SoC Power

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by team1165wins

On a robot, if you use a separate SoC for processing, like the Raspberry Pi, could you have a small UPS and watchdog, to allow the RPi to automatically SAFELY Shut down? In a typical robot, yo would just press the off button and then, KaBoom! However, manually shutting down is nearly impossible because of the great risk of human error. I am thinking of some high-capacity supercapacitors that hold just enough energy to power the Pi for a minute without the main robot battery active.

Batteries to do it are certainly not legal, per R34, unless they are integral to and part of the device (like a laptop battery).

As for "high-capacity supercapacitors"... As an inspector I would be very concerned with safety surrounding these. In college I had a roommate (bit of an idiot, failed out after freshman year, but that's another story) who had trouble with his sub woofer. Thinking he was a genius, he decided to open it up to try and fix it himself. He unplugged it, spent a few minutes getting the back off, and proceeded to get a sizable zap when the capacitors discharged into the screwdriver he stuck in there. So, I would be concerned with any sizable capacitor used for these types of purposes! If you're really concerned with shutting things down in a proper manor, have it respond to a signal from the cRio (or maybe the lack of a signal?).