anyother robots smoke up?

[irishninja]

The worse thing that happened to us this year was a frayed wire in contact with our robot. The entire thing had a current going through it and when a judge touched it he got shocked. Oh well.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I coached that match against them. Sadly, after they reset the field and removed 1189, Huskie forgot to completely reset their robot (thanks to the backup battery) and ended up going nowhere in autonomous instead of scoring all those balls. Not that we did much, as we were still dealing with a lot of other difficulties.

At any rate, I managed to talk with some guys from 1189 on saturday, and related our hard-luck story of losing a match cause an opposing robot went up in smoke. And then discovered that it was them. Apparently some battery leads got twisted up with some PWMs in their turret. Then they either got pinched or otherwise exposed and shorted. And thus full 12V to ground with no breaker. I was honestly wondering how you could possibly make that much smoke without tripping a breaker. I suppose it's good to know that you in fact can't.

[65_Xero_Huskie]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I coached that match against them. Sadly, after they reset the field and removed 1189, Huskie forgot to completely reset their robot (thanks to the backup battery) and ended up going nowhere in autonomous instead of scoring all those balls. Not that we did much, as we were still dealing with a lot of other difficulties.

At any rate, I managed to talk with some guys from 1189 on saturday, and related our hard-luck story of losing a match cause an opposing robot went up in smoke. And then discovered that it was them. Apparently some battery leads got twisted up with some PWMs in their turret. Then they either got pinched or otherwise exposed and shorted. And thus full 12V to ground with no breaker. I was honestly wondering how you could possibly make that much smoke without tripping a breaker. I suppose it's good to know that you in fact can't.

lol, yea, we did forget to reset our bot...our faults...but we did learn that our aim on our camera was off from half field, so we adjusted that after that match

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Apparently some battery leads got twisted up with some PWMs in their turret. Then they either got pinched or otherwise exposed and shorted. And thus full 12V to ground with no breaker. I was honestly wondering how you could possibly make that much smoke without tripping a breaker. I suppose it's good to know that you in fact can't.

Yep, 1189 showed us their video in Pit Admin - and then showed off the burned up length of PWM.

[Idaman323]

Wow, last year at St. Louis regional.. there was a bot that had some pretty nice smoke coming out of it. Never knew what caused it though.

I have a request for everyone who views this: Please post your videos in a text format.

[Chrispy393]

Hurray for Magic Smoke. Just kidding, but those of you who did start smoking....you should have covered it up with a casual "Man, the fireworks weren't supposed to start until after we won!" Good luck and try to stay away from future ms.

[ICE MAN]

Last year at Nat's. a nut fell between our Victor 884s and landed on one of them. Then the nut made a circuit between the two motor out leads.Then the victor released puffs of smoke that the judge noticed and alerted our team. The result was a burned out victor that would only allow the motors to run forward and not back wards. This incident set us back the whole day.

[KenWittlief]

The correct expression when an engineer makes a mistake, and something bad happens is "THERE!" (instead of "OOPS!")

as in 'There! That should do it!'

to the tune of America -Simon & Garfunkel

Toss me a speed control
I think theres one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
...

The magic smoke song every EE knows:
to the tune of Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple

Slow talking Walter
The fire engine guy
Slow talking Walt-er
nert nert nert
nert nert NER NERT!
...

^ dont you think every event should have this song queued and ready to play when a robot starts a motor meltdown?

[Talos]

This is the electronics team captain from team 1189.

What I believe happened to our robot was that the PWM cable powering the camera was placed very close to the pins that connected the camera to its PCB. Unfortunately for us, there was a lot of heat from the power connection in the area, and our design didn't vent the camera very well. The heat melted the coating on the power PWM to the camera, and the exposed wire shorted on one of the screws that mounted the camera to the backplate. Essentially, the chassis became our ground, and the power load through the wire spiked, burning the whole wire along a 4-foot length. Literally the entire black wire was melted. Honestly, it was hard to determine where the power spike came from, as the cable was damaged badly enough that we couldn't tell much. It's also possible that the cable was pinched in a corner of our battery box, and touched one of the terminals, but I would think that would leave one, heavily damaged area, which I didn't find. The damage was well-spread over the entirety of the cable.

Fortunately, the cable couldn't have burned very long; no more than two or three seconds, but the plastic did smolder for along time afterward, and the smell was very potent. Our camera PCB was cracked from the heat, and we had to pull out the cable and replace it, but we've had no problems so far. Other cameras seem to be having similar issues with high heat near power connections. If this can be confirmed, it's definitely something that should be addressed in next year's kit.

Overall, we had a terrible regional, ranking 35th out of 63. Out of six matches, we were only fully operational for four, but I'm happy to say that, aside from the camera, we had literally no electronic faults. Mechanical and programming issues crippled us, but we hope to be up and swinging at the Waterloo Regional in Ontario.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Dillon Compton

Thank god for the brave ref with good reflexes who grabbed the battery and, I kid you not, threw it a good twenty feet.

.

in who's direction?! where could you possibly throw a burning battery in the middle of a regional?

[65_Xero_Huskie]

everyone around that robot started to move fast after that happened, anything coulda happened

[Dillon Compton]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

in who's direction?! where could you possibly throw a burning battery in the middle of a regional?

It was Nationals- they grabbed it, ran about ten feet, and pitched it into an unoccupied portion of the georgia dome floor. It promptly went out as the refs severly reprimanded us for having a faulty battery.

[KTorak]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

which motor are you referring to? we didn't have drill motors this year

Sorry, I called the DeWalt motor a drill motor. But I remeber the bottom motor of your shooter puffing out smoke.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by Wigginsgame

There was another bad smoker at GLR along with 1189. I don't remember who it was, but they had the fire extinguisher ready.. and it was red. Both smokers had lovely smells...

That was the most magic smoke in awhile.

That other robot was 857's (see sig). Here's what happened:

The battery was (stupidly) only secured inside the robot by three pieces of aluminum extrusion, leaving on side open. During our match, the battery fell out and instead of disconnecting, one of the wires from the battery pulled out of the connector and touched the metal frame. Sometime along the course of the build, a tiny piece of coating was stripped from the ground wire coming from the Fisher Price motor. That touched the frame as well. So now, all the current from the battery was going right to the frame, into the FP motor, completely skipping the whole breaker part (which is why the robot continued to smoke, and then catch fire long after the E-stop button was hit). The fuse in the speed controller blew, but that didn't matter because the battery kept pumping power to the FP motor. The speed controller eventually caught fire, giving off red smoke and prompting Copioli to shout something like, "Holy cow, that's the most magic smoke I've ever seen from a single robot!" ... It was a mess.

At the Wisconsin Regional, check out our super secure battery - now supported on all four side, sand velcroed two different ways, so it can never come off the robot again without some difficulty!