The Dlink’s are especially vulnerable. We have burned out more than our share of routers. Most of FIRST’s equipment has reverse wiring fault protection. But, the Dlinks do not.
So, ANYTIME the wiring of the Dlink power cord is changed (even if it is just disconnected and reconnected), I make the students verify polarity and voltage with a volt meter before they can plug in a Dlink. The power cord is not color coded, so it is easy for the students to wire incorrectly.
One big one is gaining and maintaining the student’s respect. This is a mixture of enforcing rules/behavior policies but also building rapport. Too much enforcing leads to students who behave in front of you but develop a common connection of not really liking you. Very unlikely to behave when you aren’t around. Obviously being too soft and “fun” causes them to disobey rules right in front of you.
Don’t be afraid to joke around with students.
The other big thing is letting them know that if they DO break something that they should feel comfortable telling you so the problem can be fixed. This goes back to my initial comment. If they are terrified of breaking something, they will only hide it when they do. We have all broken lots of things…usually professionals have epic stories of screwing up.
As long as something really, really dumb didn’t cause it, I don’t get worked up. They don’t need a long lecture to know not to do that thing again. Especially if they have your respect, they’ll feel the worst about letting you down.
And, then again, I’ve done plenty of really, really dumb things myself in my day…
Thanks to everyone for all the great tips. I will be using lots of these suggestions. I’m especially thankful to know that sometimes the equipment has reverse wiring and I will make sure the students and I check the polarity of each piece.
Great blog pnitin. I’m sure this practice will save us some money and probably a few headaches.
There is a follow up to pnitin’s post on our website. Detailed instructions on how to solder the XT60 connector can be found here.
I like many of the suggestions on here. As a mentor might I just add a couple of other things not mentioned.
I tell kids that nobody plans mistakes, but they happen. Especially when people get tired. Which pretty much defines FRC. Double check, and watch where you are if something goes wrong. Drilling on your lap is not acceptable practice. Neither is drilling on someone elses lap. (both seen).
Sometimes you just need to walk away. To say our budget is tight is an understatement. Everything we buy is a choice between things we need. A couple of years ago I had a student wire a brand new camera backwards. Brand new… Just out of the box. We had saved for the camera and it was destroyed instantaneously. I just walked away. There just wasn’t words. It has become legend.
Nothing is worth getting hurt. It’s easy to start taking short cuts when time is tight. Don’t. Disable and dissipate. Watch for stored energy. I had a kid reach through a drivetrain (chain) on a live robot. One of the few times I screamed at a kid, legend. It was truly fear and addreneline on my end.
Teach kids to measure. Close enough is not good enough. A marker is NOT a layout tool.
Good luck!
I am a Student on a team out of Kansas and last year I wired the new control system, told my mentor to check it, they said green light. Okay sweet! Plugged in the battery flipped the switch… Smelled smoke and my reaction was “Thats not my fault”. (FYI It was my fault!) That day I learned to check that black wires are negative and red are positive I had the + and - switched on the PD board and fried the $200 board. I still get crap for it (But refuse to say it was all my fault my mentor checked my work!) I did learn though! 
Could’ve sworn with wiring it was red goes to black you’re okay jack red goes to yellow you’re a dead fellow… weird.
Anyway you can only avoid student mistakes for so long and that while mistakes in FIRST can be costly they are still a chance to learn. Mistakes in the work environment just suck and mean you should make sure your resume is up to date.
Anyway my preference when dealing with situations where people are going to have to be around hazardous equipment is simple. Take the information they need to be informed, and to be safe, and give it to them. It is also a condition too when it comes to heavier tools, if you aren’t going to be safe you aren’t going to get to use the stuff. Some safety that you might not think about but definitely are like the bane of my existence are allergies. Keep the work space you have clean. One of our Alumni happens to have a rather serious peanut allergy, and when he was on the team I remember so many times stopping people after seeing them eat and going “wash your hands.” The more you know the small details on a team the more likely you are to prevent something from happening all together. Some students you need to tell to go on a break, or eat something, and don’t be surprised if students tell you to do the same.
Ones chances of this sort of thing happening would be much, much lower if one adopted the attitude that when one is presenting ones work to be checked, that person is being challenged to find any errors because the work has been checked, double-checked and triple-checked and all errors found have been corrected. The other person should be there to confirm that the person doing the work has found all of their own errors, not to find the errors for the person doing the work.
Agreed!! Unless of course you get a Talon that has the wrong color wiring on the controller. The GND had the red wire, and the V+ had the black wire. Luckily we caught it before it was ever hooked up…