Altium Usage?

[EricVanWyk]

I apologize for the double post, but a thought came to me last night:

Currently, the rules dictate that the official analog breakout must be connected to slot 1 with the jumper selecting the battery voltage for AI8.

What if the rules were revised to say something closer to "Channel 8 of slot 1 must be wired with a resistor divider with values X and Y to the input battery voltage. An easy way to do this is with the official analog breakout with the jumper as such." ? I don't see any other rules nor safety guidelines preventing the use of custom analog breakouts, and it could be an easy place to get your toes wet. I'd love to see a team make an "analog breakout" that is a 6 axis IMU + compass + battery monitor.

[Alex698]

Why not just use the second analog input module?

[IceStorm]

I would love to check out the altium program but have tried on at least 3 different attempts now to sign up for the download link and have not heard back from them on where to get the download from.

[oddjob]

I'm a mentor and use Altium a lot for schematics and pcb layout. The team didn't build any custom boards this year, so it wasn't used by the team. For documentation, a FIRST Altium library of electrical and electromechanical components (cRIO, sidecars, CIM, etc.) could be used to draw a complete robot schematic. That would be great to have.

Also, as someone else mentioned above, my online application for a license went into a black hole and never got a reply.

[EricVanWyk]

Could those of you whose requests disappeared please PM me?

[Rich Kressly]

Eric,

IMHO while high-end tools like this are very cool, they will always be utilized by a very low percentage of teams - especially if it's something that comes to us "at kickoff" in a year where it's draining time and human resources just to get a new control system up and running consistently. In subsequent years, you'll see an increase I'm sure - if teams feel comfortable that the tool will be around for multiple years and if rules and games continue to call for use of an application. Even with that said, though, a tool that designs custom circuits will not be something that the overwhelming majority of our 2000+ teams ever utilizes due to time and human resource considerations unless it's something that "has" to be used.

[ay2b]

I did not use Altium -- I didn't realize it was available, and wouldn't have had time to learn it even if I did. It sounds like potentially a very useful package though. If you'd like to get more teams using it, here's what I'd recommend (off the top of my head, and in no particular order):

• give teams the software early (say in April or May)
• give teams an incentive to learn it
  • free fabrication of boards (up to a certain size/quantity?)
  • a commitment that the product will be part of the KoP for at least X years
  • perhaps allow for parts designed/fabricated before kickoff but using the current software & free fab lab to be permitted on the robot
• give teams tutorials & instructions

[ehochstein]

If it counts for anything, my team downloaded it and looked at it. We never ended up using it though.