On board shock datalogger?

[ChuckDickerson]

Originally Posted by Cory

If they don't, you can always use it during practice matches/offseaons

Yeah, but we all know that the hits aren't as hard nor as often on practice Thursday as they are later on on Friday and Saturday so the data probably wouldn't be representative of full on battle conditions. Also, we barely have enough $ to make the regular season regional. There are no off season events anywhere near here nor are there enough teams near here to have one.

I will wait for the new season rules to come out but if they are basically the same as previous years I might hit the FIRST Q&A or check with the inspectors at comp and see what they say. Just seems like fun to me and a chance to get some useful data that might be interesting to others as well. The major concern I would have is that I would see that we would be required to meet the weight requirements with it on board and they weigh about 15oz which is nearly 1lb that we would loose from our weight budget.

[Jonathan Norris]

I know that the programers on my team last year implemented a system using a small linux box and a usb flash drive to do some data logging. Don't know the details but here is a pic.

[Gdeaver]

Would be nice to see some data with bumpers attached and removed.

[ChrisH]

I would tend to treat this device as something like the on-board camera for video purposes. These are allowed as long as the video is not used during the match and you get prior approval (in writing) from FIRST Engineering.

You would have to comply with various rules. The device would have to have a self contained power supply and it would not be able to relay data back to the OI in any fashion. You would still have to meet weight with the device installed etc.

The data could be of great use to the larger FIRST community if it was published. So I think it would be approved under those conditions.

[DonRotolo]

I think it might fall under the Non-Functional Decoration rule - in that it has absolutely no interaction with any robot systems (aside from the obvious physical interface). It does count towards your weight, however.

Note that for quite a bit less $, you can mount an acceleration sensor to the robot (with a suitable G-force range) and use the RC to report back to the dashboard. You'd have to decide if you wanted continuous reports, or only when the shock exceeds some threshold. Unfortunately yhe KOP acceleromoter has a range that may be too small for this specific usage.


Don