Quote:
Originally Posted by waialua359
Hawaii has VERY high humidity.
The thing that caught my attention is getting shocked by static electricity when touching the robot this past weekend.
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High humidity and static electricity are usually mutually exclusive. One method used in industry to control static electricity is to humidify the air. I have not had static problems at work since moving from Eastern Canada to Houston but then our equipment does not have so many rotating parts. It is possible that the pneumatic tires used by many teams this year may generate much more static charge than other types of wheels used more commonly in previous years.
Try wiping some fabric softener sheets all over the tires. They leave a mildly conductive film that will help dissipate the static charge that accumulates on the tires. You would want to wipe all the way to the shafts or metal hubs that are in contact with the shafts. Hopefully, this will dissipate and equalize the charge over the whole robot so there cannot be an electro-static discharge from one part of the robot to another. It may be necessary to re-apply the fabric softener periodically since it may rub off. Alternatively, there are industrial anti-static coatings and sprays such as
Staticide, but they are probably harder to get than the fabric softener. I also just found these instructions on how to make your own
anti-static spray.
Perhaps CTRE can add some clamping devices such as TVS' across the inputs and outputs of the PDP and VRM. They would add only a dollar, or less, to the part costs though they would need some board space. The wiring in our robots is short enough that a TVS in the PDP would probably limit the voltages in the whole circuit running to the radio quite effectively.