Blown talon srx modules

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I'm sure we differ in opinions, but I've always felt that any piece of consumer electronic that can be permanently destroyed by ESD is, to put it bluntly, crap.

And what "consumer electronics" come with bare wires to which you must connect power and or signalling cables?

Being aware of ESD and taking care not to zap electronic components is SOP and good things for students to learn. A better question is were they warned by the packing material or by a mentor? I don't remember seeing anything in the TalonSRX manual, a pretty big oversight. But all the electronics used in FIRST can be damaged by ESD (to some degree) - I warned our guys/girls just the other day to NOT touch the gyro board as it is really easy to zap and destroy.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by wireties

And what "consumer electronics" come with bare wires to which you must connect power and or signalling cables?

Being aware of ESD and taking care not to zap electronic components is SOP and good things for students to learn. A better question is were they warned by the packing material or by a mentor? I don't remember seeing anything in the TalonSRX manual, a pretty big oversight. But all the electronics used in FIRST can be damaged by ESD (to some degree) - I warned our guys/girls just the other day to NOT touch the gyro board as it is really easy to zap and destroy.

Home Theater equipment, for one. But regardless, the wires didn't even have to be like that. It could have been some kid of female receptical (something like powerpole).

I'd like to see some high resolution pictures of the blown boards to see if there's anything in common.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Home Theater equipment, for one. But regardless, the wires didn't even have to be like that. It could have been some kid of female receptical (something like powerpole).

Speakers are outputs and muuuuuch easier to protect than any kind of input.

A connector for power and for CAN/PWM would have been nice but would require some sort of standardization for CAN/PWM and power interconnections.

[magnets]

Originally Posted by GregGarner

The 3.3V signal is not used by our encoder, and it is not terminated at the end of the cable. This effectively means that we have a 8 foot antenna on the 3.3V wire, which could pick up any signal in the area and connect it into the Talon 3.3V rail.
...
Finally we do intend to follow industry standard ESD protocol as part of the shotgun approach.

Interference is no longer an ESD problem.

Also, a wire that isn't terminated at one end isn't likely to result in much inductive coupling, and it will be much, much less than a wire that's terminated at both ends. Having it terminated at only one end will make inductive coupling almost disappear. There's no effective loop area if you don't have a loop!

You may have parasitic capacitive coupling though.