I was tasked with building our team with a new driver station and was wondering if anybody had any CAD models or ideas to get me started.
Add LED’s
Look at rules for the maximum dimensions, I believe it’s 7 feet
Make it colorful
If you’re on the budget side of things, I can get you a drive station that is a mix of KOP chassis and polycarb. Here at 6814 we love to recycle unused materials!
Heres a link to our cart and driver station combo.
When creating a drive stations, it’s critical to think beyond the cool factor. What design constraints do you have? What are the goals of this drive station? What is the purpose of a drive station over a just a laptop and controllers?
This is what I consider to be key:
Computer and Controller Protection
Easy to quickly transport - Light Weight, Small, etc.
Easy to connect and disconnect to the field
Easy to store.
Fits on robot cart
Resources avaliable
All Black Everything*
Once you have constraints, you can be creative. Maybe you want to use part of an old back pack for easy transportation. Maybe it is big and needs wheels. Maybe its good for comps but you want a different one for demos (Please release a drive station for Pi’s on Linux!). Whatever you choose, remember that after you design it, you can make it look cool plenty of ways. This can be from vinyl stickering to spray paint to a nice metallic finish.
*The principle that everything, all of it, should be black. Not applicable to all teams, highly suggested anyways.
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Here are some pictures of custom driver stations from a couple years ago for inspiration:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AikCDwtdoW5Lqj66386jgdCO_tXj?e=mKrSMq
And if you’re interested in creating a custom operator control setup, then here are a few Google slides with thoughts on that + control layout sketching toolkit including a bunch of buttons, other switch types, etc.
Here’s a great discussion about custom button boards last year: Button Board
And here’s a write-up from 3572: 3572 Button Box
Good luck!
We used to build a new driver station every year…over the years, they kept getting smaller, until they disappeared. Last few years we’ve been using a laptop and one Xbox controller, and it does all we need. Keep It Simple, Students.
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Sweat. I was going to grab some of our pictures, but we’re in your collection.
I must agree with the UnofficialForth – what are you trying to accomplish with a drivers station. For us, it’s keep things together (everything is mounted to the base) so we can actually hold it upside down; definitely include the velcro hooks (this has saved us from ranaway robots hitting the drivers wall); and read the rules for size constraints.
Also if you want to do a custom panel, look for ardinuo boards that are supported by the arduino Joystick library. You’ll have to write a small sketch to run on the arduino; but the library makes the buttons look like a joystick to the WPI library and it just works.
mandrews – mentor 281
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