[Uberbots]

In light of all of the... bad things that are happening to some of the IR boards that i see here on CD, i think it is time to post the story of the IR board with 9 lives.

Ok, so this story starts out with a short circuit. A bad one at that. We had built a custom IR receiver panel with 8 receivers built into it, and two of them shorted together. So the IR signals stop being processed- and with good reason. We look at the IR board and it is smoking- we let the genie out of the copper trace leading to the output pins where the IR sensor is (was). looking at the trace, it was destroyed. there was a hole burned right in the middle of it, and i was convinced that the board was dead, and so we started to prepare the second board.

But then, my dad got a wonderful idea. He soldered a small copper wire clipping over the gap. We turned on the board and, lo and behold, it returned to life as if nothing had happened. It responded to input and everything. So we put it back on the bot, and proceed to test another hybrid mode. As the robot is making its high-speed turn, we start to notice MORE smoke pouring out of the IR board. So we run over, take a look, and now the ENTIRE trace that was leading to the IR sensor was gone, charred up, and fallen on the floor somewhere.

But my dad was persistent- we had the technology to make this board come back again. so we solder a longer peice of copper wire to the two ends of the trace, turn the board on, and IT WORKS!
AGAIN!

so this is a story of the IR board with 9 lives. I guess what we have learned, contrary to the experiences of other teams, is that these little guys are very hardy, and that a short in that place is fixable.

=D