pic: Early Christmas!

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by IndySam

If they said it once they said it a thousand times....

The manuals do not flow in a linear pattern. You must be very careful how you follow them or you will be chasing your tail.

Chapter one will point you to a specific section in chapter 5 and only that section. Then that section may point you somewhere else. You have to be real careful to go where you are pointed and then back.

I would suggest that before you receive your control system that you download the manual and read if very carefully and familiarize yourself with it. It will make the whole process easier.

OK....I'll bite. WHY do the manuals flow in this manner? Is it not possible to make them more "linear" for the betterment of all? If the info is complete but jumbled, can this not be corrected fairly easily?

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

OK....I'll bite. WHY do the manuals flow in this manner? Is it not possible to make them more "linear" for the betterment of all? If the info is complete but jumbled, can this not be corrected fairly easily?

There are two uses of the manual, one is to get people up as quickly as possible, the other is to provide the information in a logical manner for reference. Since teams will only get up and running once, but may need to use it for reference many times, Sections 2-5 of the manual were optimized for the latter use case. Section 1 provides the pointers to the needed parts in sections 2-5, in order for everyone to get up and running.

[darkember]

How do you get power to the router? When i looked at the istructions, it showed that it has to get connected to the power distribution board and the cRio. The only problem is that there is only one ethernet cable that came with the router and a power supply that has no use on a robot.
P.S. It would be nice for a picture of it.

[AJ R]

Originally Posted by darkember

How do you get power to the router? When i looked at the istructions, it showed that it has to get connected to the power distribution board and the cRio. The only problem is that there is only one ethernet cable that came with the router and a power supply that has no use on a robot.
P.S. It would be nice for a picture of it.

You need to make the power cable for it. Cut off the transformer part of the cable that comes with it and put a wago connector on it. Pay attention to polarity. If I remember correctly, the wire with the stripe is positive.

[darkember]

Thanks, that was one of the last things i have left to do on the controls to make it functional.

[Nosh]

"Holy S**t it's Christmas" was my reaction when we got the new electronics too, we got it running on a working bot ASAP... it was beautiful.

[darkember]

I found something wierd. When the pneumatic bumper was plugged into the power distribution board and there wasn't any breaker, we were reading between 2-3 volts. When the breacker was plugged in we were reading the intended 12v. What i dont get is how we still got voltage without a breaker. Any Ideas?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by darkember

I found something wierd. When the pneumatic bumper was plugged into the power distribution board and there wasn't any breaker, we were reading between 2-3 volts. When the breacker was plugged in we were reading the intended 12v. What i dont get is how we still got voltage without a breaker. Any Ideas?

There's obviously some leakage through the pneumatic breakout from the 9472 Digital Sourcing Module when the 12 volt power isn't connected. I don't have a copy of the breakout schematics handy, so I can't explain the current paths in detail.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by darkember

I found something wierd. When the pneumatic bumper was plugged into the power distribution board and there wasn't any breaker, we were reading between 2-3 volts. When the breacker was plugged in we were reading the intended 12v. What i dont get is how we still got voltage without a breaker. Any Ideas?

There is ~100kOhms of leakage around the breaker on the PD. Your 2-3V isn't real, it will disappear as soon as any sort of load is applied.

[darkember]

Thanks. I was just wondering thats all.

[darkember]

We were running our benchtest, but we couldnt get tank drive. Everything else worked. Do i continue on with updating the Crio or is there something wrong?

[Mark McLeod]

Nothing is wrong. The documentation is a little out of sync with the OTB software load.

Nothing to see here,...move along, move along...

[darkember]

Thanks again.

[Applepwns]

Im not really liking how much space all that is taking up..

Congrats on the working robot though!

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by IndySam

If they said it once they said it a thousand times....

The manuals do not flow in a linear pattern. You must be very careful how you follow them or you will be chasing your tail.

Chapter one will point you to a specific section in chapter 5 and only that section. Then that section may point you somewhere else. You have to be real careful to go where you are pointed and then back.

I would suggest that before you receive your control system that you download the manual and read if very carefully and familiarize yourself with it. It will make the whole process easier.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

OK....I'll bite. WHY do the manuals flow in this manner? Is it not possible to make them more "linear" for the betterment of all? If the info is complete but jumbled, can this not be corrected fairly easily?

There's only one reason why the manuals could have possibly been written this way:

Assembly programmers.

Used to JMP'ing around all day, CMP'ing and MOV'ing data while dancing the PUSH and POP shuffle, they managed to write the manual to the new control system. Unfortunately for those not accustomed to the ways of lean and mean coding, reading the manual is like being stuck in the limbo of oh_no JMP oh_no.