Rules Question

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by philso

Attach these sub-panels to the inside of your robot using sufficient quantities of Velcro or 3M DuoLock.

If you attach things with Duallock (skip velcro, IMO) be sure to multiply the weight of the piece by the number of g's acceleration you think it might take in a collision in order to determine the amount needed. We are planning a hinged board this year, but it won't be to access additional controls, but the battery and much of the pneumatics system.The hinge will be mounted an inch away from the chassis on standoffs so that we can route the wires to/from the chassis through that gap. Always use stranded wire on robots, especially if there is a hinge or other articulation between the components at either end.

[MollyHBeil]

Last year our robot had a big piece of sheet metal covering our electrical board for the totes to slide down. It was hard to get in there and you needed a flashlight and small hands to work on electrical, but it did pass inspection. It was not fun for trouble shooting. But what you have for a plan seems way better, just make sure to have proper air circulation.

[MrRoboSteve]

You want these easily visible to someone standing outside the robot:

roboRIO lights
radio lights

Why? If you're having connectivity problems, they provide useful information to the field staff to help your robot get connected. They will generally not touch your robot as part of the troubleshooting process. During practice matches, there's more time to call your drive team out to the field to remove covers, etc, to do troubleshooting. Not so much on Saturday morning, particularly if matches are running behind.

It helps your team troubleshoot if the other active components of the control system (PDP, PCM, VRM, motor controllers) are visible. It's OK to have them under an easily-removed cover (meaning tool free removal). Don't bury them in locations that require disassembly of the robot.

This is probably a good place to remind teams of preferred radio locations:

. higher is better than lower
. don't mount it under a metal plate

[221Sarahborg]

We used a form of a "two layer" electrical panel for Aerial Assist. Since the most of our inner area of our robot was reserved for the ball/shooter, the bottom of our board was also our skid plate/the bottom plate of our bot. It was made of Alumalite, which is what we've used since. It requires an extra step during inspection to make sure no extra power/current goes through it but it's good for weight.

We had a plexiglass cover on top of it since the shooter would rest on top of it. For easy access it actually had two pins that would go through the board and into our PVC chassis. You can kind of see it in this photo. It was quick access if we needed it and it didn't include the radio, since that was higher up as you can maybe see.

We've done similar things since, last year had a vertical panel with a clear hinge panel over it and this year we plan on doing the same but just for the PDP and roboRIO since they also seem to be sitting under our shooter on our skid plate bottom board.