Driver's Stations
 

Hey guys and girls. I was curious about driver stations. How has your team approached them? Pictures are much appreciated.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We have had many iterations of our drive station, 2009-2010 a piece of ply wood painted blue and gold with the 2009 control system/ the 2010 classmate siting on a smoked piece of lexan. (sorry no pics) Last year (2011) we used just a piece of lexan, didn't work out to well. Right now we are coming up with a new one!

Re: Driver's Stations
 

From what we've learned, a good driver station should have the following things:

1) Be light. Not fun waiting in line holding a 20 pound driver station.
2) A place for the PC, controllers, etc. Clean, and evenly spaced out.
3. A place where the wires can be organized. (Messy wires are a pain in the chassis)
4) A place where all input and output wires can be easily accessible.
5. Preferably have the controls bolted down if possible, or a place for controls to be set.

Overall, something that can be set up quickly, with little to no hassle.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Previous to me on the team, they made an elevated platform from an old KOP.
But this year we just simply used a peice of plywood with velcro to hold the joysticks and zip ties to reduce the wire clutter. This wasn't that great because when we sat it down the wires always ended underneath and we had to pull them out.

Things I've learned,
-definately secure your joysticks or other light parts
-elevated surface is nice for carrying and placement (make sure the legs fit on the provided space)
-if you can secure the wires down or contain them, that helps
-and pls, pls, pls do not make one that is a disaster every time it has to get moved: Several times I have seen teams make a whole folding mechanism that folds into a box for carrying but it took forever for someone to do it and wires would always dangle out and have to be crammed in; so both alliances would be all ready at their DS while one team was still waited for the team from the previous match to get out of the way

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We make a new one each year for some inane reason but my favorite one was just a plywood frame with a sheet of red-painted regolith. Then we placed two long strips of velcro on it like racing stripes and attached everything to those.

Light, modular, and as neat as we needed it to be.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

How does everyone secure the laptop to the driver station. Last year we just had it sitting there and could have easily fell off. I dont want that again.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Zip ties? Duct tape?

Duck tape? :confused:

Re: Driver's Stations
 

I think zipties is the way i will go lmao. I dont think the programmers will want duct tape on their brand new laptop... I was thinking of Velcro but then there would be Velcro on the bottom of the laptop forever.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We use Velcro.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Do you leave the Velcro on after The season? If so does it get annoying? and if you take it off isnt there sticky stuff left on the bottom of the laptop?

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We have made lexan buckles that hold the laptop down. The joysticks are also held down with lexan. The buckles screw into a plywood DS. For the past two years we made ours into a fold up box with a handle. We are pretty fast about getting in and out. It is a little heavy but in our next iteration we plan on adding back pack straps.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

In the pre-2010 years, 1126 had a big driver station: a long sheet of diamond plate, on which sat the sensitive electronics, with a plate of some transparent material (I'm almost positive it was lexan, but it was a while ago and I was never really involved in that stuff. On that sat the controllers and everything else.

Well, after several generations of operators (who were charged with carrying that monstrosity and setting it up) hating it, we upgraded. In 2010, our driver station consists of three sheets of lexan hinged together, so it can be folded up. We had a strap connected both ends, so the operator can carry it on his/her shoulder. The joysticks were velcroed(?) to the end panels, with the center panel having sort of a "pedestal", on which sat the classmate with velcro to secure it, and underneath were all the connectors.

2011 brought yet another iteration: affectionately known as the "Box of Wonder". Because we made the jump to PS2 controllers this year, but didn't need as much space. Our drive station consisted of a box with a flip-out lid held shut by a caraveener when not in use. The box had strips of velcro inside of it to hold the controllers when not in use, as well are large strips to hold the Classmate. Again, we had a shoulder strap for ease of carrying. We've been very happy with this iteration.

That's pretty much our drive station history for the last few years.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask if you need to know anything else!
-Leeland

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Thanks guys. We made one in 2010 that was a sheet of lexan or plexiglass with 1inch square tubing around all sides the wires fit nicely underneath. The classmate was velcroed on and there was velcro on the bottom of the station.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Everything on our driver station (laptop and joysticks) are held down with Velcro. It works out well for us

Re: Driver's Stations
 

I'm not certain, but I believe we keep the velcro on the laptop all year (or on the laptop safety case that it's in when we use it).

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We use an aluminum briefcase. I think that started in 2009 although I'm not sure if we pioneered it or not. Sense then many teams in our area have begun to do this because it is very easy to carry, set up and takes up minimal space in the driver station. I can't even imagine going back to mounting stuff to a board.

Our briefcase looks something like this: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl...:429,r: 1,s:0

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We build IO panels to fit the Robot. Sometimes we'll keep the same one, other times we won't.



I built that IO in 2009, we also used it in 2010. In 2011 we used a similar design but replaced the right most Button Array with a Joystick for Arm Control.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Was it too bulky and heavy to carry? or was it pretty easy?

Re: Driver's Stations
 

It was a little on the bulky side, if memory serves me, it was about 48"x12" and a little on the heavy side, maybe 15lbs or so.

I usually carried it on my back using a Guitar strap or we'd throw it on the bottom of our cart so it wasn't a big deal. (I'm also 6'5" so a 4 foot long control board is nothing)

Really Old Picture For Reference:

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Oh man, I'm so proud of my way of doing this. What I did was take three 1/2 fabric straps and put two right around the hinges, going down the sides of the touchpad, then one between the touchpad and the keyboard. They would then go down and through slots in the piece of plywood it was sitting on. The straps covered up a few of the keys, but it's possible to type through them, and who types on the driver station anyway?

Re: Driver's Stations
 

2009 was our first year with the briefcase as well, IIRC.

BTW, Seeing our briefcase OIs side by side this year during our awesome qualification match at IRI was pretty awesome.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We uses a CNC mill to make some custom parts for our control board. They include the housings for our joysticks as well as some angled brackets to hold the 1x1 stock frame together. And we put some shiny blue lexan on it and velcroed the laptop and switchbox on top. It came out pretty nice.


The plastic connector things (yes, that's the technical term)


The completed board

Re: Driver's Stations
 

That's about what we did, except with a lighter blue, no corner pieces. and a guitar strap.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We have something similar in form to plnyyanks' too.



Switches on the left, Joysticks on the right, laptop in the middle. The main body is diamond plate, which I admit could be replaced by a lighter alternative. It holds up well for our various demos though, many of which involve driving the bot while carrying the board, so the folding solutions are a bit more complex. We are lucky enough to have a laser cutter available, so we take plexiglass, burn off some paint to make the pattern, and then cut out holes for the switches, as well as for the cables to run through. Also comes with red lights on the inside for extra effect.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Personally,

We love 233's Driver Station, we copied it this year and will for sure do it again!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/30632
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/30631

-RC

Re: Driver's Stations
 

971 2011 Drivers Station wasn't very pretty but it sure works well. The students made a mock up and it worked so well we just went with it.

Arcade set point buttons, score button with manual control levers over ride. Timer fired minibot launcher.


https://picasaweb.google.com/1177698...74397083339074

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We used velcro to keep it on our control board, it worked pretty well. You have to make sure you get good velcro though or else it will just fall off. The problem though was that our velcro was a little too strong, and the bottom panel of the laptop kept getting ripped off.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

My team is thinking about switching over to the briefcase style DS. For the teams that use them, do you do anything special to keep the Classmate from moving around, or do you just let it slide? Also, are there any specific cases anyone can recommend?

Re: Driver's Stations
 

I've mentored for two teams. My old team mounted the driver station to a marching band drum harness and that worked awesome. We could walk around the whole school driving the robot. My new team has just been using lexan with a quickframe border. Components are velcroed down. The industrial stuff is very strong. We don't worry about getting velcro stuck to the classmate because that is pretty much its whole purpose anyway. We might try to combine both styles this year.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

It was pretty sweet. That was my favorite match of the entire year. We need to work togeather more often.:)

I believe that we use velcro to keep the classmate from moving all around inside the briefcase. The controllers just sit in there on either side. I would suggest an aluminum one because they look classy. When you buy it just make sure that it is deep enough for everything you want to fit. Our's also has some pockets on the flip up portion which we use to hold other stuff like a match list, a couple small commonly used tools, etc. Another consideration.. because minibots are highly likely to come back this year. Last year we had a foam padded manibot case also. It protected the minibot very well and looked quite stylish, we threw some LED's in there to it would light up when opened. Eh, we thought it was pretty cool.:cool:

Re: Driver's Stations
 

Team 1515 has driven a fairly unique "gamepad" in the past 2 years- touch screen. We use a single 3 axis joystick to control the drive (both years mecanum) and the touch-screen to control everything else.
It's really quite cool. For instance, in Logomotion, we had 2 main screens: Drive and Maintenance modes.

Within Maintenance mode, there were animated thumbnails of the mecanum wheels, and FWD/Rev buttons, 2 speeds each. This allowed us to completely test the drivetrain. Addtionally, we had the ability to control both our forklift style lift and pneumatic joints in the arm. For the forklift, we had both absolute and relative control. We could also deploy the minibot.

Within Drive mode, every thing was streamlined in order to ensure speedy gameplay. To raise our lift, when on absolute control, we could touch any peg on the full onscreen pegboard, thus causing the lift to go to that height. (It was self-calibrating, every time it touched the bottom, it registered 0). When on relative control, we could simply press UP and DOWN arrows to take the lift to that height. Of course the pneumatics were simple, press and they change position. When the operator pressed the 'Deploy Minibot" button, an "are you sure" window popped up, and on OK, it deployed.

Consequently, we won the Innovation in Control in both the Los Angeles and Denver regional this year. The screen was a donation from a local company. The connection between the touchscreen and the classmate is relatively complex. It utilizes an industrial PLC from Automation direct and a cypress carrier board. However, if your team has the resources with which to build one, it makes the driving experience incredibly simple.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

:ahh: That's awesome. I wish we had something like that, but our programming team is just not that good.

Re: Driver's Stations
 

What touchscreen did you use? Would you recommend it? I have been told to get together a list of parts that I would like to order, and while having that may not be considered "necessary" it sure looks like fun!

Oliver

Re: Driver's Stations
 

We are using an Automation Direct C-More touchscreen (EA7-T8C).
The logic is processed by an AD DirectLogic 6-Series PLC. Please keep in mind that the parts were donated to us. When priced out, the system costs around $1500. We wouldn't have been able to do it without the generous donations.
If any teams are interested in building a similar system, I'm sure our programming and electrical teams would be happy to help out