It seems to me that having a totally detachable electronics board would be a good thing. I am envisioning all of the motors, fans, sensors - anything that is attached to the robot frame - connected to 1 or 2 harnesses. When you want to change out a Victor you simply detach the harness and pull out the electronics board and voila!
Is this a good idea? The problems I see are voltage drop along the connections and heat. What do you think? Thanks.
It seems like this would work. In past years, we have fixed the robot half of the battery connector to the robot to allow quick one-handed disconnect of the battery. If you transfer this to the entire electronics board, it would allow better access I guess.
One thing to think about is, you need to maintain the wire gauge throughout, so when you use the heavy gauge wire for the motors, and try to gang that up for four or more motors, along with whatever other wiring, it can get a bit hard to work with.
Other than that, go for it!
Mullet-
It’s not a bad idea. Nor do I think its really worth the extra time, and possible weight gain to do. I imagine teams have done it, but then, most don’t. I’ve never felt that it would have been a really useful thing to have.
If your worry is replacing a component, why would you want to pull everything out? How hard is it really to reach the Victor while it’s still on the bot? If you can, all you need to is unscrew the 4 terminals, unplug the signal cable and unscrew the mounting screws. You should then be able to drop a new Victor in it’s place, and all the wires should fall right into place. Shouldn’t take more then 5 minutes.
Being able to pull all the electronics out on one board would be cool. But, how much is that worth to you? Personally, I like to keep my electronics package as small and quick as I can. Once I know what kind of space there is to work with, I’ll get the main harness wired up on a piece of plywood, and when the time comes, unscrew everything from the wood and drop it down together in the bot. Then all you have to do is run wire out to your motors, screw things down and flick the switch.
I also think people overestimate the amount of component failure we have. I have seen 1 victor that needed to be replaced in 4 years of competition, and then only because the fan had died. The Victor was fine otherwise.
As long as you can reach all the terminals to inspect and tighten them, I wouldn’t worry about making things easily detachable. As long as your connections are good and clean, you probably won’t ever have the need to take any electronics out.
-Andy A.
Industrial-strength velcro has been a real help… Now, we don’t screw down any of our electrical components.
–Jonathan