Power for Driver Station

[kmitchell]

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19

For teams who have competed in the semifinals or above and who have not been told to go back to the pit between elimination matches (such as we were in the quarters), how can you power your robot while on the side of the field? For example if you need power to reset, test, or fix features of your robot since the new system needs an AC power source for the controls? Is this available or is there another way to power the controls without being on the field or plugging into a wall? Or is there an outlet available for teams to tether up? I don't know a whole deal about the new system, so please feel free to correct me if I have anything wrong.

The FTAs have been told to work with the production company to provide AC power on either side of the scoring table for teams' use during the elimination rounds.

[Paul Copioli]

All,

The really simple way to "tether" on the side of the field is to do the following:

1. Take the AC power for the bridge (aka antenna) and plug it into your DS.
2. take the ethernet connection at the bridge and plug it into your DS.

Viola! Instant tether. This is what we did and it worked great. Just make sure you have enough length in each cable to pull it off.

I know others said id, but I wanted to make it perfectly clear that this works. We did it at Midwest at least 4 times during eliminations.

[eugenebrooks]

Does anyone know the inner/outer diameter of the power plug
for the Linksys wireless game adapter? Using the robot
to power the driver station when tethered seems like a
great idea.

[big1boom]

Its the same power cord. Just unplug the cord from your wireless router, and plug it into your driver's station. It works.

[eugenebrooks]

I have something with much longer reach in mind,
and don't have access to the connector to size it
right now, therefore the request.

Eugene

[big1boom]

oh, ok. The wireless bridge power connector wire is pretty short, if you were at MWR, during the timeout you probably saw us reprogram, with the entire control console being held close to the bot.

[esquared]

OD is ~0.215"
ID is very roughly 0.080", our dial calipers were too fat to fit inside the barrel.
--Eric

[B. Flaherty]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

This was an issue for us at FLR. We actually had to roll our robot and controls to the scorer's table to get power to tether and run our robot. However I think we were only allowed to do this because we were also helping to diagnose a possible field issue during the finals round. I doubt that in the quarters and semis teams would have been allowed to simply setup at the scorers table whenever they please.

We're looking into rigging up an assembly to run the DS from a battery for GTR.

In one of our quarterfinal matches at FLR our robot was dead after a collision on the field. We needed to power up to be able to make sure all of our connections were corrected. The power was most likely available to you because they arranged it for us I believe when we asked for it. We brought our robot over and proceeded to power it up and check all the connections and motors. The volunteers at FLR were great in accommodating us during this time and I thank them deeply for this.

[Eugene Fang]

Since the radio power is on a WAGO connector, you could use a spare WAGO connector and connect it to a longer cable that goes into the DS. This way you can have a short cable for the radio, and a longer, more useful length for the DS.

This would be useful for us because our radio wire is really short and nicely ziptied, and it would be a pain to have to re-ziptie it each time.

[eugenebrooks]

Originally Posted by esquared

OD is ~0.215"
ID is very roughly 0.080", our dial calipers were too fat to fit inside the barrel.
--Eric

Likely a "type N" power connector, thanks!

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by eugenebrooks

Likely a "type N" power connector, thanks!

It's size M. The size is listed on the KOP checklist as 2.1mmx5.5mm.

[Speeder]

What we did with both the camera and WGA was cut the original power supply wires and use 1/4" insulated spade connectors on the ends. Now we can easily use either the original transformer or wiring on the robot. We'll be doing the same to the DS power cord. After FLR we'll be adding a set of wires from a fused port on the Power Board for the DS.