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Unread 15-02-2011, 17:41
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Matt Krass Matt Krass is offline
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AKA: Dark Ages
FRC #0263 (Sachem Aftershock)
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Rookie Year: 2002
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Re: Question from a ROOKIE Team

Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidGitz View Post
I have never seen the "slow blink" due to a debris problem. If there has been a debris issue it almost always causes instant failure of a Jaguar.
It really depends where the chips land, generally the overcurrent fault in the Jag has caught most of the problems I've seen with chips, and shut down the unit before damage was incurred. It is certainly possible though that the debris could cause a permanent failure, in fact I have one Jaguar on my desk I suspect may be a victim of such a failure

Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidGitz View Post
I'm sure there are many different ways someone could "hotwire" a motor. What I was referring to above (and why I put in the words "please exercise safety") is to use common sense*. I can think of several ways to "hotwire" a motor without having to have a "steady hands" requirement, such as:
-If the motor is not installed on a robot, put it on a table and clamp it down.
-Use a circuit breaker inline with the power connection. All Circuit Breakers that attach to the PD Board are compatible with a standard female 12 AWG connector.

Can anyone else think of some ways to safely "hotwire" a motor?
The problem was you didn't specify any of these suggestions, you simply suggested 'hotwiring' the motor (the fact that you had to use quotes around the word would indicate you knew it was up for interpretation) and the most common, especially amongst rookie teams, interpretation I've seen for hotwiring is sticking the motor wires straight in to the battery side AMP connector, and similar things like that.

What you've described here (clamps, PD board, etc) is actually a very good idea I would recommend all teams try just to have experience testing motors that way, but I wouldn't ever consider this hotwiring, instead I'd call it a test rig, or something equally less scary sounding.

My post was not meant as an attack towards you, I just know students sometimes gloss over the rest of the content available to them once they think they have a workable solution and I was afraid a student may have seen your post and tried what I described and gotten hurt or damaged something before anyone could clarify what you meant.
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Matt Krass
If I suggest something to try and fix a problem, and you don't understand what I mean, please PM me!

I'm a FIRST relic of sorts, I remember when we used PBASIC and we got CH Flightsticks in the KoP. In my day we didn't have motorized carts, we pushed our robots uphill, both ways! (Houston 2003!)