Electrical / Software test bed

[BrianAtlanta]

One issue with a programming bot is keeping it close to the competition bot, if you want to develop code while the competition bot is being built. Depending on team resources (students and money) can be a challenge.

I've been thinking this season about how start developing competition code sooner in the season. One idea I've been thinking about was prototyping a electrical harness. Here's my current thinking, using this years game. Please, suggestions are welcome.

1. After strategy, build breaks up in to 4 groups for prototyping (drive train, shooter, intake and lift)

2. Once a design is selected from each group, build starts designing and building. But at this point, electrical knows the components needed. They might change with further build enhancements, but you have a starting point.

3. As the build team works, a person or two take the required components and create a prototype harness on polycarb, rio, radio, pdp, and which ever components needed of the the subsystem.

4. Programmers can program, granted driving forward 5ft is hard to test without a bot. But you could tell that the bot motor started spinning and stopped. Once you get on the bot, then you tune the values.

5. Once build is ready for wiring, the test harness is used on the bot.

Brian