[DFTF] Required Reading

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Joe,
You can read section 3-The Game and 4-The Robot manual from 2011. You will find some inconsistencies but we are working on them for 2012. The documents are mostly what you are familiar with they have simply been broken into separate documents instead of sections in the same document. It sounds like you are going to be involved in all of the robot so I would suggest at this point to start reading up on the control system. There are a few quirks i.e. the placement of modules within the Crio frame, the interconnect to analog and digital sidecars and the use of the Power Distribution (PD) panel. Critical to this is the power supply for the Crio, radio, and camera, all of which are provided on the PD. New this past year is the addition of a regulator module for the radio. The PD was designed to have brownout protection for these critical power needs. 24 volts for the Crio, 5 volts for camera and 12 volts for the original radio/gaming adapter. The later version of the radio is 5 volts, hence the need for the external regulator module. These supplies provide power down to about 4.5 volts on the battery input. However, there is a requirement for a battery input to the analog module in slot one and a jumper is needed on the analog bumper (the small module that is fitted on top of the analog module). This critical connection supplies the battery voltage to an analog input. This allows the system to disable all control when and if the battery voltage falls to 5.5 volts. By doing so, the Crio and/or radio will not reboot during severe brownout. A Crio reboot is anywhere from 30 seconds or more depending on software and a radio reboot can be up to 50 seconds. This jumper also routes the battery voltage to the driver's station and to the field management computers so that it may be displayed for drivers and for troubleshooting. Most of the electrical system you will remember from the past. The new speed controllers, Jaguars, operate similar to the Victors you know and love. Some teams continue to embrace the IFI product as being reliable and nearly bullet proof, while the Jaguar provides CAN bus interfacing, with the ability to do some fancy motor control, sensor wiring, and current feedback if the user chooses.