Odd Electrical Problems at The Championship

[Gocho]

I am aware of some of the teams at the championship (including my own) are experiencing extremely odd electrical failures/controller flashes. My team came and after making the necessary repairs after damage from our regional, we were pretty confident that we had a functioning robot and would be able to make and play our matches today. After the first of our rounds this morning (Friday) we started experiencing a problem that made our voltage on our robot drop from around the normal 12 operation volts to between 4-8. This caused our robot in two consecutive matches to go around about 3/4 of the track and then lose power to our drive base so that when we tried to drive, even though when idle it showed a steady 12V, it would drop and we could not move. We saw from the OI that this in turn made the main battery power to the RC stop. The first logical choice was the battery. We checked and retightened every one and made sure nothing was lose after the first round that it happened in. After the problem insisted in the second around we started to look deeper in the electronics. I am going to be brief here and say that we basically either bypassed/changed every single componet in the system from the 120A breaker to the RC and the 6 gauge wire that ran through our main input part of the circuit. Over the 3.5 hours that this problem persisted we had most of the mentors and some team members from Team #1511 Rolling Thunder in our pit helping us look at the problem and trying to find a solution followed by mentors and team members from team #16 Bomb Squad and Team #111 Wildstang. With almost 15 extra people about 4 people deep crowed around our pit trying to help and use their brain power we still could not find an issue in the electrical system. Finally from with the help of the Lead Inspector we pinpointed the problem to not in the electrical system which we had just torn apart and rebuild in the past 3 hours but in our drivetrain. The chain inside of the boxed aluminum that we used to chain together our six wheel drivetrain had come loose and was throwing a link in the chain when we made sharp adjustments (ei. turning or speeding up fast or stopping fast). this in turn was causing our drive system that is powered by two CIM Dewalts on either side to stall and pull an amount of current that the whole electrical system was not near capable of handling thus making the voltage drop. So for 3 hours we worked trying to find and electrical problem only to find that all the trouble was mechanical. Just another day at the FIRST Robotics Championship.

I would like to thank all the teams that helped us or offered to help as i know i did not mention all of them. I would especially like to thank all of the team members/mentors from 1511, 16, 111 that helped with the problem and thought the thing through with us it made the pain so much better than it could have been.

We are now in the process of taking the chain in the boxes off as our drivetrain and move without them and we are hoping that that was the only problem. I will post an update tomorrow either way. Hopefully we can get it fixed and have fun in our other rounds. I believe we also have a picture of all the people standing in the pits which i will post tomorrow also.