Cameras Getting Smashed

[Daru]

we tried to get our robot to power off by throwing a ball at it as hard as we could but it wouldn't flip the power switch

Just be careful, before we had the hopper built on our robot, the balls would fall straight down about 4 feet onto the robot power switch after being brought up our conveyer-style loader. The robot would turn off once in a while, if the ball landed squarely on the nub

I think the camera needs a lot of protection. It seems pretty fragile. The lens tends to lose focus slowly just moving the camera around and one bump and all the cords come out. Perhaps you guys have taken care of the problem... (we do not have the camera on our robot... we're going to try to get it for the competition...)

If you have it at the top of the robot, and you are running the risk of falling over (on the ramp or whatnot) you should make the guard strong enough to ward off some bumps and scrapes, if not a full-speed robot ram. If you put the camera in one of the radio shack project boxes, I don't think a ball-hit would be too much of a problem unless it hit directly on the lens peice.

Dave
~706