Power Management Recommendation for driver stations

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by ebarker

Roger that, I copy your comments well !!

However I posed the question to someone in the know at the event and the answer was negative.

Who controls the field facilities ? The GDC ? FIRST engineering ?

The question needs to be asked because without consistent guidance from HQ there is going to be some confusion.

Our cart now has AC power on it so our alliance members can stay plugged in and charging during queueing. And we have a handheld AC kit for the opposing alliance so they can go ditto !!

When the teams move forward they can pull the plug and place their equipment onto the driver stations. All that doesn't interfere with any understanding that FIRST has at this moment.

Should I post this to GDC Q&A ?

Ed,
It is my understanding that each event is slightly different. Most often the local regional committee is the one paying for the venue and services it provides. I have never had a problem asking for additional power in the Inspection area. I am concerned about power cords running between robot carts while in the queue for obvious reasons. If someone had thought of this before, there should be power at the driver's station for all robot control. The old IFI controllers were powered by the field when you plugged in.

[Rosiebotboss]

If you're coming to the NU CT regional, Rosie will be bringing our UPS's for use at the field drivers stations, if needed by teams. We did it at WPI and Kate (the FTA) thought is was a great idea!

[Mike Hendricks]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Ed,
The venue should be able to dig a few power drops out of their house box in a minute or two. All it requires is a threeway extension cord at each player station.

It really shouldn't even take that long considering there already is AC power at the drivers station for the SCCF cases, as well as additional power drops for the fixed cameras on the corners of the field. I was surprised that FIRST didn't provide the ability to plug the Classmate into power on the field. It will be interesting to see how these PCs hold up in Atlanta, and if any delays are caused by teams are waiting for the laptops to wake up or if they fail from the long walks or waits in the queue.

While we didn't have any issues last weekend in San Diego with ours, there was a few rounds where our battery was dangerously low. Plugging it in when the bot was in the pit helped, but there really should be something on the field to plug them into. It's very likely that the veteran teams will need to reuse PC next year, and who knows what shape the batteries will be in by then. Maybe someone will donate batteries for the KoP

[IceStorm]

Just out of curiosity how long were the inverters staying running on one of the robot batteries? I had thought of doing this at some point on Friday but wasn't sure how long of runtime you would get before you would need to recharge the batteries.

[DtD]

We just made sure our classmate was always plugged in between matches, and plugged in over night. (Don't just power it off over night, the classmate phantom will suck down the battery anyway - no I'm not putting it in sleep mode.)

~David