pic: Electrical Board Top View

[team63]

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[EricVanWyk]

It looks very pretty, but I'm rather confused by its design. Why is the PD so far away from everything else? This adds a lot of wire length, which adds resistance, which subtracts power available. Granted, this year isn't about power, but it still begs the question.

I am nervous that this design focuses too much on aesthetics.

[team63]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

It looks very pretty, but I'm rather confused by its design. Why is the PD so far away from everything else? This adds a lot of wire length, which adds resistance, which subtracts power available. Granted, this year isn't about power, but it still begs the question.

I am nervous that this design focuses too much on aesthetics.

There is a functional reason, even though it looks nice, it was designed to help in weight distribution with the battery as a major weight factor. The resistance issue was taken in to account with the use of properly gauged wire.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by team63

There is a functional reason, even though it looks nice, it was designed to help in weight distribution with the battery as a major weight factor. The resistance issue was taken in to account with the use of properly gauged wire.

Sounds good to me. I usually give my students a list of "Do XYZ unless you have a reason not to." I think this falls into the "reason not to" category.

Good Luck!

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by team63

...it was designed to help in weight distribution with the battery as a major weight factor.

I actually did an aircraft-style "weight & balance" calculation on our controls. I wanted to find out exactly how far to the side the cRIO had to be in order to evenly balance everything. It came out very nice.

In the end, removing one of the Digital Sidecars and some of the NI modules messed with the results somewhat. I do think lightness is more important than perfect balance, so I'm not upset at all.