Getting ready to be an electrician

[K0r34nB0y]

This year, the programming cell and electrical cell on our team were seperate groups of people, which caused a lack of communication between them. Next year I am going to be one of the senior programmers on our team and I feel that in order to effectively program our robot, I need to understand the electrical systems that drive it (i.e. relays, spikes, victors, etc.). I read over the documentation for them, but it's still kind of confusing to me. If anyone could give me some pointers in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Venkatesh]

There were many resources which I used to learn how all the parts of the control system fit together. The FIRST manuals were ok, providing background information.

The single most useful source of information and experience for me was the pneumatics demo board. Yes, that is correct. The pneumatics demo board. The board contained a 2001-2003 series Robot controller, relays, etc. Playing around with that assembly was incredibly useful. You could easily see if your outputs were affecting something, in the form of a piston moving in or out.

Another thing - on team 30, the electrical, electronics, and programming teams all act as one large group, which splits into subgroups as needed. This allowed very good communication between electrical and programming, we just switched hats (in a manner of speaking). To program well, you need to have an understanding of how things are wired and connected, and to wire/create circuits, you need to know what programs are doing and what they require to run well.

Good luck.

[KenWittlief]

what are you confused about?

the power comes from the battery and goes through some distribution blocks (that allow big wires to connect to small wires)

then the power goes through circuit breakers

and from the circuit breakers the power is fed either to a victor speed control, or a relay spike

the victors allow the motors to be powered from full reverse to full forward with 254 steps

and the relay spikes allow things to be full forward, off, or full reverse

what else do you want to know?

[steven114]

It might be better if you read over the documentation again and posted any specific questions - I personally have no clue where to start helping you

[OT] Lol.. figures... minimum time between posts is 47 seconds

[coreyjon]

I Will teach you nate.

[Pierson]

I don't know if you have seen this, but this is my favorite electrical giude (for doing robot electronics).

Memorize it... print it out on big paper... it is a really good resource.