, instead of the standard one?


Thanks a bunch.

Team 870

Re: A few questions
 

1. As far as putting two cylinders on the same relay, I assume you mean you would like to actuate two pneumatic solenoids from a single Spike relay. This is permissable.

2. If you are familiar with previous year's wire gauge requirements, you should have no problems locating the specifications in this year's manual.

3. There is no standard camera, but if you would like to use one for robot control, make sure it meets the material utililization flow chart in Section 8 of the manual.

Re: A few questions
 

Firstly, this is a question I would like to know about as well, I'm pretty sure you can hook up two pistons to the same solenoid, but clarification would be nice.

For the other questions read the manual lol. that may sound like a broken record, but it very important that you read it. It will tell you wire sizes!

And I'm pretty sure you can't use any cameras this year!

Re: A few questions
 

Okay, first two questinos answered. Thank you. We checked out the flow chart, and followed it, and with that, it would seem like a camera is not legal at ALL. ?! is that really true? That seems kind of crazy..can anyone confirm this?

Re: A few questions
 

After following the flow chart, it comes down it is it an off the shelf item, which in our case it will be. We cant buy one of the CMUII cams from IFI right, because that would be a custom part for FIRST thats not in the KOP. So if we got any old off the shelf camera working it should be perfectly legal, agree?

Re: A few questions
 

What part of the flowchart led you to believe that the camera is not legal?

The CMUCam from last year's KOP as well as the CMUCam3 are both legal accorindg to the Q&A posted here

EDIT:Let me clarify a bit, the 2007 KOP camera would be legal as it is still available form IFI, the 2006 KOP camera is illegal as it is no longer available and was custom made for FIRST.

Also any other commercially available, off-the-shelf camera system should be legal provided it is under $400 and communicates with the RC and/or other robot circuitry and not wirelessly to the OI or another device.

Re: A few questions
 

The 2006 KoP CMU cameras are not legal as those were custom parts in the kit. A new CMU-3 camera which you have to purchase is legal.

Re: A few questions
 

http://www.cmucam.org/

There are places to buy the CMU Cam I, II, and III.

Re: A few questions
 

Two pistons to one solenoid, or two solenoids to one spike, makes no difference, as both are legal. (There is no rules limit to how many pistons you can put on the same solenoid.)