anyother robots smoke up?

[Talos]

This is the electronics team captain from team 1189.

What I believe happened to our robot was that the PWM cable powering the camera was placed very close to the pins that connected the camera to its PCB. Unfortunately for us, there was a lot of heat from the power connection in the area, and our design didn't vent the camera very well. The heat melted the coating on the power PWM to the camera, and the exposed wire shorted on one of the screws that mounted the camera to the backplate. Essentially, the chassis became our ground, and the power load through the wire spiked, burning the whole wire along a 4-foot length. Literally the entire black wire was melted. Honestly, it was hard to determine where the power spike came from, as the cable was damaged badly enough that we couldn't tell much. It's also possible that the cable was pinched in a corner of our battery box, and touched one of the terminals, but I would think that would leave one, heavily damaged area, which I didn't find. The damage was well-spread over the entirety of the cable.

Fortunately, the cable couldn't have burned very long; no more than two or three seconds, but the plastic did smolder for along time afterward, and the smell was very potent. Our camera PCB was cracked from the heat, and we had to pull out the cable and replace it, but we've had no problems so far. Other cameras seem to be having similar issues with high heat near power connections. If this can be confirmed, it's definitely something that should be addressed in next year's kit.

Overall, we had a terrible regional, ranking 35th out of 63. Out of six matches, we were only fully operational for four, but I'm happy to say that, aside from the camera, we had literally no electronic faults. Mechanical and programming issues crippled us, but we hope to be up and swinging at the Waterloo Regional in Ontario.