Hi, my team the last few years as had some amazing students but unfortunately this past 2018 season saw many of the talented ones graduate. This season was also my first year helping with the electrical side of the robot. In 2019 I will have to be in charge of not only making the robot work but teaching new students. Please, I want to study and work to be a good team member but I have no idea where to start. If you have any advice or materials that could help someone new to this area, I would very much appreciate if you shared it. Thank you
The two most valuable resources to hooking up a basic FRC system:
Electrical Wiring Guide
Pneumatics Guide
Seriously, going through just these two documents alone will give you the basic knowledge required to have a functional electrical system 
This is very useful. Of course you should read the rule book and make sure you are following the rules but this helps give a general understanding of wat goes where.
I usually turn to Spectrum’s(3847) guide when teaching people electrical. Here’s the link :
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DWktsIyFx9LDg2FKNm5Rkt2RC0K3OhBKp4SL9KYaHAs/edit&sa=D&ust=1531887539408000
It’s not completely finished yet, however it covers most of the common connectors/techniques in FRC.
Your TBA links to a CA team but your location is MN. Were are you at?
Lots of good stuff here at the team 358 electrical page (and their others as well).
All of these are great resources that I wish I had while mentoring the rookie team I helped star last year! definitely adding this stuff to my collection of resources for the future.
All great resources.
My one suggestion for debugging most FIRST electrical issues is ‘Pay attention to the lights!’
The LEDs that are on most components all tell information about what is happening on the system. It is the first thing I do when there is an electrical issue and the first thing I teach students to look at.
There are documents online that describe the specific colors, patterns for all devices. However, most are easily self-explanatory.
Enjoy!
This was definitely on the technician’s reading list: For the 2020 season software documentation has been moved to https://docs.wpilib.org. Documentation for KOP items can still be found here. | FRC KOP Documentation
The 2019 team hasn’t been active sense 2007.
OP if you are a MN team, if you could give us a location there may be teams in the area to assist you. There many teams and coalitions in the state willing to help out
Yes that is where i was going. MN has been building a really great off season CSA and mentor sharing program. Now we’re just need customers so the programs can grow.
The previous links are great guides. We’ve learned a couple new tidbits this year:
- Keep metal shavings out of the cRIO. In the last 10 years FRC electronics have become way more robust. Gone are they days where victors smoke left and right, but there’s still a nice opening allowing chips into the cRIO to cause problems.
- Consider powering your wifi radio with barrel jack and PoE for redundancy.
- Check the sides your 775 pro red and black (or other allowed color) wires are soldered to since this determines the direction of rotation. If they’re mixed, your pit crew can become very confused.
- Wiggle your cables regularly… especially the main battery terminals. I’ve watched a handful of teams spend half a day at regionals with disconnects on field thanks to loose cables and connectors.
- Calibrate your joysticks when needed.