Illegal?

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Daniel,
Besides the fact that the inverter puts out a very high voltage and requires better insulation on wiring than that provided in the kit, there could be any number of reasons to prevent it's use. The inverter should be considered a custom circuit and therefore can only feed the RC under the robot rules.

<R61> All outputs from the custom circuits must connect to the Robot Controller or to other custom circuits.

You might claim that is a non-functional decoration but decorations can only draw power from the 12 volt main battery, the inverter is the power source to the lamp, not the main battery.

Again, I'd disagree. The entire lamp (including it's cold cathode bulb) is a COTS item and that single COTS item is powered soley (sp?) from the 12v battery (through a breaker)

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

<R110> Decorations may draw power from the 12v electrical system as long as they are powered via a dedicated 20A or 30A circuit breaker and do not affect the operation of other control system components.

You might even argue that custom circuits can and frequently do have local power supply regulators and/or negative power supply generators, but again the voltage is not higher than the main battery and those devices still follow the rules for custom circuits.

Wattage is wattage. In order to up the voltage you must reduce the current (through a constant resistance). There is no rule against having higher than 12 volts on the robot (or lower, which by your definition would not be allowed either), just that the electrical supply must come from the 12 volt battery.

As long as it is breakered properly, then electrically it should pass inspection, according to the letter of the rules.

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

The lamps themselves are not roboust as anyone who built lights in 2006 can attest. I would venture to guess that several hundred lamps gave their lives to an errant ball during last year's game. Broken lamps produce dust and slivered glass. I wouldn't want to do a belly check on a robot and lay down in a pile of phosphor and glass out on the field.

And here we agree. Which is why I said that it would have to be contained within the robot completely if it did break.

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Small, intense, light sources play havoc with CCD cameras especially those without an iris mounted in front of the pickup. The particular device linked in the first post is a "black light" or ultra violet output device. Although it has some visible light output, there is considerable radiation outside the visible spectrum. CCD pickups are capable of detecting a rather wide spectrum including IR and UV and this device would likely cause some interference.

Superbright LEDs put out ~2000mcd (give or take some due to manufacturer and wavelength). 2000mcd, unless put directly in front of the camera (less than 6") does not have enough power to saturate the CCD elements within the camera. In addition, the camera is searching for a particular wavelength, which happends to be very close to one of it's primaries (green). Thus as long as the LED has very little green in it's composite the camera will easily filter it out. In fact, at a distance of more than 6" it will be able to filter it out better than the stadium spotlights.

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Sorry, but I have to stand by my original response. Really cool but not for use on an FRC robot.

For cold cathode lamps, I agree. There is too much engineering to make tham safe and not enough return (other than the 'cool' factor) for use on a FRC robot.

For LEDs I disagree. I can see plenty of feedback information that could be useful here. But I would caution those who would use them to be prepared to prove that your setup does not affect the CMU camera in any way, and to be prepared to disable the LEDs should you be required to do so.