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Re: Radio 12V to 5V converter
Do you need it for your robot to work? Not really.
Do you need it for your robot to work reliably? Very much yes.
As Mark indicated, the various electronics are designed to shut down in a specific order to attempt to keep the most imporant stuff awake through nasty droops. The radio and cRIO are top priority in this queue, but if you had it plugged into the 12->5V converter on the PD, your radio would have been one of the first devices on your robot to shut down when your power dipped.
If you had plugged it straight into the 12->12 converter, you run the risk of slowly baking your radio. Part-to-part variation means that some of the radios can handle this happily for months, while others fry much sooner.
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