[Adam Shapiro]

While we're on the topic of electronic safety features I wanted to bring another thing to light. Too many times I've seen robot controllers placed in unsafe locations, either because they were installed late in the build season, or for convenience of access. I've seen a number of RCs lose radio, tether, and programming ports due to unfortunate placement choices. This is not something that you can fix on your own (I've tried ), and unfortunately "but it got hit in competition!" doesn't cut it when dealing with your warranty.

It's happened to me in the past and it can certainly happen to you. This is something that can easily be avoided however, so I urge teams to keep this most sensitive of components in mind early on in design decisions. More recently I have seen teams that build extensions to the tether/programming ports for easy access, while setting the RC a bit further back for protection. I think this is an excellent idea, however make sure you keep the indicator LEDs visible at all times, and make sure it isn't too hard to get to the RC to make changes or to secure wires (which should be done frequently since they have a habit of coming loose). It's very easy to overlook your controller as a point of failure, but it hurts a lot if that's what ends up breaking on the field.