Arduino with control system

[pav920]

Hi I'm a rookie captain so don't chew me out if this is a totally absurd question, but if we use the frc power distributor to power an arduino, are we allowed to use it on our robot? We have some components worked out that we were just going to test on arduino, but they work so well on the arduino itself that we were wondering if we were allowed to just plop it on.

I know there is a rule against using other batteries, but are we allowed to use other control boards than the cRIO?

[DominickC]

[R52] prohibits this.

Robots must be controlled via one programmable National Instruments cRIO (part # cRIO-FRC or cRIO-FRCII), with image version FRC_2012_v43. Other controllers shall not be used.

[Jeff Pahl]

That depends.

No, you cannot use the Arduino, or any other device other than a cRIO, to receive commands from the FMS and to issue commands to the motor controllers, etc.

Yes, you can use another controller board (or PC) to do things like interface sensors to the cRIO, perform vision processing, etc. But it needs to feed it's information to the cRIO, which then needs to issue the commands out to the rest of the robot. This is for safety reasons, as the FPGA in the cRIO contains the disable logic to shut your robot down if the FMS needs to shut it down.

[Matt Krass]

Originally Posted by DominickC

[R52] prohibits this.

That rule prohibits the Arduino from controlling the robot, not from reading sensors, or crunching numbers, or any number of useful things. I believe the Arduino would be covered under the custom electronics rules.

I believe R43/R44 allows you to power the Arduino off the PD board, with a second layer of protection between the breaker and Arduino itself, like a small fuse, which I recommend.

Matt