Basically last year our electrical guy graduated and when on to M.I.T. We were all very happy for him but it meant we had only one electrical person. The issue is she does not have much free time and only came once maybe twice a week for a few hours. SO me and My friend who’s dad is an electrician decided to learn. I had no experience and he had a little but no FRC experience. Basically we learned everything from online in one day. Neither of our mentors know electrical so we were really on our own. So I proudly present what we did. We still have to shorten the Network cable and connect the light and two cameras but that’s for final robot assembly. All constructive criticism will be taken but I am still really proud. http://postimg.org/image/u8divpdq7/ http://postimg.org/image/u8divpdq7/ (Not Sure If the Picture Posting Worked)
It looks nice: its neater than ours and I’ve been doing ours for three years. The one comment I have is that you need to make sure that your main breaker is easily accessible when you mount your board on the robot.
Your board may need a bit of shielding from above and from the sides (wouldn’t want an errant tote or bin falling on this fine piece of work). I think that the main breaker is in a reasonably good location, it shouldn’t be too hard to turn the robot off if it starts driving off as fast as it can possibly go (“I don’t like your team anymore, and I’m moving to Team 254… and there’s NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!” It’s happened before.) If this happens again and again, I would recommend placing the robot in a cage. A Faraday cage would work fine for this.
All joking aside, excellent electrical board! Nice job. I hope you feel very proud.
I think 254 would be too embarrassed to take in our robot even as their 2,000th foster bot. However we are still quite proud of it…Now lets hope we finish it in time. Again all joking aside Ill bend a piece of lexan in the same shape tomorrow and put in over everything. Then Ill hinge it so its still easy to access. I think that will add enough protection while still not being too intrusive. Thanks for the input.
I have a few suggestions. Please make sure you insulate the copper terminals coming from the main breaker. You don’t want an errant falling tool to short out your nice control board!
Also, make sure the two fuses for your RoboRIO and VRM are seated fully (you shouldn’t be able to see any metal on them. You don’t want them bouncing out and shutting down your robot in the middle of the match.
Also, forgive me for not being able to see (the picture is just a bit too small to tell) but where is your radio plugged into? I see wires coming out of the 5v 2a port of the voltage regulator module, but they don’t seem to match the colors on the radio plug. If it’s crimped somewhere in between, ignore this one and carry on!
Thanks for the suggestions I am really glad to hear some! Ok so as for the fuses your completely right I didnt even notice that. And as for the radio power it is heatshrinked to a new cable. As for the battery terminals how should we insulate it(Sorry for being a noob) but I have no Idea what works. Thanks again!
Another thing I noticed, is that you might want to change out the connectors on the breaker to crimp ones. The ones you are using are legal, but they have a tendency to vibrate loose over time.
Heat shrink or electrical tape are the easiest ways to insulate them. I think the heat shrink that came in the kit is too small to go over those terminals, but there was plenty of electrical tape supplied.
I also do agree with this to some extent. They can work loose over time, so if you stick with them, make absolutely sure they are as tight as you can get. If you decide to switch to the crimp ones that came in the kit, they have to be crimped right or they can fall off. We use this crimper and haven’t had a problem. We crimp in two places and don’t worry about it. If you don’t have a crimper that will work on that size terminal, I have heard of teams using a vise to crush them down. Whatever you do, do a pull test on them to make sure they are absolutely secure and won’t fall apart during the match.
Just so you know, using that IR controller (or at least using it in-match) is illegal because it counts as an external signal that does not pass through the router. Otherwise, this looks really, really good for your first time! Also, I wouldn’t suggest shortening your ethernet cable. Those things can be very, very difficult to crimp, especially if you don’t have the right tool.
Do we have to take it off durring the match? OR can we just not use it during the match. Its the led ir reciever and we planned on using it before the match to put the alliance color on. It has built in memory so it remembers what color it was on last. Thanks
Alright. We have some large heatshrink so we will use this (our goal was to use zero electric tape because last year everything was held in with electric tape and it fell apart completely) as for crimping we have no problem, the “help desk” or it guys at our school use our room sometimes for its tools but they also allow use to us their tools which includes all sorts of industrial grade crimpers. Thanks for the help.
I’m really not sure. It might vary from inspector to inspector or event to event, but I’d bet you could get away with covering the receiver during matches.
I’m not 100% sure but it appears your PWM connectors are plugged in backwards. If I recall correctly the black wire of each connector should be toward the outside of the RoboRIO.
Nice wire routing work though at times you may regret using all of those tie-wraps when changes need to be made.
You can help wire our team’s robot anytime.
It looks nice for your first ever electrical panel! My only recommendation, and this is purely aesthetic, would be to look into the possibility of using zip-ties to secure the wires leading from the PDB to the Talons down to the board in a similar fashion to how your PWM cables are fashioned. It’s a minor thing that could help clean up the appearance of the board just that little bit extra without making the panel unserviceable.
One minor thing that would make it easier to use at competitions is the orientation of your router. I’m not quite sure how much clearance you have between your main disconnect (power switch) and your open ethernet ports. Since you have to tether to your robot at competition when you’re not on the field, I would double check that you have enough room to comfortably plug an ethernet cable into the currently unused ports. If not, you may want to see if you have enough length on your cables to flip the router around 180* to make tethering to the robot easier.
Overall though I think it’s a very nice job! A lot of robots show up to competition with what my team has dubbed “spaghetti monster” wiring that kind of goes all over the place. This wiring is well organized into little “highways” of sorts such that all your wires are routed along one main loop between components, and it really make the wiring look a lot cleaner than it would otherwise!