How to power the Kinect on the robot.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by David Kaplan

One of our team members thought of using the spike relay as it will take a small fuse, but wouldn't that have to be turned on during initialization... more work for the programmers.

If your programmers are able to successfully use the kinect on the robot, they can turn on a spike in their sleep. On the other hand, if you are worried about turning on a spike, trying to put a kinect on the robot may not be the best idea.

[David Kaplan]

Oh, programming the Spike isn't a problem... just trying to keep things simple. If I can legally plug a kinect into the PDB with a small Snap-Action breaker, and perhaps plug a panda board into the PDB with a 12V-5V DC-DC converter we're golden... I know these can PHYSICALLY be done, but concerned about legality.

[Johnny_5]

Be careful about using different snap action breakers. I think there is a rule that you can only use 20, 30, 40 amp breakers on the robot.

But don't quote me

[Justin Stiltner]

R43 Blue box

"
Smaller value Snap Action auto resetting breakers may be used on the PD Board for circuitry not defined above.

In addition to the required branch power circuit breakers, smaller value fuses or breakers may be incorporated into custom circuits for additional protection.
"

So you may use a 20A breaker, or substitute a smaller one, but it must be the same make, model, etc of the ones included in the kit.

Personally, I would use a 20A that you already have, and put a fuse inline if you are worried about trying to protect your device. In reality I have never seen a fuse protect a device that was miswired, unless that device had a crowbar circuit built in.

[RoboMaster]

Originally Posted by Johnny_5

Be careful about using different snap action breakers. I think there is a rule that you can only use 20, 30, 40 amp breakers on the robot.

But don't quote me

Yes, watch out. Something like this sounds right. Ask FIRST or read the manual before doing anything.

It kind of sounds like FIRST didn't really plan out how teams might use the Kinect on the robot. They really meant it for the driver station. So now that it is proving to be quite difficult/not easy, it's kind of a loss to us because we've got to get it working in 6 wks. Maybe there wasn't much they could do, but it's kind of a bummer.