[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by zman2865

Ok first of all i'm going to say i appreciate all the volunteers that helped out with FIRST FRC robotics this year and every year, but i think that FIRST needs to have a code of conduct for when it comes to inspecting a teams robot. For example having to ask to move your robot at ANY and EVERY time they wish to do so, ect. the reason i say that is because this year when we went to Atlanta we missed our very first match because during our teams inspection the inspector moved our robot while it was off while this doesn't seem like a problem it is because our team decided to use CAN this year and when he moved our robot he sent reverse current into our jaguars thus completely ruining functionality of 3 of our jaguars it was to bad that the only thing the texas instruments guy could do for us was give us three new jaguars(after 30min. of trying to fix them. on top of the at least 1 hour inspection) and after that things just went down hill for our team.

We've moved our robot with the power off many times without any damage to our Jaguars (and yes, we were using CAN). Now, it's possible that there was some sort of electro-static discharge (ESD) event that propagated through the CAN bus that caused multiple Jaguar failures. I defer to Al Skierkiewicz (CMP Lead Robot Inspector, and VERY familiar with the robot control system electronics) as to whether back-EMF could induce such a problem.

As far as robot inspector code-of-conduct goes, the inspectors at CMP were presented with a huge challenge: get 340+ robots inspected in less time than what is allotted for most regional events. If your inspector seemed a bit rushed, it's because we all were. If you felt uncomfortable moving your robot, you should have said so. I will only touch a robot when looking for sharp edges, tracing wires, or inspecting bumpers. If someone asks me to help support their robot, hold a component, or move a mechanism, I'll do it because I trust the team will not ask me to do something that is unsafe. No inspector would ever want to damage a team's robot. We all want to see everyone compete safely and within the rules.