2005 FIRST Robotics Confernce: Electrical Conference... A call for ideas!

[dez250]

At the 2005 FIRST Robotics Championship Conferences, Al Skierkiewicz, Steve Shade and myself, Michael Dessingue will be presenting on the topic of FIRST Electrical Design at 4pm on Thursday in Room 1. While we have some great ideas and topics planned to present on, we would like to hear from you the attendee. If you have any topics or ideas you have questions about or situations you would like explained, please post them here and we will try to cover them in our presentation. Don't be afraid to ask or suggest anything.
Thanks A lot,
Michael Dessingue

[dez250]

Tuesday evening will be your last chance to submit any questions prior to The Electrical conference to be answered in our Q&A session. You can email them to me or pm them to me directly through my profile or leave them in the thread.

[petek]

How about:

Materials and methods of securely attaching this year's PWM cables to Spikes and Victors

The consequences of Ohm's Law violations: How 12 volts + two questionable connections + eight feet of the wrong size wire = 2 volts at the motor

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by petek

How about:

Materials and methods of securely attaching this year's PWM cables to Spikes and Victors

The consequences of Ohm's Law violations: How 12 volts + two questionable connections + eight feet of the wrong size wire = 2 volts at the motor

Pete, gotcha covered.

[JamesBrown]

I cant think of anything right now but I will definitly be attending the conference. I am just curious will this cover the basics of the wiring and electrical set up or will it cover the Physics behind the electronics?

[Greg Needel]

One of the major things I think would be useful would be the basics of electricity talking about waveforms and why you can do some things but not others. (Like swapping wires on a speed controller to reverse direction)

Talk about grounding and why it is important

I would also talk about wire gauge and why specific gauges are chosen for specific applications.

The difference between varying voltage and pwm for speed control

The difference between amperage and voltage


I will not be at the seminar but these are common topics that come up on my teams and at competitions

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

I cant think of anything right now but I will definitly be attending the conference. I am just curious will this cover the basics of the wiring and electrical set up or will it cover the Physics behind the electronics?

James,
We will get into a little of the physics, but we are looking to give teams a chance to use the parts they they have effectively. If you would like to get into how these work, please bring that up at the end and we can discuss anything you like.

Greg,
We will get into some of that discussion. Has PWM been an issue for your team? If so, I will try to get into that a little.

To any team, I will be one of the lead inspectors in Atlanta. If you are having a problem, please come and see one of us right away. We will try to help or get you in touch with someone who can.