[Al Skierkiewicz]

Wheelman,
Stang Sense is our name for a current monitoring system we used on this years robot. It is capable of monitoring the current supplied to all six of our drive motor speed controllers through the dashboard port of the Operator Interface. Since the robot battery voltage is also available in the dashboard stream we monitored that as well. We were able to pass the stream to a color palm pilot that would change colors on two displays to show normal(green), caution(yellow), or warning (red) conditions of current. One display was an overhead of the robot showing the motors as colors. The other was a bar graph display of each motor. Since the palm was able to store the data in each match with a rough clock tick, we were able to analyze high current activities and warn drive team and strategy of risky behavior during matches. This system allowed us, during building phase, to recognize the new FP motors and the change in power curve. With a portable version, we were able to analyze problems on other robots as well.
We offered to connect up to problem robots at both Midwest Regional and Nationals. All in all I think we analyzed 20-30 robots and these are some of the problems we were able to help correct. Dead motor in a multi-motor drive system, locked transmission, binding bearing in a steering gear, excessive voltage drop in wiring during operation (led to change in electrical layout), excessive current while turning (typical for tank drive with high friction wheels), inefficient gear train, tripping resettable breakers, slipping clutch, and assorted wiring errors, bad crimps, loose wires and high resistance connections.
This system has been discussed here before so there is probably stuff in the archives. There is also a link on our website which is in the process of changing over to a new server. Try wildstang.com
Good luck all