[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Brian,
Your last post is confusing, what are you trying to say? Are you saying I act with favoritism because I don't agree with your suggestions? With your methods or with your premise?

No I am merely stating that the power supply issues, on the whole robot in point of fact, are often a great big grab bag of problems many of which I feel are beyond the resources of some teams.

We don't expect teams to solder. If they can great. We don't expect teams to engineer the cRIO. If they can great. We expect teams to follow directions, but what directions can I hand them to follow?

Where are the directions and parameters to load test that power supply? What tools do they need? What do the tests in the directions tell, or not tell about the robot?

I am not the first to ask these questions. When we ignore that some teams are far more equipped than others. When we ignore that off the competition fields these teams may be more greatly isolated. We create a situation that while I agree with you seems so simple...to them is disaster looking for a place to happen for them.

What are you referring to in the paragraphs about students and field teams?
I am suggesting that you use your monitors on your own robot on your practice field to give First and the community some data to digest and duplicate. Are you against that?

I'll be at Monty Madness at the request of field personnel. I am not against it at all.

As to you having something on your robot during Monty Madness, that is up to you and the event staff.

Exactly. I was willing to let FIRST shut down the idea of monitoring the D-Link power supply with my my monitors without too much fuss because it was made clear to me that off season events are the place to beta test. I agree with the KOP team at FIRST that they should have all opportunity to review a piece of test hardware they've not seen before.

I was surprised when FIRST said the cRIO couldn't monitor the power supply of the D-Link AP. In effect that means that we can't look while the robots are running on the competition field with hardware FIRST should by now know quite well.

As to First's reaction to your hardware, I have no knowledge of what you are relating to us. For the record I am not FIRST staff, I am not a member of the GDC, I am a key volunteer.

Fair enough Al. It's just that this a FIRST sponsored forum. It's hard to ignore the authority from which some of you speak.

As to adding monitoring to a robot, may I refer you to StangSense. We used the control system in conjunction with a custom circuit, to monitor current/voltage to critical systems, mostly motors, using a method that did not interrupt the power pathways to electrical components on our robot. We also used that system in a mobile design to aid other teams in the pursuit of problems on their robots for several years. We also described the data we collected and the subsequent issues we observed to anyone who wanted them and that data aided in the design of the current PD power circuitry. FIRST added several test bed monitors to operating robots (including ours) during the design phase as well. I assisted with at least some of the interpretation of that collected data during the collection at IRI. The boost/buck regulators on the PD are a direct result (I believe) of that research.

I have no doubt that StangSense and your work is well considered Al. The problem for me remains. That you do not personally build all of our robots. The need for teams to collect data doesn't really end in a beta or in just a few robots or even in the pits at competition.

Data collection against issues, assuming proper respect for doing it properly, should not discouraged in any way. In fact, it should be an extremely common thing for FIRST teams beyond just reading the voltage of the battery. I don't feel based on the current rules and based on the current status of things that such collection is widely encouraged. Worse, because of a lack of simple instructions I feel that it's beyond the reach of some people that really need it.