Wiring in general help

[hectorcastillo]

If you want to try something cool, you can put the majority of your electronic and pneumatic components on a "control panel". My team has done this for the past two years, and it's worked out well for us. Last year we had one control panel with electronic and pneumatic components, and this year we have two panels roughly dividing the systems into separate electronics and pneumatics panels due to limited space on the robot. These panels are removable in case we need to do any work with the control system separately. They are a byproduct of our modular design process which involves a team of a few designers CADing subsystems that can be modularly integrated with each other.

The basic idea behind our approach is to have two .125" lexan plates separated by 1"-2" standoffs with control system components mounted on both sides with the wires running through the middle. The wiring process is a bit tedious, and I promise you'll be unscrewing the panel plenty of times when it's first getting wired up, but the end product is nice and elegant.

Check out this Google Doc if you want to learn how we make our panels: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing We base our CAD models off of the actual CAD files of the control system components we are using, to make sure that all of our holes align and everything is spaced correctly.

How do I know that this actually makes your wiring noticeably better and more attractive? Well, not to brag or anything , but we are constantly getting people from other teams commenting on our wiring at events and taking pictures. Also, the judges' comments for the five design awards that we've received in the past two years have all mentioned the quality of our wiring. Now, I'll admit that our wiring does get a little bit crazier as the season goes on, especially as we add new sensors and whatnots (all of those ugly pwm wires in the last url), but having a nice clean start is good.

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpl1/t31.0-8/10988274_10203868044558401_2898672782872616124_o.j pg
http://i.imgur.com/sI13plw.jpg
https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/12888615_1303371016346182_6685089353445235607_o.jp g