As for the cRio hardware itself, it was fairly good (although it does weigh alot). It would be nice to have a separate Tether and Radio connection to avoid unplugging the radio, but that could be fixed by using a radio with multiple ports (this would also make the tether easier to access, as the radio is generally in a more visible location than the cRio.
We have had some issues involving a broken Analog Bumper or Analog Module, we don’t know which but we replaced both and now it works. The voltage was oscillating considerable, as a graph of the analog inputs showed. We also had an issue where the analog module came out of the cRio and caused the arm to freak out and almost damage the robot (the e-stop helped here).
There are also many seperate points of failure here. There is the crio itself, its connections to the 3-6 modules, the connections of the 2-4 solenoid and analog modules to their bumpers, the connections on each end of 1-2 db37 cables, and up to 7 power connections not including the radio (4 bumpers, 2 sidecars, and the crio.)
Proposed solution: A crio backpack would attach to the top of all of the modules, providing a more robust connection with two screws to each module, and accept a single 12v unregulated input which would feed the 12v radio, 6v servos, 12v solenoids, 5v DIO and AI, and the 24v cRio. The camera could come off the 5v feed if it needed to, eliminating the PD board completely, some money savings for off-season projects. It could be designed for 2 analog modules, 1 digital module, and 1 solenoid module. the 32 DIO channels could have a fixed number of PWM’s, DIO’s, relays, SPI, and I2C. If you needed more than that, you could use modules like you have now in the remaining slots.
As for DSC’s shorting out, we have always fixed that by turning the robot upside-down and shaking it out. Works well.
Strictly to robot-end control system components, my biggest complaint is the radios. 18 seconds into a match at Kettering, we sailed over the bump after autonomous (not very roughly compared to other teams), hit the ground, and the radio stopped for some unknown reason. When we returned to the pits, we had a huge delay between matches (mostly because of field problems), got a new radio from spare parts, and had to wait for a really long time to have it reprogrammed. Once it was reprogrammed, we put it back on (in a different orientation this time), and used about 12-18 inches of duck tape on the connections, plus two zip ties to go with the velcro. No more problems at Kettering. Since then, we have carefully used a ton of duct tape on all radio connections and had no problems. However, the radios should be much more reliable then they are. The power connections are just friction locks - and that will never work for FIRST, especially a game as rough as Breakaway. To make things worse, that button on the top can press itself and cause problems, so disabling that in the firmware might be a good idea.
And, of course, I hate the Cypress comm. Totally sucks. But that is for a different thread.
We had to carefully mount it to stop the reset button from pressing itself.
