Things You Shouldn't Do

[Ekcrbe]

I thought it would be ineresting to see what things people have done that they regret...

Our team accidentally plugged an analog sensor into the digital side of the sidecar...
[magic white smoke]

[electron]

Things to not do:
-Think you can worry about wire management after everything is wired.
-Put the Digital Sidecar in the most out-of-the-way, hardest-to-reach place on the robot you can possibly imagine.

Things to do:
-Make sure the jags are not wired backwards..

[SenorZ]

Get M+ and V+ mixed up on a jaguar... And turn on the robot

[BrandonGlatz]

Connect two battery connectors together.... I still regret that to this day...

[OZ_341]

We had a rookie store bare steel cables in the same crate with an un-insulated battery.
It makes a beautiful green vapor!!

[Ty Tremblay]

We had the robot in the back of an SUV on the way to a practice field. Somehow, a battery fell over and the two leads connected on our drive train. We didn't notice until we got to the field about 30 minutes later. The chain go so hot that several links were welded together.

Moral: Insulate and secure your batteries.

[Taylor]

While we were helping set up an indoor summer offseason competition, we did not realize it was raining outside. Our robot, however, took note of that. Mostly because it was in the bed of a pickup truck at the time.

[scottydoh]

Originally Posted by Taylor

While we were helping set up an indoor summer offseason competition, we did not realize it was raining outside. Our robot, however, took note of that. Mostly because it was in the bed of a pickup truck at the time.

That's not always the end though. Out lead teacher is notorious for leaving the robot outside in his truck through all kinds of weather. Back in 2008 the robot sat through a rain storm, several days later we went to use it an a demo and noticed water dripping out of the computer (The old school IFI Microchip one) So we took it apart and dried off the PCB with a hand dryer in the men's room, 15min later the robot was up and running perfectly.

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by electron

Things to not do:
-Think you can worry about wire management after everything is wired.
-Put the Digital Sidecar in the most out-of-the-way, hardest-to-reach place on the robot you can possibly imagine.

Things to do:
-Make sure the jags are not wired backwards..

We actually did a similar thing, putting power into both sides of a Jaguar, and found that it was unresponsive afterward.

[ianonavy]

Don't wire motors directly into the power distribution board and turn the robot on.

[PayneTrain]

Don't let freshmen drill on your electronics board by hanging it over the table when you aren't looking, causing a giant crack to form in the Lexan you and your squad spent hours working on making the biggest, best board we ever made... in Week 6.

Why me.

[Anupam Goli]

Never ever EVER let the mechanical engineer guys design places for electronics to go and wires to go. They will put it under a giant rotating arm and make it impossible to wire anything there. Always design it yourself or find a place and be firm about it.

[DavidB96]

i put a wire connected to a bettery, much smoke. then a friend did it to prove what happened, and he got in trouble for it!

[rsisk]

Never forget to secure the robot crate in the back of a pickup when driving. It will fly out of the truck.

Nothing more bizarre than watching a 400lb crate catch wind and lift up and out of the trucks bed. Also, the truck stops faster than the 400lb crate sliding down the road, it rear ended me.

Robot survived.

My reputation didn't

Don't trust your non-driver friends with the controls for a moment. You think they won't shoot you in the face, they will.