Week 1 Observations

[Mike Copioli]

Some recommendations after week 1 SFR (south Florida Regional). Below are a list of observed issues. These are in order of most common to least common

1. Update your DS software, PDP and PCM firmware to the required versions.

1. Check the seating depth of your PDP fuses, I cannot stress this enough. A good rule of thumb for this; If you can remove the fuse by hand, without the use of pliers, then it is NOT properly seated.

2. Robot Wiring - Teams should pull test every connection on the robot, specifically the Weidmuller connectors (push-in-type connector on PCM/VRM/PDP). Try to pull the wire out, you do not need to be gentle. If the wire can be removed without pressing the white button you should re-strip and re-seat as necessary. Also check the main battery, breaker and PDP terminals. Make sure these connections are not loose. You should not be able to move these connections without the use of tools.

3. Driver Station Computer - Disable all power management features of your DS computer. Specifically sleep and hibernate features. This can affect connectivity to the field as hibernate and sleep disable network connection and sometimes do not re-enable properly upon wake.

4. Disable all firewall and antivirus software. This can also affect field connectivity. A few teams had this issue.

5. Battery Quality - Not all SLA batteries are created equally. Some brands of batteries contain more pure lead, more consistent chemistry and lower internal resistance than others. From my experience, the MK and Genesis batteries seem to perform the best. They have a much lower internal resistance than some of the other brands out there. Having said that, all lead acid batteries degrade over time and use, so it is a good practice to test your batteries regularly.

6. PERFORM A COMPLETE ROBOT SYSTEMS CHECK BEFORE EACH MATCH!!!
If you are not doing this you are inviting failure. Catch issues before they cost your team and your alliance partners a match.

These are my observation made by both myself and Ken Gardner while CSAing at SFR.