DRIVER STATION DESIGNS

[Taylor]

Things to consider:
-Size. Make sure it's large enough for two people to comfortably stand next to each other, but small enough to be manageable and fit in the station (this past year it was a max of 44")
-Weight. When in queue, as well as the walk there and back, somebody's gotta hold this thing. Even if you plan to just put it on the robot cart, this year at some events one person from the drive team was asked to stand on the opposite side of the field from the robot and its cart.
-Carrying. Make it easy to carry.
-Robustness. Lesson learned this year: Don't trust four small pieces of hook-and-loop to secure your computer.
-Accessibility. You may need to plug/unplug/reconfigure quickly. Make everything accessible.

[JB]

We redesigned ours this year with some smoked Lexan and 80/20. It has two game controllers and the laptop. Its lightweight and small making it easy to manage both on and off the field. Also were were able to brand it everywhere since we got our laser engraver to do vinyl this year. If you have any questions let me know pictures are attached.

https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...eVdKe0X7uMEyco
https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...NTgDSrl4uFYQEo
https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...o_h3Q8z555cIpg

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by jb1403

We redesigned ours this year with some smoked Lexan and 80/20. It has two game controllers and the laptop. Its lightweight and small making it easy to manage both on and off the field. Also were were able to brand it everywhere since we got our laser engraver to do vinyl this year. If you have any questions let me know pictures are attached.

https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...eVdKe0X7uMEyco
https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...NTgDSrl4uFYQEo
https://mail-attachment.googleuserco...o_h3Q8z555cIpg

links dont work

[gracie.]

Okay, so here's our driver's station. IMHO, it's really pretty and functions well. It got made several years ago by my sister and one of our alumna/mentors. It's basically a metal frame with 1/4 inch thick acrylic for face plates with cutouts for handles, 4 joysticks, and the classmate. One of the joysticks has been replaced with "peef" a box of buttons with LEDs that we made. The classmate velcros in. It's not too heavy, and we've attached straps for carrying! Unfortunately, with the new DS measurements this year, we had to have 2 inches sawed off one end at our first regional, but you could design around that since you know... >.>
http://www.team2399.org/?attachment_id=654
we CNCed it i believe, so perhaps you wouldn't want to use acrylic if you're putting on together by hand. or maybe not use acrylic in general, because it can shatter, but we haven't had any problems with that so far.

[AllenGregoryIV]

We made an extremely cheap driver station out of a piece of 1/2" plywood. We painted it and wrapped the edges in gaffers tape to prevent any splinters. Than we just dual locked (the stuff the use for Lego League tables) our joysticks, laptop and control panel to that. It's really light weight. The only thing missing is an easy handle, we will fix that soon.

If you want to know more about how we setup the control panel, we made a white paper a little while ago.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2666