Building a field

[Johnny_5]

I have contacted FIRST about a list of all components used because I want this field to be FIRST legal. There is a robotics group of mentors in a city near me that put on an off season event, and local teams around us also would love to practice during build season on a legal full size field.

I was just at the Buckeye Regional and was able to get a couple of good looks at the field and I also reviewed it with someone on our team who specializes in automation and integration similar in aspects to the field. The A&B Panelview Plus 1000's that are used for scoring are very easy to program in the sense of sending scores to the scoring computer. The E-stop switches are connected to a distro block of some kind that then inputs it into the server (PLC).

However you do bring up a good point about the custom circuity and sensor position with the field. There are DMX controllers used for lighting that integrate into control with the FMS. But otherwise as far as I can tell the Scorpion box is just a way to route the signal in the correct path without setting up many more switches and routing panels. It has PoE for the Cisco router that is used for all D-Link's to bridge to. There is a panel that sits on the scoring table that has 6 buttons (3 red, 3 blue) that I believe is used for enabling and disabling the robots based off what the ref's see.

The networking components such as the Cisco router and switches are all very standard. So are the Allen Bradley components used in and on the field for DS comms and scoring. However, things definitely get more tricky when we begin to look at this "server" that is used on the field. I also am confused about this "SCC" device that is spoken about.

I have attached the manual that is published by FIRST for volunteers that setup the field. This helped a lot for understanding some more components I could not put a name to. And it also shed some light on some components that FIRST puts a name to and I was not aware of what that component did, such as the Scorpion Box.

I recommend checking out the manual that I attached, it really helped me understand more. And now I feel that building a field with the FIRST electronics is more possible than before!!